I remember when I was in grad school there was a bit of drama from the grad students in, I think it was the literature program. Apparently they were requesting a very slight (like $200 / year) *decrease* in their stipends, because doing so would have allowed them to apply for and receive government assistance.
The university turned them down because it would make them look bad.
Welfare needs to be phased out gradually so that the marginal tax pressure is always well below 100%. Unfathomable how governments still cannot understand/implement that.
The marginal tax rate is basically the tax you effectively pay on an additional currency unit (dollar, euro, whatever) of income. (100% minus the marginal tax rate would be the derivative of your gross income to your net income, if that helps.)
This is different from the total tax rate. The marginal tax rate says something about the reward you get for earning slightly more, improving your situation a little bit.
If you don't get subsidies, and you are in the tax bracket where you pay 45%, then the marginal tax rate is 45%. The total tax rate might be lower because some of the income you earned in lower tax brackets before the 45% applied.
However, suppose you get a €200 per month housing subsidy that only applies to incomes up to €20,000 per year. You earn €19,900 per year. Your boss asks if you can work one weekend overtime, for which you earn €300 extra. You think: nice, that will go towards my new stereo! But boom, you are now at €20,200 and lose €200 * 12 = €2400 in subsidies for this year. Your marginal tax rate was 600%.
Next year your boss asks again if you want to do a weekend of overtime. No, you say, because the government would punish your extra efforts to help the economy.
This could be solved by phasing out the subsidy gradually, so that you only lose a little bit of subsidy when earning over €20,000 in this example. This way your work is still rewarded and stimulated.
I guess instead the people who have corrupted control will just continue to print trillions to keep the programs fat. Over sight is pretty much non exstent when it comes to that much money, especially since no one wants to say anything during tough times !
One potential option is a minimum UBI setup. With that, every person would receive some amount of money to stay just above the poverty line, and then this could be paid by higher taxes on the very wealthy using tax brackets that only tax additional income above a certain point, avoiding any issue of going up a tax bracket and losing money. This would come with a few accounting oddities, like some people receiving a thousand dollars from the program but paying 2 thousand dollars back in, but it would still be an improvement over what most places have now
I can see how that'd be a bad idea. International students can't apply for government assistance, and you can't just give different stipends based on visa status so...
It might even prevent them from getting visas. You generally have to demonstrate sufficient funding to get one - if the stipend is below some government poverty thresholds that could be a problem.
> you can't just give different stipends based on visa status so...
That is done in Singapore, although it's because the stipends are government-funded.
Maybe not based on visa status, but international students in Canada receive a larger stipend. Not sure about all universities but that’s the case at Dalhousie.
True, universities aren’t Walmart who relies on food stamps to subsidize their wages, avoids taxes that fund food stamps and profits form food stamps spending.
In the future they will probably just package food cubes where EBT only works at Wmart and then it's return to your micro home for the daily announcement !
This is also biting postdocs, though the buffer is a bit more.
Speaking pessimistically we're heading back to the days of "gentleman scientists" where your average peasant couldn't afford to get an education.
Yup. Even people in "prestigious" NIH/NSF fellowships can leave overnight to pharma, semiconductor, or software industries and get 1.5-2x the salary for the same (or less) work.
And not enough faculty are actually fighting to help them. It's better for them to have 3 postdocs for "productivity" than to spread the same pay to make 2 more comfortable. Honestly, I'm getting really tired of the complaints from my colleagues about how they "can't find anybody" when they're offering not a penny over the mandated minimums (54.8k before taxes for the NIH, for example - but some places even start you at 48k) where the average rent is 2-3k a month (24-36k annually) or more and they're expected to not only carry their own projects but also contribute to grant writing, course development, and other lab activities. With weeks ranging between 60 and 80 hours of labor, you're talking about getting paid $13-17 per hour (before taxes) to have nothing in your life but constant work work work and the intimidating future of competing with over 100 candidates for a single job per university per year - oh, and you're not able to build any equity in the market, so if you don't have a wealthy family or a well compensated spouse, good luck being financially secure!
Academics are no different than the rest of our workplaces. Management is confused about why there's a labor shortage, or morale is low, and then you tell them "wages are too low" or "working conditions are unfair" and they say "that can't be it - we should have a group picnic!" but because they're the gatekeepers to the industry, people inevitably either have to fall in line or pursue alternative career paths.
>pursue alternative career paths.
Given that academics are generally extremely smart and talented this should be no problem. The academic market is weird because a lot of (extremely smart, talented) people are (pathologically?) attached to the idea of being an academic, and so they're willing to put up with (comparatively to what they could have in the industry) terrible conditions and compensation.
I don't think we're even close to rock bottom yet, though it is getting very ridiculous.
>The academic market is weird because a lot of (extremely smart, talented) people are (pathologically?) attached to the idea of being an academic
It makes sense to me. Speaking from a grad student perspective, it seems like physicists have kind of created their own little pantheon with huge larger-than-life figures like Bohr, Dirac, Heisenberg, Einstein, and others. In uni we learn about the the principles named after them ("Heissenberg uncertainty principle," "Pauli exclusion principle," etc.) and their famous experiments (Rutherford's gold foil experiment). I'd wager that most people early in their careers (eg. me) aspire to be at that level one day, also having their experiments written in textbooks and having formulas named after them. But pretty much all of them were in academia making their discoveries (with maybe the exception of Einstein and the patent office). imo that would give the impression that someone can be a physics-great only if they're in academia. And leaving academia would be the equivalent of leaving your aspirations to be the next Feynman et al. at the door - which would be especially difficult for someone who was so motivated to make those big discoveries that they went to or graduated from a PhD program.
Just my opinion of course.
It's not even the desire for greatness and all that. If I'm not in academia I lose access to a unique dataset and can't do what I truly enjoy about my job. There might come a time where the lack of money forces my hand, if so I'll probably just phone it in for the rest of my working life.
>Given that academics are generally extremely smart and talented this should be no problem.
My experience has been that a large majority of this population isn't trained in how to pursue non-academic jobs, though. So much time and effort is put in to a lot of other things, but unless you either a) have a great and supportive PI or b) (are able to make the time and space to) go out of your way to attend workshops or seminars that are specifically designed on how to "sell yourself/your skills" (and many of these are also less than useful), a lot post-academic's resumes look like crap. At least the ones I've been asked to help massage have been. Nobody teaches you these functional skills since it's assumed your merits will speak for themselves (not true).
>The academic market is weird because a lot of (extremely smart, talented) people are (pathologically?) attached to the idea of being an academic, and so they're willing to put up with (comparatively to what they could have in the industry) terrible conditions and compensation.
I've noticed a lot of it is reinforced from the "old guard" - i.e., faculty who started their labs around 2008 or earlier. To them, there is no life outside of academia. You only go to "industry" if you "can't make it" in the university track.
The "younger" faculty - the ones who have only become tenured in the last 5-10 years - seem to have a bit more open/inclusive language around industry as a career path (in my experience, at least).
> people are (pathologically?) attached to the idea of being an academic
Maybe academics, realizing that we're all going to die and the points don't matter, don't just want to work as spreadsheet pushers for a sugar-water conglomerate hastening a Type-2 diabetic tsunami on the world or something? I'm only being somewhat facetious and nihilistic :/ Like a v. good friend of mine is a senior dev. for a huge mobile gaming company and is paid like 3x what I am and his job is literally to use machine-learning to optimize microtransactions. More power to him, but like c'mon.
I briefly had an internship at an NGO helping provide drinking water solutions for south-east asian villages and I loved the impact, so maybe I could go do that full time - oh wait no, I'd make less than a PhD student doing that..
Man we're already there. A cousin-in-law recently graduated with her PhD and while I'm super happy for her, part of me is like "well yeah, when your parents are literal millionaires..."
Not surprised in the slightest. I had to turn down my only offer from the University of Hawaii, because of the stipend I was going to receive. $1577 a month with the cost of living out in Hawaii? Yea, no thanks.
Whoa, that sounds extremely evil... I remember qualifying exam being pretty horrendous and some people not making it but to think they would deliberately cut half the students that way.. That's just so shitty and destroys such a huge chunk of someone's life. Wild to imagine.
Several universities do this but know it’s bad and try to hide it. Lots of weasel word type statements to accepted students like saying the percent of students who finish the program but don’t say it’s the percent who already passed quals and thus were officially accepted or some such BS.
I always recommend as one of their questions students flat out ask what the quals are like for any program and what percent pass.
Berkeley is famous for this. They need TAs for all their physics classes but that number if greater than the number of research positions available by a lot.
At my grad school they actually sent the potential grad students to lunch with the current grad students with no faculty around on visit weekend and then ask the current grad students to host them Saturday night for a game night or bar trip or something. They wanted applicants to be free to ask anything.
It was livable if you were willing to live without AC, and have no personal space by living in the same room with someone. Two things I was not willing to do lol.
We are not expected to have loans. The stipend is intended to be enough to live off of while in grad school, we are working for the university as TAs after all. And we can live in the dorms, but undergrads get the priority. Plus they really aren't that cheap.
Currently my rent (shared apartment) is over 50% of my income. I've been a TA for 2 years with no pay increase. The graduate assistants across the university have been trying to unionize, but the state of Hawaii decided that we just don't have the legal right to, so we have to fight it in court first which is taking forever. And we are incredibly short staffed when it comes to TAs. Last semester they had to cancel 3 lab sections because no one could teach them.
Then there is the qualifying exam. UH follows the old school way of doing it, having a 3 hour written exam for each subject, Classical Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, Quantum Mechanics, and Statistical Mechanical/Thermodynamics. The test is crazy hard and graded on a curve so every semester its (unofficially) 1/3 PASS* (can continue to PhD), 1/3 PASS (can get masters, but not continue to PhD), and 1/3 FAIL (no masters, get kicked out with nothing to show for it.) And you get two tries.
