Federal Funding of Doctoral Recipients: Results From New Linked Survey and Transaction Data

Funding of research is critically important because it affects the flow of new, doctorally qualified scientists into the workforce. This paper provides new insights into how survey data can be combined with administrative records to examine the ways in which funding affects workforce decisions. We show that NSF supports more graduate students per dollar spent than other federal agencies. Not surprisingly, NIH heavily supports biology, health, and psychology PhDs, while NSF heavily supports PhDs in engineering, the physical sciences, mathematics, and computer science.