NBER study: AI-generated writing appears in 29% of US STEM PhD dissertations filed in 2026, and those graduates are less likely to stay in academic research
Confirmed
The takeaway
An NBER working paper by Daniel P. Gross, Dror Shvadron and Hansen Zhang measured AI-generated text in a near-census of US STEM PhD dissertations from 2019 to 2026 and linked graduates to their jobs.
Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- 3 of 5
- Last verified
- 17 October 2026
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None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 108 days before it.
Key facts
- NBER Working Paper 35859, ‘How Heavily Are PhD Students Offloading Their Scientific Writing to AI? Evidence from US STEM PhD Dissertations’, Daniel P. Gross, Dror Shvadron, Hansen Zhang (October 2026; DOI 10.3386/w35859); not peer-reviewed
- Abstract: ‘AI writing is absent before 2023, present in 29% of dissertations filed in 2026, and rapidly growing’
- Use is more common among students from non-English-speaking countries and at lower-ranked programs
- Within program and cohort, AI-writing graduates are less likely to enter academic research careers and more likely to take non-tenure-track or industry roles; strongest among US-origin students
- Authors’ interpretation: AI may raise research productivity while displacing the work through which scientific expertise is built
- Nature news (Oct 16): ‘PhD students who write dissertation with AI less likely to stay in academia’ (paywalled to our fetchers; headline only). A Nature careers piece of Oct 15 asked whether AI is eroding PhD students’ critical thinking
What happened
Economists measured AI-generated text in nearly every US STEM PhD dissertation filed from 2019 to 2026 and followed the graduates into the job market. AI writing appears only from 2023 and was in more than a quarter of 2026 dissertations. Graduates who used it were less likely to stay in academic research, even compared with peers from the same program and year.
Why it matters
It is one of the first large-scale measurements of AI ghost-writing in doctoral training and its link to careers. The correlation is not causal (who chooses AI may differ), but it feeds the debate, also raised by Harvard’s CMSA, about whether dissertations still certify research skill.
Sources
3 sources from 2 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
3 sources: 1 primary, 2 press
Primary
Press
Changes
- Filed. NBER abstract page read; Nature not readable