Graduate Physics Programs During COVID-19: Admissions, Resilience and Diversity

The sudden COVID-19 outbreak introduced unexpected barriers and uncertainty for prospective graduate students and physics departments. Chief among concerns are the safety and health of students, recruitment, economic shortfalls resulting from reduced enrollment, and effects on the diversity of incoming graduate cohorts. More recently, programs have attempted to return to “normalcy”, while still ensuring the safety of students and employees. Our group is conducting surveys of students and physics departments, augmented by follow-up interviews with both groups, between fall 2020 and spring 2022. We will report on how COVID-19 has impacted the processes, pressures, and demographics of physics graduate programs, and also on the primary concerns that emerged among first-year graduate students. We will also discuss the process of returning to pre-pandemic operations, and the resilience of various programs. We will present practices implemented by departments, with special attention paid to those that have been successful in maintaining the size, diversity, and preparedness of the 2020 and 2021 graduate cohorts. We will compare and contrast findings from the first “pandemic academic year” (2020-21) with the current academic year (2021-22).