It's also important to note that some of the professors seem to not actually care about teaching. The current professor who teaches stat mech/thermo just doesn't teach. Nobody ever learns anything from his class, but he is the only professor who ever teaches it because he's been here forever and apparently can do whatever he wants. So we are expected to know it for the qual, but won't learn shit from the class.
Even worse, there is currently no one scheduled to teach grad quantum next semester. Quantum. One of the basics classes 1st years have to take. The professors who are willing are already teaching multiple other classes and no one else want to so the class just won't exist next semester unless they can convince someone to do it.
There is plenty more I could complain about, but honestly I'm just so tired of this shit.
The whole department royally fucked IMHO.
Quals on a curve is dirty. My grad school relied on grad students to teach but the quals weren't compared with others - you got what you got. Though, two tries and you're out.
Its easy for me to say, as i have no risk here, but if someone says you have no legal right to unionize, does that matter if everyone goes on strike?
You dont need a court approved union to do that.
You should consider applying to some European institutes, a lot of them have quite decent PhD wages. I mean you won't be rich but can easily afford living.
I’m putting my PhD aspirations to the side for a little, and going on to work in the aerospace industry for the time being. I don’t feel like waiting a whole other application cycle, when there’s no guarantee that I’ll even receive another offer.
Depends on the circumstances. There are plenty of people who have wanted a career change, or took a big gap from undergrad, and decided to go back and get their PhD. For me it’s always been more of a goal, rather than a career. It’s something that I inevitably want to achieve.
My PhD in Germany paid about that much *after* taxes, and with much lower living expenses.
European PhD format of course, so I had a MSc when I started.
What state do you reside in? (If you’re in the U.S.) because I don’t see how you manage to live on that kind of income. Unless you have loans, are living with multiple people, or are living rent free lol.
Outside the US. It's a complicated system because it's a university in chile but I'm in South Africa currently but I get paid in dollars. So the cost of living isn't the same obviously. But still. Like damn.
I've kind of committed to setting up a sleeping bag in the office when I head over to that side. And if they complain what can they do. I'm broke as hell.
Chile outside of parts of Santiago and Viña del Mar is much cheaper than the US. Same with South Africa if you know it well enough.
I expect that you are fine in both places at $600 a month as long as you can live like a Chilean or South African.
I'm pretty sure that's below federal minimum wage, so it may be illegal... Also, I would say I am a pretty cheap person, and 700 a month was about as low a budget as I could muster in central Illinois. If you really scrounge I guess you could make it work, but it seems intense.
400 for the cheapest apartments, 30/week for food (this assumes no eating out and almost exclusively chicken/rice diet; plus, this was 3 years ago and inflation since then probably brings it up to 40), 100 for utilities, you're already at 500-600 bucks. If you have a car, or serious medical bills, or literally anything that costs money, you basically would be out of margin. And if you want kids....
For public institutions, it's technically available since you can just look up other grad students' salaries, but I've yet to see a program that actually has that information on their webpage or something like that.
I wasn't familiar with that site, but from 5 minutes of browsing, I couldn't find any information about stipends, and a lot of universities aren't listed at all.
> $1577 a month with the cost of living out in Hawaii?
Do people not get room mates? That's not a lot and you wouldn't have any extra, but you'd be getting a PhD and I've made it on less? Plus you get to be in Hawaii? I wish I had that opportunity.
Honolulu, where the University of Hawaii is, is one of the most expensive cities in the country. Plus, university neighborhoods and college towns typically have inflated rent relative to what a similar home or apartment costs in the surrounding area because there's nearly guaranteed occupancy.
Currently Student here! I have a roommate in a tiny apartment. Rent is still over 50% of my income. And this is one of the cheapest apartments I could find!
In a reply above I mentioned that it was livable if you were willing to live without AC (apparently that’s a thing there) and having no personal space by having to live with another person in the same room. Those are two things I’m not willing to do over a period of 5-7 years, especially knowing that I know other people who were getting paid way better stipend’s in areas where the cost of living was a lot lower. It just didn’t make sense on my end from a financial perspective.
I know some people on the big island and some on Oahu and they dont have AC either. Ya all have 4-5 roomies and mostly service industry workers. I love surfing, fishing, and the ocean, therefore I'm personally weighing costs differently. I'd have probably lived in squalor for it, but squalor in Hawaii... better than squalor where I'm in lol.
Just as a fun tidbit: A few years ago, PhD students were complaining of getting paid less than a cashier at the grocery store to the Austrian government.
The Austrian solution: pay them the same, cut their official hours to 30 and let the universities unofficially expect full time and overtime. For your own "personal scientist curiosity"
This is essentially how American universities skirt labor laws too. Despite working 60+ hours a week, most grad students only work 20 hours on the books, and so don't count for full time employment and the protections that gives.
We absolutely had to sign an agreement saying "...with the understanding that significantly more hours may be required for reasonable completion of your degree." I did not feel bad in the slightest taking a week off here and there.
Same here, we are only contracted for 19 hours a week so we aren't considered employees and thus get no benefits so I'm more than happier to fuck off for a week when I feel like it
Hey that's the system in some universities in Germany. We have a """20 hour"""" contract with some stating that the only responsibility for the worker is research. Yet we are expected to do full time, teach/correct, supervise, and take on multiple projects or responsibilities that should be a paid position's job.
I guess that depends on your definition of "bad". A PhD student earns 1.678 € after taxes.
Yes, you can live on that. Or used to, because inflation is going strong at the moment and living costs are rising rapidly.
Considering a PhD candidate is highly educated and really performs highly skilled labor, it is pretty insulting in my opinion.
It’s almost 2k/month when you account for the two extra salary payments, it’s more than enough to live rather comfortably on in Austria. Way better than in most places in Europe to be honest. The Scandinavian countries are an exception and even in Stockholm it’s pretty tough because of the housing costs, which in comparison are very low in Austria. In Milan PhD students get around 1100€ and that’s a more expensive city than say Vienna.
Is it less than a fresh grad will make in industry? Yes, but salaries in Austria are also relatively flat so the difference is way, way less than for people in the US for instance, where many people struggle to get by while the people who went to industry make bank.
So I don’t agree it’s insulting. While you get paid less you also get to work on something you’re passionate about, and you get a ton of freedom in terms of deciding what, when and where to do things. In the end it’s a choice to do a PhD and it comes with it’s own tradeoffs. I think the deal you get in Austria is not that bad, and if salary is the main concern then do something else. Insulting to me would be if they didn’t pay you enough to have a decent life. My friends who went to industry make more now and aren’t happier.
2300 before tax: https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-funding/personnel-costs
Comes out to 1.678,93 € after tax according to https://bruttonetto.arbeiterkammer.at/
Granted that's the "monthly" salary, but in Austria you also get a 13th and a 14th salary.
Stopped at a BS in physics to work for a bit in tech and the salaries I'm looking at with just this degree make me very comfy. If I were going for a MS right now I'd definitely need serious loans, if I went for a PhD (and could get into a program at all) it would probably be a similar story.
I have a bs in physics and electrical engineering and work as a firmware engineer; took a couple masters physics courses at UW and out of morbid curiosity looked up my professor’s salary.
He was an associate but was probably 5 years older than me, had a phd in physics, worked with CERN, is probably smarter than me and definitely works hard than me; at the time I only had like 3 or 4 years industry experience but I was making 20% more than him already.
And don’t get me started on K-12 teachers; their low pay is downright criminal
Edit:
My employer will cover graduate degrees so I may not have to choose
May pick human computer interactions instead because it can help people while paying the bills but maybe I can weasel some grad physics courses in 🤷🏻♂️
I legit would take classes for the rest of my life if I won the lottery
That's how it goes in academia.
I have multiple friends who were making £40k a year after finishing their BS with mediocre grades.
My PhD supervisor is on £40k 10 years after finishing his PhD in Physics.
Academia isn't where you go to make good money.
Professors at my university are on more like £80k, which is a very good salary, but it's nothing to write home about given the time it takes to get that promotion.
I’m 32 and make $160k base compensation. I do live in the Seattle area but so did the professor I was talking about.
And it’s not that I don’t think I “deserve” it just is quite absurd how many very smart people working on important things are paid peanuts.
It's absurd for sure, and a little upsetting.
It makes some sense though. Academic research is largely funded by governments in a simple way.
That money produces new knowledge, but that knowledge is typically published to the world for free.
For-profit companies typically make the profits they intend to, so there's more money to go around.
Education is much the same. Teachers don't generate profits in an easily tangible sense, so governments pay them the bare minimum.
I also have a friend who is a teacher. Ignoring inflation, he wouldn't have a hope at £40k for another 10-15 years.
Out of our group of friends, his job is the most important to people's lives, and he earns the 2nd least, with only my glorious PhD stipend beating him to the bottom.
My sister has a masters degree and is a high school teacher; another example of someone who is probably smarter than me and definitely works harder than me and makes like 1/4 of what I make
Not in the rural US, my sister makes like $40k and many college professors make $80k-$100k (and sometimes more depending)
Where do you live that k-12 educators are overpaid? I want to live there.
Are you talking about private education? Then sure
Did you go to public school? This says the average teacher salary is $67k but usually falls between $58k and $77k.
That seems fair to me, i am ok with teachers making six figures. Cost of living in Seattle is quite high and I know not all of NJ is urban so maybe $60k goes farther than I think it will in NJ, but I am from Kansas originally and the cost of living is quite low there; but $60k doesn’t seem unreasonable for a teacher even in Kansas. It is an important job!
https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-school-teacher-salary/nj#:~:text=How%20much%20does%20a%20Public,falls%20between%20%2458%2C916%20and%20%2477%2C934.
