Funding for Statistics PhD Programs

[trynagetby]

I just heard from friends that a certain school (Ivy league with a 10+ billion dollar endowment) is no longer providing funding for PhD applicants this cycle. The communication said "school of arts and sciences regrets to announce a one year pause in School-funded phd admissions for the year of 2021".  However most science departments have not cancelled their application cycles (same can't be said of humanities).  If this wealthy of  a school is doing this I can't imagine other schools not pursuing a similar policy. Can someone familiar with funding mechanisms for Statistics departments speak to how this development affect admissions for statistics specifically? I know many sciences allocate funding by advisor so they aren't affected as badly, but to my knowledge statistics department use departmental funding. How much trouble are applicants this cycle in/should we all jump ship to OR and business schools? Specifically for this school, it doesn't make a difference however as the stats department is in the business school.

Edited September 16, 2020 by trynagetby

[StatsG0d]

There are a couple issues here:

• Business departments rely on government funding much less than arts and sciences departments
• Private universities also rely much less on government funding

So given that this department is private and in a business school, I'd say it could be quite different than the rest of the departments.

[Stat Assistant Professor]

Funding for Statistics grad students is typically from tuition paid for by undergrads (and Masters students). In fact, I'd say well over 50 percent of the funding comes from the large survey courses (e.g. Introductory Statistics), which might have over 1000 students enrolled in a given semester. These classes are taught online for the most part anyway (with a possible small in-person component), and they have a lot of remote distance students even under 'normal' circumstances. Some "big shots" in the field also have a lot of their own grants that they can use to support PhD students as RA's. But most students are supported through TA. 

I think funding should be reasonably safe for Statistics. Not sure about Biostat, as there aren't typically undergraduate Biostat majors or undergrads taking biostat classes.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Stat Assistant Professor

[trynagetby]

Thank you for your responses! That's super comforting to know that this coronavirus won't completely destroy our admission chances.

[StatsG0d]

1 hour ago, Stat Assistant Professor said:

Not sure about Biostat, as there aren't typically undergraduate Biostat majors or undergrads taking biostat classes.

In my (biostats) department at least, I'd say the vast majority of the money comes from grant money (e.g., NIH). You're right though that for larger schools where there's a lot of TA opportunities funding is pretty robust to economic shocks.