STEM Doctoral Students' Perceptions of Program Policies, Degree Requirements, and Available Supports

Graduate students benefit from structured learning environments where program policies are clear, degree requirements are transparent, and program supports are widely available (Mendoza-Denton et al., 2018). However, doctoral students can often experience graduate school with a sense of ambiguity around expectations and guidelines (O’Meara et al., 2017). Using survey data from the Council of Graduate Schools’ (CGS) Creating Learning Environments for Advancing Researchers (CLEAR) project, this brief provides insight into how STEM doctoral students experience their learning environments and ways in which programs can make the graduate experience easier to navigate.