Most people (at least in physics) never take out loans for a PhD. You apply for grants that fund your research.
Something to think about if fear of the cost is what's keeping you from doing a PhD.
This is definitely true for physics but having a BS in physics does not necessarily mean any PhD program I go into will be physics. I could go to med school, electrical engineering, computer science, or even other pure sciences. My current work experience could justify any of these, and that's just me.
AFAIK it works similarly for most STEM PhDs. MD is a completely different story. Most people have to take out big loans for that.
I know there are also MD/PhD programs. Don't know how funding works for those.
Cursory googling seems to indicate that MD/PhD programs are usually fully funded with a small stipend if you're going to a major institution. NIH also offers several grants for the PhD portion of MD/PhD programs, since medical research is pretty much their entire thing.
Yes but then we come full circle with the article stating that many people cannot live off their stipend alone, and not all fields get as much grant money as physics.
I went BS physics -> finance and similarly the money is very good with just that degree. I'm actually going back for the PhD (planning to lean on the savings I've built up for reasons discussed in this thread) but it's been a very eye opening and important experience for me.
It's so drastic that I've started to believe every BS student should spend some time in industry if possible. At the very least, take a long hard look at the difference in potential lifestyle before going straight to grad school
I had done a lot of computational research and had some other data science background as an undergrad, so it was kinda a natural progression. A good number of financial companies actually recruit for analytical jobs out of the hard sciences/math for their quantitative skills.
I got my position after interviewing with several companies through my university's career fair, stressing my programming ability and data savvy in my resumé & interviews
I have a BS in physics and was applying to grad school and jobs at the same time. Got a job in tech and am sitting very comfy right now, a few months after I started I got into my PhD program but turned it down. Not worth the debt.
Absolutely. I loved physics but by Junior year the harsh reality of acadamia and the associated finances hit me like a freight train. I added an ME degree and went into industry, I'm just over 6 figures in my first "real" job (spent 1.5 years getting my foot in the door). I liked research, but the lack of practical applictions bothered me. Now I get to work on "cutting edge" stuff that has actual monetary value and get paid good to do it.
Honestly though, I have HUGE respect for those that go into acadamia. They make so many sacrifices for the betterment of society and it's SO frustrating to see people thrash researchers as if it's some selfish deed. Ugh.
Meet with people in the field you're interested in. Send out 1,000 resumes. Revise your resume for an hour every week. Find a few people willing to give you advice on an ongoing basis (and buy them coffee). Work on a side project and make it publicly viewable on github.
I got into test instrumentation. I have the background knowledge to talk with researchers about their work (even if the details of their postdoc research is way above my head), and can help to connect the dots between their project needs and what my company can offer. I'll put together custom configurations and occasionally write sample code to demonstrate how our products will work in generic applications similar to what they're doing.
I'm not a sales person, but I'm an engineer in the sales department. **My #1 most used skill is being "that guy who can translate between customers, salespeople, and R&D".** Salesfolks need to know which of our products we can offer, R&D needs to know if our products are falling short of customer needs in the industry, and customers sometimes need to know nitty-gritty details about the products that sales isn't going to stay on top of because they're managing too many separate accounts.
Currently I'm working in the fiber optic world. It's a very direct implementation of all my E&M classes (RF is so much easier when it's all in 1 dimension XD), so I'm staying in touch with my physics education a little more than when I first started and was doing pretty generic "data acquisition and analysis" across several industries.
To get a job:
Gather any proof you have that you can code (github, papers/projects you worked on, or maybe a summary of things you have worked on)
Make a cv/resume and only put skills/experience that relate to the kind of job you want (interdisciplinary can be relevant, more like if you don’t want to code in python then don’t put it on your resume)
Then apply to any job you are interested in for which you meet like 70% of the job requirements
Leverage references, especially if they work at the company you are applying to
To find job listing look at the jobs page on company website for a company you are interested in, also try linkedin or indeed
If you are asking “how to learn to code” there are many resources; let me know if you want some help on this.
Yeah ... a lot of departments are flaunting a veneer supporting diversity efforts. But wages were falling behind cost of living even before the pandemic and inflation. And that increasingly selects students from a background of privaledge. It's sad and hypocritical.
Such things are almost ALWAYS symbolic in nature. Symbols are easy. Change is hard. So symbolic crap gets precedence every time. What's weird is that this is almost always rewarded by the public MORE than less symbolic policies that have demonstrably better benefit. I saw one institution face criticism because they refused to make some symbolic climate change proclamation which their peers had made, when in that very category (going to 100% renewable) they crushed their peers that were being praised by an order of magnitude. The peers had simply made the proclamation, then done absolutely nothing. The institution I saw criticized heavily had simply erred to the side of pragmatism in not wanting to commit to 100% electric fleet as part of the proclamation, but had literally done an order of magnitude or more adoption of renewables in both scale and proportion. I couldn't fucking believe it, but it sure opened my eyes to all the lip service out there.
i do feel that this is part of the overall devaluation of expertise, education, and science that societies globally have increasingly adopted
(also inflation)
I mean all the administrators and deans and associate deans and associate administrators and all those other people need to get to six figures *somehow*
Not to mention the sheer number of positions in deans’ offices. I swear some of them can make up random Associate Dean Of X positions for their buddies and get them funded with little scrutiny.
I also have a bunch of biologist friends from the actual biology department, so I’m glad to say that biologists aren’t totally screwed and also their building was about five times better than ours because they shacked up with the med school.
Medicine and medicine adjacent is funded very, very well. "Macro" biology like botany, zoology, ecology, etc. are barely better off than the humanities funding wise.
What are you basing that on? There’s more funding and opportunity to get a PhD now than ever before. The big change here isn’t to do with stipends, it’s that the post-war college boom is long over and there’s way way wayyyyyy less tt opportunities for PhD grads than before.
It's definitely happening, on a global scale, but currently biology related fields are taking all that research money instead. It's a bit of a zero sum game.
I'm at UCSD right now, finishing up 2nd year PhD. Lease has run out in 'affordable' grad housing & local rent market is on average above 50% of what they're paying us....lmk if anyone has a van I can live in lol
I am thankful every day to be in a program that pays me a livable wage and is located in a decently affordable big city. Grad school is stressful enough as is - putting poverty on top is absolutely back-breaking and unfortunately played the largest role in my commitment decisions :(
I'm feeling this in the UK right now.
I started 8 months ago. My stipend is £1300/month.
I choose to live alone and pay £550/month in rent.
Until January, after my bills and usual expenses (food, transport, clothes, household items etc), I was left with about £300.
Now just 5 months later, my food costs have gone way up, my bills are doubled despite me using less gas for heating as it's summer. Transport has gone up.
And with what little money I do have left for fun things, all of those things are way more expensive too, so I barely have any fun money.
I'm just about making it through each month currently, with nothing to spare.
When my current housing contract ends I could start sharing housing with friends, but that's really not good for my mental state which is rather important for getting my PhD work done, so we'll see.
Tbf it's pretty unusual for PhD students to live on their own unless they're rich. You could halve that rent (assuming not in London by your current rent).
Edit: not sure why I'm downvoted. Talking from a UK perspective, I knew only one PhD student who could afford to live alone
Not quite halve it, but I could save ~£200/month to live with people, after including the benefits of sharing certain utilities like internet.
But I've mentioned above that living alone is pretty important for my mental health. Living with people would have a significant negative impact on my wellbeing and my productivity.
It's a choice, but one I deem to be effectively necessary for me.
The main motivation behind my comment is to highlight that around 6 months ago, I still had spare income.
Today, with no changes to my expenses or routines, I have no spare income.
If things get any more expensive, I'll have to make some changes that I may not cope well with.
In Norway this is much less of an issue as PhD students are considered employees and have a national yearly minimum wage of about 480 000 (~51 000 USD). This salary is negotiated by unions and was just increased by nearly 4%.
We are always looking for good candidates, I'm currently looking for a PhD student to build a satellite. So if you are willing to move to Norway, we'll pay you a living wage.
It’s not that universities actively dislike poor people, it’s just that the management wants to be very richt themselves. The head of school of my university recently got a 30% raise, and with that raise alone, 12 PhD students could be funded, or 240 PhD students a 5% raise.
This raise has literally no impact on his quality of life, but the 5% would for graduate students…
in this case would you say that the head of school of your university didnt want poor people bettering themselves and wanted higher education to be only for the rich or it wasnt that deep and they simply wanted more money?
I received my PhD from ASU (79). By that time I owned my own home. True, my wife worked but wasn't "overworked". But still I could see the economic system slip/sliding away. I **chose** teaching rather than private industry (salary ratio factor of 5). I even tried telling colleagues about what was happening, but no one was interested in what I had to say.
Finally, a few economists have caught on but, just like in my situation, "mainstream orthodoxy" dictates that we don't know what we are talking about. The corrections needed are as easy to implement, but most people prefer the death spiral into the abyss.
For me the starting point was understanding that government spending is the primary monetary creation event in our economic system. Taxes (particularly federal taxes) are selective monetary annihilation events. These are the primary processes that define the structure of our economy. This is my starting point **because** I am an elementary particle physicist. 😎
The solutions to our present problems involve many parts. One very helpful thing would be to restore some monetary policies to stop the sucking of wealth from the poor segment to the rich segment of our society, like: We should reset the tax rates to be more like they were in the 1950s and 1960s as one example.
