Recognition in STEM doctoral education: a phenomenology of student complaints, institutional response, and lived conditions

Existing research, including scholarship influenced by Bourdieu, has shown that recognition in doctoral education is mediated by symbolic power and institutional habitus. This paper advances that debate by shifting the unit of analysis from recognition as an institutional outcome to recognition as an existential condition of intelligibility, asking when STEM doctoral students can appear as recognizable subjects in departmental life at all. Using existential phenomenology as a conceptual frame, we conducted in-depth interviews with ten STEM doctoral students across two departments. Through cross-department comparison, we show that recognition depends not only on procedures, but also on how pedagogy positions students in lived relation to authority and community. When these conditions are undermined, student reports often fail to register as legitimate and actionable, even before any formal response becomes relevant. On this basis, we argue that doctoral education must confront these existential conditions, reshaping pedagogical relations of power and responsibility.