Invited discussant comments during the UCL–Penn Global COVID Study webinar ‘Doctoral Students’ Educational Stress and Mental Health’

This discussant commentary considers the findings presented in the UCL-Penn Global COVID Study webinar 4 ‘Doctoral Students’ Educational Stress and Mental Health’ and the research article published from the series of webinar in this journal, ‘The effects of cumulative stressful educational events on the mental health of doctoral students during the Covid-19 pandemic’. The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the education of hundreds of thousands of graduate students worldwide by curtailing their access to laboratories, libraries, and face-to-face interactions with peers and supervisors. This has resulted in considerable stress, given that expectations on research productivity during the period have remained unchanged. This note suggests three principles to help graduate students cope with the impact of Covid-19 on their educational journey: (1) support student resilience; (2) support student learning; and (3) support students technologically

Preferences and skills of Indian public sector teachers

With a sample of 700 future public sector primary teachers in India, a Discrete Choice Experiment is used to measure job preferences, particularly regarding location. General skills are also tested. Urban origin teachers and women are more averse to remote locations than rural origin teachers and men respectively. Women would require a 26-73 percent increase in salary for moving to a remote location. The results suggest that existing caste and gender quotas can be detrimental for hiring skilled teachers willing to work in remote locations. The most preferred location is home, which supports decentralised hiring, although this could compromise skills