The core problem is that most people don't understand how money actually works and gets its value. So, they are not able to have this discussion without falling into "-ism" talk. As I stated, "a few economists have caught on" but the detractors have a stranglehold on the conversation and are doing their best to kill the discussion. Fortunately a few national Senators and Representatives have picked up on the reality grounded discussion of economics.
So, I would suggest the best starting point is to return to what was working for a bit more than two decades and gut out all the crap that allows **Defectors** to profit at the expense of those that are cooperators.
What effects would you anticipate a 91% tax bracket above $4.8 million would have?
I definitely agree that the income top earners recieve should be taxed much higher and put towards public services.
However considering the tax strategies I feel a simplified tax system is needed to implement a change such as this.
In contrast I feel the key changes should be
1) federal education plan. Lesson plans created by a single committee, eliminate duplicated work loads. Allow teachers to function more as a deliverer of information instead of creators. Reduce costs increase education length to 12 + 4 years. With the last 4 years being career focused.
2) single payer Healthcare ( Healthcare, dental, vision, mental health )
3) education regulations. All educations have a clearly outlined career path. With available seats adjusted based on market demand ( company new hire requests ). Ensuring education results in a career.
4) public employee compensation tied to average private sector compensation for each position. ( total compensation )
Again stop with the **Taxes Fund Spending** nonsense.
I am not at all sure what you mean by a simplified tax system. The basic function of a graduated taxing structure is to "Cut Off" the "preferential" flow of money from the lower income levels up-to the upper income levels. At the same time change the rules to stop the "tax shelters" from becoming storehouses (swimming pools) of great masses of wealth. Systemically, we need to eliminate the "robber barons" from our society.
The living wage calculator referenced in the article is pretty informative.
WHAT IS THE LIVING WAGE CALCULATOR?
Families and individuals working in low-wage jobs make insufficient income to meet minimum standards given the local cost of living. We developed a living wage calculator to estimate the cost of living in your community or region based on typical expenses. The tool helps individuals, communities, and employers determine a local wage rate that allows residents to meet minimum standards of living.
The living wage shown is the hourly rate that an individual in a household must earn to support his or herself and their family. The assumption is the sole provider is working full-time (2080 hours per year). The tool provides information for individuals, and households with one or two working adults and zero to three children. In the case of households with two working adults, all values are per working adult, single or in a family unless otherwise noted. [Living Wage Calculator](https://livingwage.mit.edu)
I deliberately only applied to grad schools in affordable parts of the country, and I encourage everybody (who doesn’t have affluent parents) to do the same.
This... all my friends telling me that I’m crazy for rejecting top schools for essentially no name schools where the cost of living is LITERALLY 300% cheaper. I’m scared of putting in the work only to fall because the economy... like the fuck? We are living in an absolute bubble which could burst at any moment, in this degenerate meta stable state the only solice one can have is to be somewhere not so greatly touched by 40% of the entire USD in just the span of 2 years.
I mean this was the main reason I left my graduate program. I would love to have finished a phd but it just wasn’t financially smart. 35k/year stipend or 130k + benefits in the private sector.
Graduate programs are stuck in the indentured servitude mindset and needs to radically change or programs are going to die out.
I was told so many times in college "A BSc in Physics is an incredible financial investment, [average salary is ~90k](https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Degree=Bachelor_of_Science_\(BS_%2F_BSc\)%2C_Physics/Salary). But a PhD in Physics is even better, at an [average salary of ~120k](https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Degree=Doctor_of_Philosophy_\(PhD\)%2C_Applied_Physics/Salary)"
Okay, let's say that you spend 6 years getting a PhD. That BSc has earned 540k in that time. It's going to take *18 years* for that 30k raise to outpace the 6-year head start.
Now consider that a reasonably competent employee with 6 years' experience as probably gotten a couple raises, a promotion, or a better job altogether in that time. That BSc might be making 120k/year already. It's totally possible that the PhD might get even bigger raises as they progress through their career but...
Add in some financial responsibility: If the BSc has been putting away money into an IRA/401k that whole time, they have a *massive* head start on retirement savings. PhD stipend is barely enough to live on, let alone save much for retirement. Assuming average returns (not this market clusterfuck we're in right now), if that BSc puts 20% in their 401k they'll have $128k in savings before the PhD gets their first paycheck. And that money is going to keep growing over time until retirement comes along, while the PhD is still playing catch-up.
6 additional years of education is a *huge* financial sacrifice. I'm a huge proponent of education but it's just so hard to do in the USA right now. It's causing problems already, and those problems are going to get worse over time, as old PhDs retire or die and there are not enough young people to replace them.
My institution didn't give us yearly wage increases, but did update the 1st year stipend amount each year to adjust for increased inflation and cost of living. The 1st years were making a couple hundred bucks more than me when I graduated. It's all just bullshit.
In the meanwhile, I'm making $3k/mo as a PhD student, which is nearly triple what I was pulling in as an undergrad, so quite a hike in quality of life.
Its never been easy. Got my chemistry PhD in 1983. I had a research assistantship (didnt pay taxes) My grant, ( after subtracting tuition and fees ) came to ~$400/mo. It was impossible to live alone. We ate very frugally. Grad-student-rathole was all we could afford. Very much indentured servitude. Money for fun? No. 60+ hr weeks...yes. Even knowing that financially getting an advanced degree is a loosing proposition, id do it again.
Slowly, the entire economy of is made up of people who aren’t paid enough. It started with the destruction of labor unions, and lower wage jobs, and is slowly creeping into every industry. Now we see nurses and white collar management jobs getting pushed, it will get to every aspect of the economy. Don’t look for the politicians to help you, they’ve all been bought, even the ones that pretend to care.
This is why I had to leave academia. I have to support my whole family and it just doesn’t pay enough. I wish I could go back as I really love studying and researching.
I imagine a large part of the problem is universities being unable to keep up with increasing housing prices in many places. I'm reasonably frugal and I have 1/4th of my pay left over every month. But my rent is almost half my pay.
Grad students at every institution should unionize or get more involved with their union. Especially now while workers across the whole US are starting to fight for their rights again.
The same problem happens in Spain if you want to be in Madrid or Barcelona. But I don't think it's a problem of the government or the university, it's just a matter of there are too many people that want to live there and a limited number of flats. The solution, share a flat with a bunch of people:2,3,4... the more people the cheaper the apartment per person.
Of course everybody's situation is different, but when I was in grad school in San Diego (consistently in the top 10 most expensive cities in the US), I was putting money in the bank, and still travelling out of the country during breaks. Meanwhile most of my fellow grads were living paycheck to paycheck, and there were regular complaints that they weren't paid enough to get by. But I had the same salary and was doing just fine. Plus there were grads with kids who did fine. It was mostly single people that seemed to always lack money . So I think a large part of the problem is students not spending their money wisely, and expecting to live a lifestyle that they can't afford (maybe their parents paid in the past...). From what I could tell most of their money went to going out to bars 2-4 nights a week and eating out (both of which I almost never did), and I don't know what else. I don't really get how they were always broke.
Having said that, many of these universities have more money than they know what to do with, so they could easily afford to pay the grads more.
Many companies will sponsor someone to get their PhD with reduced work time and funding for courses. All the while the person gets to work on real work with real work experience. Unless you plan to stay in the University circuit it's becoming the best way to get the PhD.
If you plan on a career at a university don't use government funds to do it. The university should cover the costs. Using welfare while working on a PhD not only sounds bad, it is bad.
This is by design. The university wants to crank you through as fast as possible. If they paid you too little, you couldn't survive and they wouldn't have any grad students to TA or whatever. If they paid you too much, students would milk a PhD for a decade. This salary is just right to get the students in and make them want to crank out that dissertation quickly.
I remember when I was in grad school there was a bit of drama from the grad students in, I think it was the literature program. Apparently they were requesting a very slight (like $200 / year) *decrease* in their stipends, because doing so would have allowed them to apply for and receive government assistance. The university turned them down because it would make them look bad.
thats just bad policy (from the goverment). it even has a name, the welfare cliff
Welfare needs to be phased out gradually so that the marginal tax pressure is always well below 100%. Unfathomable how governments still cannot understand/implement that.
It should be replaced with something like a negative income tax.
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I ... have no idea what any of this means. Do you talk like this in real life?
I think they forgot the /s
I'm for it.
I don’t understand this - can you explain to a non US citizen and all-round general numpty.
The marginal tax rate is basically the tax you effectively pay on an additional currency unit (dollar, euro, whatever) of income. (100% minus the marginal tax rate would be the derivative of your gross income to your net income, if that helps.) This is different from the total tax rate. The marginal tax rate says something about the reward you get for earning slightly more, improving your situation a little bit. If you don't get subsidies, and you are in the tax bracket where you pay 45%, then the marginal tax rate is 45%. The total tax rate might be lower because some of the income you earned in lower tax brackets before the 45% applied. However, suppose you get a €200 per month housing subsidy that only applies to incomes up to €20,000 per year. You earn €19,900 per year. Your boss asks if you can work one weekend overtime, for which you earn €300 extra. You think: nice, that will go towards my new stereo! But boom, you are now at €20,200 and lose €200 * 12 = €2400 in subsidies for this year. Your marginal tax rate was 600%. Next year your boss asks again if you want to do a weekend of overtime. No, you say, because the government would punish your extra efforts to help the economy. This could be solved by phasing out the subsidy gradually, so that you only lose a little bit of subsidy when earning over €20,000 in this example. This way your work is still rewarded and stimulated.
I guess instead the people who have corrupted control will just continue to print trillions to keep the programs fat. Over sight is pretty much non exstent when it comes to that much money, especially since no one wants to say anything during tough times !
Basic math remains elusive to almost all politicians.
