NIH Diversity Programs Doubled PhD Odds: 20-Year Study
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- RISE and MARC programs doubled Ph.D. odds for participants: 20% of RISE students and 34% of MARC students earned Ph.D.s, compared to 10% and 15% in matched comparison groups, per a 20-year study of 743 students published Wednesday in Science Advances.
- The study, funded by NIH in 2005, matched 608 program participants against 135 comparison students on 11 variables including GPA, major, intention to become a scientist, and first-generation status, addressing the difficulty of finding an untreated control group.
- Both programs were created under the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 to "increase the number of underrepresented minorities engaged in biomedical and behavioral research"; the Trump administration terminated both over the past year, along with the funding for the study itself.
- Study author Anna Woodcock called the termination "heartbreaking" and "absolutely crushing," adding that the research team holds data through 2024 on graduate school performance, satisfaction, and publication records but cannot analyze it without restored funding.
- Clif Poodry, the former NIH division director who funded the study, said he was "very sad" that future students would lose the support pipeline the study validated.
- A separate National Bureau of Economic Research working paper found that among 916 early-career biomedical researchers surveyed, barely half said they're likely to stay in academia — a 22 percentage-point drop from six months earlier.
Why it matters: The two programs that doubled Ph.D. completion rates for underrepresented undergraduates have been cut, and the 20-year study that proved their effectiveness lost its own funding before follow-up analysis of data through 2024 could be completed. A separate survey of 916 early-career biomedical researchers found intent to stay in academia dropped 22 points in six months — a pipeline erosion that compounds the loss.
