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The purpose of this paper is to understand US federal government policy during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the connections to graduate education. Using the multiple streams framework, the paper outlines these actions through various streams (problems, policy and political) and perspectives (defining problems, articulating options and mobilizing responses).

The primary sources of data collected for this study were US federal government policies from March 2020 through May 2021. Policies were examined through introduction, implementation and alteration (when possible) within the specific time period of the study. The policies outlined in this paper were connected to the US Department of Education, and to a lesser extent, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies. Data analysis was a two-fold process. First, the individual policy was considered as a single case and second, a cross-case comparison occurred across the multiple cases.

Analysing the study’s data in the problem stream provides a strong indicator of how the pandemic was perceived as a challenge for US graduate education. The pandemic served as a focusing event and illuminated the connections of graduate education to key institutional functions, including research and teaching. Broadly, US federal policy actions in this area focused on giving institutions resources and flexibility to support graduate students and allow them to continue their academic work while also seeding funding and incentives to continue the movement of knowledge, activities and people in the research pipeline. Actions in the policy stream aligned with the decentralized nature of the US higher education system and allowed for choice by academic institutions within the parameters of options.

This paper extends extant literature related to policy-making and graduate education to consider policy-making during a time of crisis. The paper offers methodological and conceptual ideas for consideration in future research.

The growing demand for doctoral education and the role of the doctoral degree to advance nations socially, economically, and culturally forces countries and individual institutions to respond to concerns stemming from the doctoral process. Numerous initiatives to support doctoral students have been adopted with varying features across countries. The purpose of this paper is to examine doctoral student support programs in two countries: the USA and Turkey. These countries offer higher education systems at different stages of maturity and stability.

The data for this study came from a comparative case study analysis of doctoral student experiences in support programs at two research universities, one in the USA and one in Turkey. Ten American doctoral students and eight Turkish doctoral students were interviewed, for a total of 18 interviews. The study utilized the conceptual framework specified by the PhD Completion Project initiated by the US Council of Graduate Schools.

The two national systems featured in this study are at different points of their development. These developmental starting points influence the rationale and construction of a student support program, particularly one focused on advanced degrees, research activity, and knowledge production. The Turkish higher education system faces the challenge of building its infrastructure to be responsive to national needs in future decades, including producing qualified faculty as teachers and researchers. The American model of doctoral student support concentrates on increasing diversity within the academy. By focusing on first-generation students, students of color, and women in STEM disciplines, efforts are directed toward not just improving the quantity of graduates, but also the diversity of those graduates.

While doctoral student support programs are increasingly common in multiple national contexts, analyses of these programs are rare, and comparative analyses even more so. The emergence of new academic disciplines, the trend toward interdisciplinary research, and the prevalence of neo-liberal policies has made the doctoral experience increasingly complex. The data presented here reveal that while doctoral education is influenced by country-specific contexts, doctoral students from multiple countries share many of the same experiences.