PhD students’ excellence scholarships and their relationship with research productivity, scientific impact, and degree completion

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between excellence scholarships and research productivity, scientific impact, and degree completion. Drawing on the entire population of doctoral students in the province of Québec, this paper analyzes three distinct sources of data: students, excellence scholarships, and scientific publications. It shows that funded students publish more papers than their unfunded colleagues, but that there is only a slight difference between funded and unfunded PhD students in terms of scientific impact. Funded students, especially those funded by the federal government, are also more likely to graduate. Finally, although funding is clearly linked to higher degree completion for students who did not publish, this is not true of those who managed to publish at least one paper during the course of their PhD. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of the findings for Canadian science policy.