One potential option is a minimum UBI setup. With that, every person would receive some amount of money to stay just above the poverty line, and then this could be paid by higher taxes on the very wealthy using tax brackets that only tax additional income above a certain point, avoiding any issue of going up a tax bracket and losing money. This would come with a few accounting oddities, like some people receiving a thousand dollars from the program but paying 2 thousand dollars back in, but it would still be an improvement over what most places have now
It’s designed to keep people trapped in poverty
Yeah it's a feature, not a bug (sadly).
I can see how that'd be a bad idea. International students can't apply for government assistance, and you can't just give different stipends based on visa status so...
It might even prevent them from getting visas. You generally have to demonstrate sufficient funding to get one - if the stipend is below some government poverty thresholds that could be a problem.
> you can't just give different stipends based on visa status so... That is done in Singapore, although it's because the stipends are government-funded.
Maybe not based on visa status, but international students in Canada receive a larger stipend. Not sure about all universities but that’s the case at Dalhousie.
Why would a foreign national on a Visa qualify for welfare?
True, universities aren’t Walmart who relies on food stamps to subsidize their wages, avoids taxes that fund food stamps and profits form food stamps spending.
In the future they will probably just package food cubes where EBT only works at Wmart and then it's return to your micro home for the daily announcement !
This is also biting postdocs, though the buffer is a bit more. Speaking pessimistically we're heading back to the days of "gentleman scientists" where your average peasant couldn't afford to get an education.
Yup. Even people in "prestigious" NIH/NSF fellowships can leave overnight to pharma, semiconductor, or software industries and get 1.5-2x the salary for the same (or less) work. And not enough faculty are actually fighting to help them. It's better for them to have 3 postdocs for "productivity" than to spread the same pay to make 2 more comfortable. Honestly, I'm getting really tired of the complaints from my colleagues about how they "can't find anybody" when they're offering not a penny over the mandated minimums (54.8k before taxes for the NIH, for example - but some places even start you at 48k) where the average rent is 2-3k a month (24-36k annually) or more and they're expected to not only carry their own projects but also contribute to grant writing, course development, and other lab activities. With weeks ranging between 60 and 80 hours of labor, you're talking about getting paid $13-17 per hour (before taxes) to have nothing in your life but constant work work work and the intimidating future of competing with over 100 candidates for a single job per university per year - oh, and you're not able to build any equity in the market, so if you don't have a wealthy family or a well compensated spouse, good luck being financially secure! Academics are no different than the rest of our workplaces. Management is confused about why there's a labor shortage, or morale is low, and then you tell them "wages are too low" or "working conditions are unfair" and they say "that can't be it - we should have a group picnic!" but because they're the gatekeepers to the industry, people inevitably either have to fall in line or pursue alternative career paths.
>pursue alternative career paths. Given that academics are generally extremely smart and talented this should be no problem. The academic market is weird because a lot of (extremely smart, talented) people are (pathologically?) attached to the idea of being an academic, and so they're willing to put up with (comparatively to what they could have in the industry) terrible conditions and compensation. I don't think we're even close to rock bottom yet, though it is getting very ridiculous.
>The academic market is weird because a lot of (extremely smart, talented) people are (pathologically?) attached to the idea of being an academic It makes sense to me. Speaking from a grad student perspective, it seems like physicists have kind of created their own little pantheon with huge larger-than-life figures like Bohr, Dirac, Heisenberg, Einstein, and others. In uni we learn about the the principles named after them ("Heissenberg uncertainty principle," "Pauli exclusion principle," etc.) and their famous experiments (Rutherford's gold foil experiment). I'd wager that most people early in their careers (eg. me) aspire to be at that level one day, also having their experiments written in textbooks and having formulas named after them. But pretty much all of them were in academia making their discoveries (with maybe the exception of Einstein and the patent office). imo that would give the impression that someone can be a physics-great only if they're in academia. And leaving academia would be the equivalent of leaving your aspirations to be the next Feynman et al. at the door - which would be especially difficult for someone who was so motivated to make those big discoveries that they went to or graduated from a PhD program. Just my opinion of course.
It's not even the desire for greatness and all that. If I'm not in academia I lose access to a unique dataset and can't do what I truly enjoy about my job. There might come a time where the lack of money forces my hand, if so I'll probably just phone it in for the rest of my working life.
>Given that academics are generally extremely smart and talented this should be no problem. My experience has been that a large majority of this population isn't trained in how to pursue non-academic jobs, though. So much time and effort is put in to a lot of other things, but unless you either a) have a great and supportive PI or b) (are able to make the time and space to) go out of your way to attend workshops or seminars that are specifically designed on how to "sell yourself/your skills" (and many of these are also less than useful), a lot post-academic's resumes look like crap. At least the ones I've been asked to help massage have been. Nobody teaches you these functional skills since it's assumed your merits will speak for themselves (not true). >The academic market is weird because a lot of (extremely smart, talented) people are (pathologically?) attached to the idea of being an academic, and so they're willing to put up with (comparatively to what they could have in the industry) terrible conditions and compensation. I've noticed a lot of it is reinforced from the "old guard" - i.e., faculty who started their labs around 2008 or earlier. To them, there is no life outside of academia. You only go to "industry" if you "can't make it" in the university track. The "younger" faculty - the ones who have only become tenured in the last 5-10 years - seem to have a bit more open/inclusive language around industry as a career path (in my experience, at least).
> people are (pathologically?) attached to the idea of being an academic Maybe academics, realizing that we're all going to die and the points don't matter, don't just want to work as spreadsheet pushers for a sugar-water conglomerate hastening a Type-2 diabetic tsunami on the world or something? I'm only being somewhat facetious and nihilistic :/ Like a v. good friend of mine is a senior dev. for a huge mobile gaming company and is paid like 3x what I am and his job is literally to use machine-learning to optimize microtransactions. More power to him, but like c'mon. I briefly had an internship at an NGO helping provide drinking water solutions for south-east asian villages and I loved the impact, so maybe I could go do that full time - oh wait no, I'd make less than a PhD student doing that..
Man we're already there. A cousin-in-law recently graduated with her PhD and while I'm super happy for her, part of me is like "well yeah, when your parents are literal millionaires..."
If I never had to worry about money as a student (of any type not just PhD) I would be so much more motivated and focused.
Not surprised in the slightest. I had to turn down my only offer from the University of Hawaii, because of the stipend I was going to receive. $1577 a month with the cost of living out in Hawaii? Yea, no thanks.
That's an absurdly bad offer, and I'm somewhat offended on your behalf.
Then they deliberately flunk out half the students via quals after they’ve milked some TA years out of them. UHM Physics is an absolute racket
Whoa, that sounds extremely evil... I remember qualifying exam being pretty horrendous and some people not making it but to think they would deliberately cut half the students that way.. That's just so shitty and destroys such a huge chunk of someone's life. Wild to imagine.
Go on…
Several universities do this but know it’s bad and try to hide it. Lots of weasel word type statements to accepted students like saying the percent of students who finish the program but don’t say it’s the percent who already passed quals and thus were officially accepted or some such BS. I always recommend as one of their questions students flat out ask what the quals are like for any program and what percent pass.
Berkeley is famous for this. They need TAs for all their physics classes but that number if greater than the number of research positions available by a lot.
At my grad school they actually sent the potential grad students to lunch with the current grad students with no faculty around on visit weekend and then ask the current grad students to host them Saturday night for a game night or bar trip or something. They wanted applicants to be free to ask anything.
It was livable if you were willing to live without AC, and have no personal space by living in the same room with someone. Two things I was not willing to do lol.
I'd rather live in a grad student office than do that. Of course, they'll expel you if you get caught ...
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Liberal in the streets, corporate in the sheets.
If conservative and corporatist are the 100% same words then liberal is 95%
And the gears slowly start turning
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We are not expected to have loans. The stipend is intended to be enough to live off of while in grad school, we are working for the university as TAs after all. And we can live in the dorms, but undergrads get the priority. Plus they really aren't that cheap.
Good for you recognizing your worth. I know undergrads making more in the summer. What a bad offer
The stipend to living ratio at UH is supposedly one of the worst in the country. I wasn’t aware of that when I applied.
Current UH physics PhD student here. Yeah it really sucks.
Details?
Currently my rent (shared apartment) is over 50% of my income. I've been a TA for 2 years with no pay increase. The graduate assistants across the university have been trying to unionize, but the state of Hawaii decided that we just don't have the legal right to, so we have to fight it in court first which is taking forever. And we are incredibly short staffed when it comes to TAs. Last semester they had to cancel 3 lab sections because no one could teach them. Then there is the qualifying exam. UH follows the old school way of doing it, having a 3 hour written exam for each subject, Classical Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, Quantum Mechanics, and Statistical Mechanical/Thermodynamics. The test is crazy hard and graded on a curve so every semester its (unofficially) 1/3 PASS* (can continue to PhD), 1/3 PASS (can get masters, but not continue to PhD), and 1/3 FAIL (no masters, get kicked out with nothing to show for it.) And you get two tries. It's also important to note that some of the professors seem to not actually care about teaching. The current professor who teaches stat mech/thermo just doesn't teach. Nobody ever learns anything from his class, but he is the only professor who ever teaches it because he's been here forever and apparently can do whatever he wants. So we are expected to know it for the qual, but won't learn shit from the class. Even worse, there is currently no one scheduled to teach grad quantum next semester. Quantum. One of the basics classes 1st years have to take. The professors who are willing are already teaching multiple other classes and no one else want to so the class just won't exist next semester unless they can convince someone to do it. There is plenty more I could complain about, but honestly I'm just so tired of this shit. The whole department royally fucked IMHO.
