Study shows students in large research groups more likely to drop out of academia than peers in smaller groups – Phys.org

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March 10, 2025 report
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by Bob Yirka , Phys.org
A team of systems scientists from Beijing Normal University, IT University of Copenhagen and Southern University of Science and Technology has found evidence that college students working in large research groups at all levels are more likely to drop out of academia than their peers in smaller groups.
In their study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, the group used crowd-sourced data and the online research catalog OpenAlex to learn more about factors that affect academic and career success for college students.
Recent research has shown that postdocs around the world are leaving academia in record numbers. And other research has shown that Ph.D. students are experiencing an unusually high degree of mental health problems. Such findings have led to more research looking into the nature of the problem. In this effort, the research team suspected that one part of the problem might be the size of research groups and their effects on students.
To learn more about how postdocs, grad students and junior scientists are doing at academic institutions around the world, the team accessed datasets from a crowd-sourced website that queried students about a variety of topics including how well they are proceeding toward graduating and how they fared afterward. They also studied data from the online research database OpenAlex regarding information about papers and the researchers who published them.
The research team found that the percentage of students who remained in a science field for a minimum of 10 years after college was higher than for those who had done their college work with small research teams. The survival rate, as they called it, for those who had done their work with large teams was 38% to 48% lower. The researchers also found that students working in large groups tended to drop out of school more than did those in smaller groups.
On the other hand, the team also found that those who had done their work with large teams tended to publish papers that scored higher on index measures based on citations. They also tended to have more career success after graduating.
The researchers note that the differences are likely attributable to the roles that students often play in research efforts. Younger students, for example, tend to wind up with more menial tasks if they are in a large group, whereas students in small groups have much more responsibility. The researchers also noted that when a protégé was listed first on a paper and their mentor listed last—an indication that they had received more attention than other students—they tended to be less likely to drop out.
More information: Yanmeng Xing et al, Academic mentees thrive in big groups, but survive in small groups, Nature Human Behaviour (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02114-8

Journal information: Nature Human Behaviour
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Students in large research groups are more likely to leave academia than those in smaller groups. The survival rate in science fields for students from large groups is 38% to 48% lower. However, these students often publish higher-impact papers and achieve greater career success post-graduation. The disparity is attributed to the roles students play, with those in large groups often assigned more menial tasks.
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