Short and long-term impacts of an increase in graduate funding

Abstract

This paper studies the short- and long-term impacts of an increase in merit-based scholarships with a novel data set containing 1114 recipients from the 2004 and 2005 doctoral competitions of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Using the scores received by recipients and the funding thresholds, I take advantage of a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal impact of an increase in scholarship amount on locational choice and career outcomes of recipients. First, I find no evidence that recipients are induced to remain in Canada when they are promised a larger scholarship if they study in Canada. Second, there is no evidence that receiving a larger scholarship affects the probability of PhD completion within either five or nine years. Third, there is some evidence that a larger scholarship does increase the probability of having a tenure-track academic position nine years after receiving the award by approximately 15 percentage points. This result only holds for students who were initially awarded the scholarship in their second year.