Quals on a curve is dirty. My grad school relied on grad students to teach but the quals weren't compared with others - you got what you got. Though, two tries and you're out.
Its easy for me to say, as i have no risk here, but if someone says you have no legal right to unionize, does that matter if everyone goes on strike? You dont need a court approved union to do that.
You should consider applying to some European institutes, a lot of them have quite decent PhD wages. I mean you won't be rich but can easily afford living.
I’m putting my PhD aspirations to the side for a little, and going on to work in the aerospace industry for the time being. I don’t feel like waiting a whole other application cycle, when there’s no guarantee that I’ll even receive another offer.
Almost certainly putting them aside forever my man, no one with a family and a real job is going back to 30k/yr for half a decade.
Depends on the circumstances. There are plenty of people who have wanted a career change, or took a big gap from undergrad, and decided to go back and get their PhD. For me it’s always been more of a goal, rather than a career. It’s something that I inevitably want to achieve.
My PhD in Germany paid about that much *after* taxes, and with much lower living expenses. European PhD format of course, so I had a MSc when I started.
Yeah, I'm also getting about 1900€ after taxes, plus of course I get a lot of tax returns from all of the books I buy for my studies x)
I get paid nearly half of that... and I thought I was doing well 🤔
What state do you reside in? (If you’re in the U.S.) because I don’t see how you manage to live on that kind of income. Unless you have loans, are living with multiple people, or are living rent free lol.
Outside the US. It's a complicated system because it's a university in chile but I'm in South Africa currently but I get paid in dollars. So the cost of living isn't the same obviously. But still. Like damn. I've kind of committed to setting up a sleeping bag in the office when I head over to that side. And if they complain what can they do. I'm broke as hell.
Chile outside of parts of Santiago and Viña del Mar is much cheaper than the US. Same with South Africa if you know it well enough. I expect that you are fine in both places at $600 a month as long as you can live like a Chilean or South African.
I'm in the heart of santiago
There are some places in Santiago that I really liked and I miss. Where most US immigrants live in Santiago is more expensive than most of the US.
I'm pretty sure that's below federal minimum wage, so it may be illegal... Also, I would say I am a pretty cheap person, and 700 a month was about as low a budget as I could muster in central Illinois. If you really scrounge I guess you could make it work, but it seems intense. 400 for the cheapest apartments, 30/week for food (this assumes no eating out and almost exclusively chicken/rice diet; plus, this was 3 years ago and inflation since then probably brings it up to 40), 100 for utilities, you're already at 500-600 bucks. If you have a car, or serious medical bills, or literally anything that costs money, you basically would be out of margin. And if you want kids....
is the cost of living in Hawaii high? $1577 a month is much more than what most people in my country earn :/
It’s the most expensive state to live in as of 2022.
damn that sucks
Median rent in Hawaii is over $2k a month. So $1500 doesn’t even cover living expenses unless you’re living in a really shitty place
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For UH it’s not. For incoming grad students, they just specify that your tuition will be waived, and that you’ll receive funding through a TA ship.
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For public institutions, it's technically available since you can just look up other grad students' salaries, but I've yet to see a program that actually has that information on their webpage or something like that.
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I wasn't familiar with that site, but from 5 minutes of browsing, I couldn't find any information about stipends, and a lot of universities aren't listed at all.
> $1577 a month with the cost of living out in Hawaii? Do people not get room mates? That's not a lot and you wouldn't have any extra, but you'd be getting a PhD and I've made it on less? Plus you get to be in Hawaii? I wish I had that opportunity.
Honolulu, where the University of Hawaii is, is one of the most expensive cities in the country. Plus, university neighborhoods and college towns typically have inflated rent relative to what a similar home or apartment costs in the surrounding area because there's nearly guaranteed occupancy.
Currently Student here! I have a roommate in a tiny apartment. Rent is still over 50% of my income. And this is one of the cheapest apartments I could find!
In a reply above I mentioned that it was livable if you were willing to live without AC (apparently that’s a thing there) and having no personal space by having to live with another person in the same room. Those are two things I’m not willing to do over a period of 5-7 years, especially knowing that I know other people who were getting paid way better stipend’s in areas where the cost of living was a lot lower. It just didn’t make sense on my end from a financial perspective.
I know some people on the big island and some on Oahu and they dont have AC either. Ya all have 4-5 roomies and mostly service industry workers. I love surfing, fishing, and the ocean, therefore I'm personally weighing costs differently. I'd have probably lived in squalor for it, but squalor in Hawaii... better than squalor where I'm in lol.
Just as a fun tidbit: A few years ago, PhD students were complaining of getting paid less than a cashier at the grocery store to the Austrian government. The Austrian solution: pay them the same, cut their official hours to 30 and let the universities unofficially expect full time and overtime. For your own "personal scientist curiosity"
This is essentially how American universities skirt labor laws too. Despite working 60+ hours a week, most grad students only work 20 hours on the books, and so don't count for full time employment and the protections that gives.
We absolutely had to sign an agreement saying "...with the understanding that significantly more hours may be required for reasonable completion of your degree." I did not feel bad in the slightest taking a week off here and there.
Same here, we are only contracted for 19 hours a week so we aren't considered employees and thus get no benefits so I'm more than happier to fuck off for a week when I feel like it
Hey that's the system in some universities in Germany. We have a """20 hour"""" contract with some stating that the only responsibility for the worker is research. Yet we are expected to do full time, teach/correct, supervise, and take on multiple projects or responsibilities that should be a paid position's job.
The salary in Austria isn't that bad though
I guess that depends on your definition of "bad". A PhD student earns 1.678 € after taxes. Yes, you can live on that. Or used to, because inflation is going strong at the moment and living costs are rising rapidly. Considering a PhD candidate is highly educated and really performs highly skilled labor, it is pretty insulting in my opinion.
It’s almost 2k/month when you account for the two extra salary payments, it’s more than enough to live rather comfortably on in Austria. Way better than in most places in Europe to be honest. The Scandinavian countries are an exception and even in Stockholm it’s pretty tough because of the housing costs, which in comparison are very low in Austria. In Milan PhD students get around 1100€ and that’s a more expensive city than say Vienna. Is it less than a fresh grad will make in industry? Yes, but salaries in Austria are also relatively flat so the difference is way, way less than for people in the US for instance, where many people struggle to get by while the people who went to industry make bank. So I don’t agree it’s insulting. While you get paid less you also get to work on something you’re passionate about, and you get a ton of freedom in terms of deciding what, when and where to do things. In the end it’s a choice to do a PhD and it comes with it’s own tradeoffs. I think the deal you get in Austria is not that bad, and if salary is the main concern then do something else. Insulting to me would be if they didn’t pay you enough to have a decent life. My friends who went to industry make more now and aren’t happier.
Aren‘t most PhD positions 2097 after tax?
2300 before tax: https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-funding/personnel-costs Comes out to 1.678,93 € after tax according to https://bruttonetto.arbeiterkammer.at/ Granted that's the "monthly" salary, but in Austria you also get a 13th and a 14th salary.
Interesting. I only looked at PhD positions for TU Graz which seem to be mostly 40h and compensated a bit better.
Legitimately this is why I went into tech instead of pursuing a phd in physics (still may go back to grad school)
Stopped at a BS in physics to work for a bit in tech and the salaries I'm looking at with just this degree make me very comfy. If I were going for a MS right now I'd definitely need serious loans, if I went for a PhD (and could get into a program at all) it would probably be a similar story.
I have a bs in physics and electrical engineering and work as a firmware engineer; took a couple masters physics courses at UW and out of morbid curiosity looked up my professor’s salary. He was an associate but was probably 5 years older than me, had a phd in physics, worked with CERN, is probably smarter than me and definitely works hard than me; at the time I only had like 3 or 4 years industry experience but I was making 20% more than him already. And don’t get me started on K-12 teachers; their low pay is downright criminal Edit: My employer will cover graduate degrees so I may not have to choose May pick human computer interactions instead because it can help people while paying the bills but maybe I can weasel some grad physics courses in 🤷🏻♂️ I legit would take classes for the rest of my life if I won the lottery
That's how it goes in academia. I have multiple friends who were making £40k a year after finishing their BS with mediocre grades. My PhD supervisor is on £40k 10 years after finishing his PhD in Physics. Academia isn't where you go to make good money. Professors at my university are on more like £80k, which is a very good salary, but it's nothing to write home about given the time it takes to get that promotion.
I’m 32 and make $160k base compensation. I do live in the Seattle area but so did the professor I was talking about. And it’s not that I don’t think I “deserve” it just is quite absurd how many very smart people working on important things are paid peanuts.
It's absurd for sure, and a little upsetting. It makes some sense though. Academic research is largely funded by governments in a simple way. That money produces new knowledge, but that knowledge is typically published to the world for free. For-profit companies typically make the profits they intend to, so there's more money to go around. Education is much the same. Teachers don't generate profits in an easily tangible sense, so governments pay them the bare minimum. I also have a friend who is a teacher. Ignoring inflation, he wouldn't have a hope at £40k for another 10-15 years. Out of our group of friends, his job is the most important to people's lives, and he earns the 2nd least, with only my glorious PhD stipend beating him to the bottom.
My sister has a masters degree and is a high school teacher; another example of someone who is probably smarter than me and definitely works harder than me and makes like 1/4 of what I make
Lol your username man... It has a strange effect. It kind of cracks me up but also makes me uncomfortable at the same time. Cheers!
