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PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

nature.com

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Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#171

Post by ska »

daxfohl wrote: post #132
colinmhayes wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 40% of employees aren't paid by the university system's academic arm, but by the healthcare section. 30% are academic staff, and 30% are support staff.

Even with the cost of medicine going through the roof, college kids don't incur a whole lot of medical costs on average. So it's surprising the university would need to spend so much there.

> college kids don't incur a whole lot of medical costs on average.

These are typically regular (teaching) hospitals, they serve the community not just the university.

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#172

Post by xyzzyz »

CydeWeys wrote: post #135
prepend wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my family member the salary isn’t huge, I think like $40k so the whole department is probably less than $500k/year including overhead and whatnot. My assumption was if they are spending stupid money on this they are likely spending stupid money on many other things.

$500k/yr spent on fundraising does not remotely sound like a stupid use of money to me?

That depends on what the ROI is.

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#173

Post by plopilop »

lightweightbaby wrote: post #157

In case some is curious about how it is in Europe: I'm a PhD student (physics) in Denmark and I get 2500$/month after tax. I save from 1000$ to 1500$ each month. Disclaimer: I bike everywhere and share a 1400$/month flat with partner. Also, the entire pay comes directly from the university, I never had to apply to get funding after getting accepted (this was the main reason to go to Denmark).

Here in France: I had a ~1 900€ salary after taxes (incl. income tax, 2 000€ otherwise) but because I was working in a company fulltime (the contract stated I was to devote myself 100% to my research, the reality was different but that's another topic).

My partner, on the other hand, has a public contract (with teaching charge), she gets around 1 400€ after taxes. Living with this in Paris is not easy (1 studio of 15m² will cost around 650-700€)

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#174

Post by tombert »

wincy wrote: post #162
tombert wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was taking them as separate. I did my bachelors online (while working full time), so I didn't know how to factor that into the calculation. I just texted a friend to ask, and he said he left his state school with about $35,000 in debt, but that was with a partial scholarship for the tuition, so I suspect a good chunk of that was the dorm. If we double the number I gave to $60,000, that's a lot more, and starting to…

I met a person who went to a for profit university, never got a degree, and works at Cheesecake Factory. He owes $120,000 and has three kids. His life was effectively ruined by this college.

I'm sorry to hear that; I think that a lot (most?) for-profit universities are really predatory. You pay an obscene amount of money to them, you get an education that's maybe on par with a local community college, and if you drop out you end up owing a ton of money without even that. That's why I qualified my statements with "state school or community college". They're generally at least somewhat respected, and don't cost anywhere near as much as a for-profit school. There are also some non-profits private universities that don't charge a ton of money for tuition, like the aforementioned WGU.

The first time I attempted school and dropped out, I started getting a ton of advertisements for for-profit universities in the mail. I knew that they were often scams, so I threw them away, but I can totally see an alternate universe in which I don't know that and end up with a boatload of debt for the rest of my life.

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#175

Post by voxl »

uberman wrote: post #39

While I agree that PhD students don't get enough cash on a weekly basis to get buy, they are certainly compensated well above what is quoted in the article. International PhD students by law cannot work more than 20 hours a week. Most institutions cap paid responsibilities at 20 hours a week. Most have 9 month appointments, most likely get the full cost of their tuition and fees waved. Most of the time waved costs su…

Thinking in this way has always been very toxic. Some professors think this way and will accidentally state how PhD students are overpaid and underworked... Any sane analysis would note that PhDs are valid added to society, we want PhDs, and pipelines into industry for them. Using your analysis there would never be another PhD student.

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#176

Post by mbesto »

Cerealkiller050 wrote: post #56
twistedpair wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever seen Football coach, and college president salaries? For state colleges, they're often some of the highest paid employees in the state. [1] 1. https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/28261213/dabo-s...

Then you look at the revenue college football brings in to the rest of the university, the coach salaries looks like a bargain. Not only that, for most universities college football (some men's basketball) cover all the other men's and women's sports that hemorrhage money.

> Then you look at the revenue college football brings in to the rest of the university, the coach salaries looks like a bargain.

Now do this analysis while paying student-athletes salaries and tell me if the coaches are bargain.

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#177

Post by JohnPDickerson »

lazyjeff wrote: post #53

I recently collected the first-year PhD stipends in computer science across 39 university departments, to have a real sense of the numbers. Basically to have a fair comparison, because a lot of reported stipends aren't clear whether they are 9-month or 12-month stipends, and stipends can different depending on the year/candidacy of the student. Data: https://jeffhuang.com/computer-science-open-data/#verified-c... The…

Jeff, thanks so much for putting that stipend information together; I'm sure your list has started discussions amongst students and amongst faculty at many institutions. The variance in stipends was eye-opening to me, and clearly they all need to go up.

The posted numbers for my home institution, the University of Maryland, are a bit off; current offers are $25k for 9-month and up to $36k for 12-month, if funded on an RA over the summer. That RA summer funding is not guaranteed. Again, clearly, this needs to go up.

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#178

Post by hedora »

tombert wrote: post #7

It's a bit of a shame that the US doesn't really allow part time PhDs (at least not in any of the schools that I asked). If they did, conceivably a lot of these students could get a relatively well-paying job in engineering or a lab or something, and as such the schools could get away with paying less. Part of the reason that I didn't bother trying to pursue the CUNY PhD in mathematics was specifically because the st…

Engineering PhD candidates often have summer internships that pay extremely well. Most thesis advisors encourage their students to do this, since it helps ground research in real world problems (and conserves grant money, of course!)

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#179

Post by [deleted] »

throwawayboise wrote: post #104
BeetleB wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many students do community college for the first two years, and then finish at a university, and end up on the order of ~$30,000 of debt. For people in many European countries, this is an absurd amount of debt to get a university degree. Edit: For context: About 20 years ago, my university's annual fees was $15000/year for out of state students, and $4600 for in state - in today's dollars. Now that university charg…

Your European parents paid that $30K and more in additional taxes though. The money came from somewhere; land and buildings and qualified professors do not come for free in Europe.

[deleted]

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#180

Post by lupire »

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #16
tombert wrote: post #7

It's a bit of a shame that the US doesn't really allow part time PhDs (at least not in any of the schools that I asked). If they did, conceivably a lot of these students could get a relatively well-paying job in engineering or a lab or something, and as such the schools could get away with paying less. Part of the reason that I didn't bother trying to pursue the CUNY PhD in mathematics was specifically because the st…

Where is all this tuition even going to? Schools in the US charge an absurd amount of tuition compared to schools in Europe/Asia and yet these colleges are also systematically underpaying PhD students, Teaching Assistants, etc. College Professors don't exactly make the big bucks either. Yet, universities in the US have made put many Americans in lifelong debt. These colleges are all "nonprofit" (and get significant t…

This is offtopic.

PhD has no tuition, except in an accounting sense (you pay tuition, they pay you back as a stipend).

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