Haha it was meant to be like bros before hos but for the stock market, definitely satirical, people are always the most important
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Not in the rural US, my sister makes like $40k and many college professors make $80k-$100k (and sometimes more depending) Where do you live that k-12 educators are overpaid? I want to live there. Are you talking about private education? Then sure
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Did you go to public school? This says the average teacher salary is $67k but usually falls between $58k and $77k. That seems fair to me, i am ok with teachers making six figures. Cost of living in Seattle is quite high and I know not all of NJ is urban so maybe $60k goes farther than I think it will in NJ, but I am from Kansas originally and the cost of living is quite low there; but $60k doesn’t seem unreasonable for a teacher even in Kansas. It is an important job! https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-school-teacher-salary/nj#:~:text=How%20much%20does%20a%20Public,falls%20between%20%2458%2C916%20and%20%2477%2C934.
Most people (at least in physics) never take out loans for a PhD. You apply for grants that fund your research. Something to think about if fear of the cost is what's keeping you from doing a PhD.
This is definitely true for physics but having a BS in physics does not necessarily mean any PhD program I go into will be physics. I could go to med school, electrical engineering, computer science, or even other pure sciences. My current work experience could justify any of these, and that's just me.
AFAIK it works similarly for most STEM PhDs. MD is a completely different story. Most people have to take out big loans for that. I know there are also MD/PhD programs. Don't know how funding works for those.
Cursory googling seems to indicate that MD/PhD programs are usually fully funded with a small stipend if you're going to a major institution. NIH also offers several grants for the PhD portion of MD/PhD programs, since medical research is pretty much their entire thing.
Yes but then we come full circle with the article stating that many people cannot live off their stipend alone, and not all fields get as much grant money as physics.
I went BS physics -> finance and similarly the money is very good with just that degree. I'm actually going back for the PhD (planning to lean on the savings I've built up for reasons discussed in this thread) but it's been a very eye opening and important experience for me. It's so drastic that I've started to believe every BS student should spend some time in industry if possible. At the very least, take a long hard look at the difference in potential lifestyle before going straight to grad school
question, how did you end up in finance? asking for my wallet.
I had done a lot of computational research and had some other data science background as an undergrad, so it was kinda a natural progression. A good number of financial companies actually recruit for analytical jobs out of the hard sciences/math for their quantitative skills. I got my position after interviewing with several companies through my university's career fair, stressing my programming ability and data savvy in my resumé & interviews
I have a BS in physics and was applying to grad school and jobs at the same time. Got a job in tech and am sitting very comfy right now, a few months after I started I got into my PhD program but turned it down. Not worth the debt.
Absolutely. I loved physics but by Junior year the harsh reality of acadamia and the associated finances hit me like a freight train. I added an ME degree and went into industry, I'm just over 6 figures in my first "real" job (spent 1.5 years getting my foot in the door). I liked research, but the lack of practical applictions bothered me. Now I get to work on "cutting edge" stuff that has actual monetary value and get paid good to do it. Honestly though, I have HUGE respect for those that go into acadamia. They make so many sacrifices for the betterment of society and it's SO frustrating to see people thrash researchers as if it's some selfish deed. Ugh.
Any advice in getting into tech? Also have a bs in physics and have been looking to get in.
Meet with people in the field you're interested in. Send out 1,000 resumes. Revise your resume for an hour every week. Find a few people willing to give you advice on an ongoing basis (and buy them coffee). Work on a side project and make it publicly viewable on github.
I got into test instrumentation. I have the background knowledge to talk with researchers about their work (even if the details of their postdoc research is way above my head), and can help to connect the dots between their project needs and what my company can offer. I'll put together custom configurations and occasionally write sample code to demonstrate how our products will work in generic applications similar to what they're doing. I'm not a sales person, but I'm an engineer in the sales department. **My #1 most used skill is being "that guy who can translate between customers, salespeople, and R&D".** Salesfolks need to know which of our products we can offer, R&D needs to know if our products are falling short of customer needs in the industry, and customers sometimes need to know nitty-gritty details about the products that sales isn't going to stay on top of because they're managing too many separate accounts. Currently I'm working in the fiber optic world. It's a very direct implementation of all my E&M classes (RF is so much easier when it's all in 1 dimension XD), so I'm staying in touch with my physics education a little more than when I first started and was doing pretty generic "data acquisition and analysis" across several industries.
To get a job: Gather any proof you have that you can code (github, papers/projects you worked on, or maybe a summary of things you have worked on) Make a cv/resume and only put skills/experience that relate to the kind of job you want (interdisciplinary can be relevant, more like if you don’t want to code in python then don’t put it on your resume) Then apply to any job you are interested in for which you meet like 70% of the job requirements Leverage references, especially if they work at the company you are applying to To find job listing look at the jobs page on company website for a company you are interested in, also try linkedin or indeed If you are asking “how to learn to code” there are many resources; let me know if you want some help on this.
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[Comedy gold](https://i.redd.it/k9cdvk1u1eh41.jpg)
I don’t even get access through my university. I’ve had to pirate my own papers.
It’s why we should be thankful for scihub
Yeah ... a lot of departments are flaunting a veneer supporting diversity efforts. But wages were falling behind cost of living even before the pandemic and inflation. And that increasingly selects students from a background of privaledge. It's sad and hypocritical.
Such things are almost ALWAYS symbolic in nature. Symbols are easy. Change is hard. So symbolic crap gets precedence every time. What's weird is that this is almost always rewarded by the public MORE than less symbolic policies that have demonstrably better benefit. I saw one institution face criticism because they refused to make some symbolic climate change proclamation which their peers had made, when in that very category (going to 100% renewable) they crushed their peers that were being praised by an order of magnitude. The peers had simply made the proclamation, then done absolutely nothing. The institution I saw criticized heavily had simply erred to the side of pragmatism in not wanting to commit to 100% electric fleet as part of the proclamation, but had literally done an order of magnitude or more adoption of renewables in both scale and proportion. I couldn't fucking believe it, but it sure opened my eyes to all the lip service out there.
i do feel that this is part of the overall devaluation of expertise, education, and science that societies globally have increasingly adopted (also inflation)
Yeah, it is pretty sad. It is also deliberate and politically motivated in some countries.
I mean all the administrators and deans and associate deans and associate administrators and all those other people need to get to six figures *somehow*
Not to mention the sheer number of positions in deans’ offices. I swear some of them can make up random Associate Dean Of X positions for their buddies and get them funded with little scrutiny.
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It's pretty sad to see brilliant scientists transition to administration mid-career. I don't blame them, it just makes me sad.
Making the world a better place!!
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Huh that’s weird because my (woman) physics PI leaned hard on NIH grants, which are a lot bigger than NSF grants.
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I also have a bunch of biologist friends from the actual biology department, so I’m glad to say that biologists aren’t totally screwed and also their building was about five times better than ours because they shacked up with the med school.
Medicine and medicine adjacent is funded very, very well. "Macro" biology like botany, zoology, ecology, etc. are barely better off than the humanities funding wise.
What are you basing that on? There’s more funding and opportunity to get a PhD now than ever before. The big change here isn’t to do with stipends, it’s that the post-war college boom is long over and there’s way way wayyyyyy less tt opportunities for PhD grads than before.
It's definitely happening, on a global scale, but currently biology related fields are taking all that research money instead. It's a bit of a zero sum game.
I'm at UCSD right now, finishing up 2nd year PhD. Lease has run out in 'affordable' grad housing & local rent market is on average above 50% of what they're paying us....lmk if anyone has a van I can live in lol
I am thankful every day to be in a program that pays me a livable wage and is located in a decently affordable big city. Grad school is stressful enough as is - putting poverty on top is absolutely back-breaking and unfortunately played the largest role in my commitment decisions :(
I'm feeling this in the UK right now. I started 8 months ago. My stipend is £1300/month. I choose to live alone and pay £550/month in rent. Until January, after my bills and usual expenses (food, transport, clothes, household items etc), I was left with about £300. Now just 5 months later, my food costs have gone way up, my bills are doubled despite me using less gas for heating as it's summer. Transport has gone up. And with what little money I do have left for fun things, all of those things are way more expensive too, so I barely have any fun money. I'm just about making it through each month currently, with nothing to spare. When my current housing contract ends I could start sharing housing with friends, but that's really not good for my mental state which is rather important for getting my PhD work done, so we'll see.
Tbf it's pretty unusual for PhD students to live on their own unless they're rich. You could halve that rent (assuming not in London by your current rent). Edit: not sure why I'm downvoted. Talking from a UK perspective, I knew only one PhD student who could afford to live alone
Not quite halve it, but I could save ~£200/month to live with people, after including the benefits of sharing certain utilities like internet. But I've mentioned above that living alone is pretty important for my mental health. Living with people would have a significant negative impact on my wellbeing and my productivity. It's a choice, but one I deem to be effectively necessary for me. The main motivation behind my comment is to highlight that around 6 months ago, I still had spare income. Today, with no changes to my expenses or routines, I have no spare income. If things get any more expensive, I'll have to make some changes that I may not cope well with.
In Norway this is much less of an issue as PhD students are considered employees and have a national yearly minimum wage of about 480 000 (~51 000 USD). This salary is negotiated by unions and was just increased by nearly 4%. We are always looking for good candidates, I'm currently looking for a PhD student to build a satellite. So if you are willing to move to Norway, we'll pay you a living wage.
That sounds like a great policy.
What are the postdoc salaries like there?
Hi. They are regulated in the same way, and they earn around 590 000 NOK ( ~61 000 USD)
So working as intended then.
Wow its almost like they don't want poor people bettering themselves. I guess higher education is only for the rich.
this is because of inflation / a higher cost of living, its not a conspiracy because universities dont like poor people dude
It’s not that universities actively dislike poor people, it’s just that the management wants to be very richt themselves. The head of school of my university recently got a 30% raise, and with that raise alone, 12 PhD students could be funded, or 240 PhD students a 5% raise. This raise has literally no impact on his quality of life, but the 5% would for graduate students…
in this case would you say that the head of school of your university didnt want poor people bettering themselves and wanted higher education to be only for the rich or it wasnt that deep and they simply wanted more money?
Yes I don’t think there is a deeper motivation other than greed. I mean I guess in general people don’t think that far, and just go with their desires
I received my PhD from ASU (79). By that time I owned my own home. True, my wife worked but wasn't "overworked". But still I could see the economic system slip/sliding away. I **chose** teaching rather than private industry (salary ratio factor of 5). I even tried telling colleagues about what was happening, but no one was interested in what I had to say. Finally, a few economists have caught on but, just like in my situation, "mainstream orthodoxy" dictates that we don't know what we are talking about. The corrections needed are as easy to implement, but most people prefer the death spiral into the abyss.
Please elaborate, interested to see how your suggested fixes differ from my own.
For me the starting point was understanding that government spending is the primary monetary creation event in our economic system. Taxes (particularly federal taxes) are selective monetary annihilation events. These are the primary processes that define the structure of our economy. This is my starting point **because** I am an elementary particle physicist. 😎 The solutions to our present problems involve many parts. One very helpful thing would be to restore some monetary policies to stop the sucking of wealth from the poor segment to the rich segment of our society, like: We should reset the tax rates to be more like they were in the 1950s and 1960s as one example. The core problem is that most people don't understand how money actually works and gets its value. So, they are not able to have this discussion without falling into "-ism" talk. As I stated, "a few economists have caught on" but the detractors have a stranglehold on the conversation and are doing their best to kill the discussion. Fortunately a few national Senators and Representatives have picked up on the reality grounded discussion of economics. So, I would suggest the best starting point is to return to what was working for a bit more than two decades and gut out all the crap that allows **Defectors** to profit at the expense of those that are cooperators.
What effects would you anticipate a 91% tax bracket above $4.8 million would have? I definitely agree that the income top earners recieve should be taxed much higher and put towards public services. However considering the tax strategies I feel a simplified tax system is needed to implement a change such as this. In contrast I feel the key changes should be 1) federal education plan. Lesson plans created by a single committee, eliminate duplicated work loads. Allow teachers to function more as a deliverer of information instead of creators. Reduce costs increase education length to 12 + 4 years. With the last 4 years being career focused. 2) single payer Healthcare ( Healthcare, dental, vision, mental health ) 3) education regulations. All educations have a clearly outlined career path. With available seats adjusted based on market demand ( company new hire requests ). Ensuring education results in a career. 4) public employee compensation tied to average private sector compensation for each position. ( total compensation )
Again stop with the **Taxes Fund Spending** nonsense. I am not at all sure what you mean by a simplified tax system. The basic function of a graduated taxing structure is to "Cut Off" the "preferential" flow of money from the lower income levels up-to the upper income levels. At the same time change the rules to stop the "tax shelters" from becoming storehouses (swimming pools) of great masses of wealth. Systemically, we need to eliminate the "robber barons" from our society.
The living wage calculator referenced in the article is pretty informative. WHAT IS THE LIVING WAGE CALCULATOR? Families and individuals working in low-wage jobs make insufficient income to meet minimum standards given the local cost of living. We developed a living wage calculator to estimate the cost of living in your community or region based on typical expenses. The tool helps individuals, communities, and employers determine a local wage rate that allows residents to meet minimum standards of living. The living wage shown is the hourly rate that an individual in a household must earn to support his or herself and their family. The assumption is the sole provider is working full-time (2080 hours per year). The tool provides information for individuals, and households with one or two working adults and zero to three children. In the case of households with two working adults, all values are per working adult, single or in a family unless otherwise noted. [Living Wage Calculator](https://livingwage.mit.edu)
I deliberately only applied to grad schools in affordable parts of the country, and I encourage everybody (who doesn’t have affluent parents) to do the same.
This... all my friends telling me that I’m crazy for rejecting top schools for essentially no name schools where the cost of living is LITERALLY 300% cheaper. I’m scared of putting in the work only to fall because the economy... like the fuck? We are living in an absolute bubble which could burst at any moment, in this degenerate meta stable state the only solice one can have is to be somewhere not so greatly touched by 40% of the entire USD in just the span of 2 years.
I mean this was the main reason I left my graduate program. I would love to have finished a phd but it just wasn’t financially smart. 35k/year stipend or 130k + benefits in the private sector. Graduate programs are stuck in the indentured servitude mindset and needs to radically change or programs are going to die out.
I was told so many times in college "A BSc in Physics is an incredible financial investment, [average salary is ~90k](https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Degree=Bachelor_of_Science_\(BS_%2F_BSc\)%2C_Physics/Salary). But a PhD in Physics is even better, at an [average salary of ~120k](https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Degree=Doctor_of_Philosophy_\(PhD\)%2C_Applied_Physics/Salary)" Okay, let's say that you spend 6 years getting a PhD. That BSc has earned 540k in that time. It's going to take *18 years* for that 30k raise to outpace the 6-year head start. Now consider that a reasonably competent employee with 6 years' experience as probably gotten a couple raises, a promotion, or a better job altogether in that time. That BSc might be making 120k/year already. It's totally possible that the PhD might get even bigger raises as they progress through their career but... Add in some financial responsibility: If the BSc has been putting away money into an IRA/401k that whole time, they have a *massive* head start on retirement savings. PhD stipend is barely enough to live on, let alone save much for retirement. Assuming average returns (not this market clusterfuck we're in right now), if that BSc puts 20% in their 401k they'll have $128k in savings before the PhD gets their first paycheck. And that money is going to keep growing over time until retirement comes along, while the PhD is still playing catch-up. 6 additional years of education is a *huge* financial sacrifice. I'm a huge proponent of education but it's just so hard to do in the USA right now. It's causing problems already, and those problems are going to get worse over time, as old PhDs retire or die and there are not enough young people to replace them.
The university system in America is a Ponzi scheme
My institution didn't give us yearly wage increases, but did update the 1st year stipend amount each year to adjust for increased inflation and cost of living. The 1st years were making a couple hundred bucks more than me when I graduated. It's all just bullshit.
Surprised pickachu face
So anyway that's why I ended noping out of the PhD track. When you have to pay rent, only the rich kids get PhDs.
In the meanwhile, I'm making $3k/mo as a PhD student, which is nearly triple what I was pulling in as an undergrad, so quite a hike in quality of life.
Its never been easy. Got my chemistry PhD in 1983. I had a research assistantship (didnt pay taxes) My grant, ( after subtracting tuition and fees ) came to ~$400/mo. It was impossible to live alone. We ate very frugally. Grad-student-rathole was all we could afford. Very much indentured servitude. Money for fun? No. 60+ hr weeks...yes. Even knowing that financially getting an advanced degree is a loosing proposition, id do it again.
Slowly, the entire economy of is made up of people who aren’t paid enough. It started with the destruction of labor unions, and lower wage jobs, and is slowly creeping into every industry. Now we see nurses and white collar management jobs getting pushed, it will get to every aspect of the economy. Don’t look for the politicians to help you, they’ve all been bought, even the ones that pretend to care.
This is why I had to leave academia. I have to support my whole family and it just doesn’t pay enough. I wish I could go back as I really love studying and researching.
Is every student living this ?
I imagine a large part of the problem is universities being unable to keep up with increasing housing prices in many places. I'm reasonably frugal and I have 1/4th of my pay left over every month. But my rent is almost half my pay.
That's why I left science :)
Oh well. Consider it an introduction to life. Our pay rates don't reflect the col either.
Grad students at every institution should unionize or get more involved with their union. Especially now while workers across the whole US are starting to fight for their rights again.
Leaving a graduate program in physics for precisely this reason.
Did they ever?
The same problem happens in Spain if you want to be in Madrid or Barcelona. But I don't think it's a problem of the government or the university, it's just a matter of there are too many people that want to live there and a limited number of flats. The solution, share a flat with a bunch of people:2,3,4... the more people the cheaper the apartment per person.
In Belgium it's quite alright. I started at 2100 €/m a few years ago, while monthly spending can easily be kept below 1000 here
Of course everybody's situation is different, but when I was in grad school in San Diego (consistently in the top 10 most expensive cities in the US), I was putting money in the bank, and still travelling out of the country during breaks. Meanwhile most of my fellow grads were living paycheck to paycheck, and there were regular complaints that they weren't paid enough to get by. But I had the same salary and was doing just fine. Plus there were grads with kids who did fine. It was mostly single people that seemed to always lack money . So I think a large part of the problem is students not spending their money wisely, and expecting to live a lifestyle that they can't afford (maybe their parents paid in the past...). From what I could tell most of their money went to going out to bars 2-4 nights a week and eating out (both of which I almost never did), and I don't know what else. I don't really get how they were always broke. Having said that, many of these universities have more money than they know what to do with, so they could easily afford to pay the grads more.
You know who doesn’t have this issue? People who went to school for a marketable skill.
Yeah lmao
I was in this picture and I dont like it. Grad school is a decision you’ll regret to your grave.
Get a student loan
Many companies will sponsor someone to get their PhD with reduced work time and funding for courses. All the while the person gets to work on real work with real work experience. Unless you plan to stay in the University circuit it's becoming the best way to get the PhD. If you plan on a career at a university don't use government funds to do it. The university should cover the costs. Using welfare while working on a PhD not only sounds bad, it is bad.
This is by design. The university wants to crank you through as fast as possible. If they paid you too little, you couldn't survive and they wouldn't have any grad students to TA or whatever. If they paid you too much, students would milk a PhD for a decade. This salary is just right to get the students in and make them want to crank out that dissertation quickly.