PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by midhhhthrow » Mon, May 23, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

rabuse wrote: post #27

mberning wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the US are very spoiled in this regard. In Europe and Asia having a car and being able to afford to drive it is honestly a luxury.

It's not really "spoiled", as that is the price due to the fuel taxes in Europe, where the U.S. pays almost nothing in fuel tax. If they don't like that high of a fuel price, then they're free to vote for another party.

And the whole world is free to suffer the consequences of global warming which are becoming increasingly dire.

Sorry for the snarkiness but it just needed to be said

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

#72

Post by MisterBastahrd » Mon, May 23, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

sudden_dystopia wrote: post #43

FunnyBadger wrote: post #12

How is this any different from 20, 30, 40 years ago?? Hint: it's not.

I believe that FunnyBadger is pointing out that people have been pointing this out for a long time and is frustrated that nobody has paid attention to it until it became a crisis. You know, kind of like how we treat every other problem we have.

It's not a crisis. People are simply louder about it now. When people stop signing up for PhD programs, THEN it's a crisis. Until then, the system has no reason to care, thus the general public will remain completely oblivious.

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

#73

Post by NullInvictus » Mon, May 23, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #4

So do vast swathes of Americans. Pop quiz: In what countries does it cost a full day's wages or more to fill a car's gas tank? US minimum wage is $7.25/hr. As of this writing, US gas prices average $4.71/gal. For a typical car the gas tank holds about 15 gallons. Even a small car would have a 12 gallon tank.

Pair it with the fact that by-and-by, apartments are extremely expensive, and in short supply, so that service jobs are often not near where people are forced to live, and that you have to pair the cost of a car with the cost of gas, and rent. Public transit is a joke, a hollow underfunded mess in most cities.

It is absolutely brutal out there, and the response is inhumane.

I don't want to discredit the experience of grad students. I've known more than a few Grad students (anecdote warning), and they are also stuck in a special kind of hell. As the article mentions, they often can't seek other employment, so they're stuck with what the university pays. But even if they could, they can't - universities may stipulate that they expect X number of hours a week, but that's a joke. Every task given over to graduate students comes with piles of mandatory overtime under crap conditions that are unpaid.

The university may talk about 'valuable experience that will pay dividends' (conveniently not paid out by the university), but grad students often deal with losing proof of that experience when their work or ideas appear under the byline of their advisor. What do you do? Your relationship with your advisor is crucial to graduating.

Suffer all that, and _maybe_ you'll get your PhD. I've met a couple of phD students who dropped out simply because their advisors were intolerable, or really disinterested in any part of the advising process except squeezing work from their student workers.

Looking from the outside in, there's a weird sorta hazing elitist mindset going on. Professors say, "My PhD program sucked, so now I'm going to make it suck for you. Can't hack it? Well, you probably don't 'belong'".

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

#74

Post by BeetleB » Mon, May 23, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

hwbehrens wrote: post #35

IMTDb wrote: post #2

Note that this applies to biology PhD. Isn't a solution to reduce the amount of fellowship offered and increase the stipend. This would reduce the amount of publications, but potentially increase the average "quality" if more money means that students won't have to look for money on the side, and also if there is a more careful selection of the candidates.

> Note that this applies to biology PhD. While the article specifically calls out biology programs, at my university the CS department is similarly affected. (Stipends are set at a standard rate for all engineering depts.) If your stipend is $19K, a single student's take-home pay is $16,734, less ~$1,600 in required departmental fees. So, you've got about $1261/mo to pay for everything. If you split a 1-bedroom for $…

> If your stipend is $19K, a single student's take-home pay is $16,734, less ~$1,600 in required departmental fees. So, you've got about $1261/mo to pay for everything. If you split a 1-bedroom for $2.2K (not including utilities), that means you've got $161 for electricity, food, phone, internet, fun, literally every other expense for the rest of the month.

Where is this? When I started my PhD in the early 2000's, my after tax monthly income (state school) was $1400-1500 per month, which is more than what you listed above. Granted, we got paid only 11 months of the year, and yes, did pay university fees, so the total per month may have been similar, but: Seriously, this was almost 20 years ago - I'm sure they pay more now. Either your numbers are off, or your school sucks (sadly, quite likely).

When I went to grad school, my original goal was Berkeley. But when I found out how expensive it was to live there, I picked a top school in a cheaper town. The monthly stipend was only $100/mo less than at Berkeley, but rent was several hundred dollars cheaper.

Edit: Hard to find numbers quickly, but just checked and one of the engineering programs there currently pay $2300/mo (11 months a year). That's $25K vs your $19K. Of course, in some cities, that's still not enough.

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

#75

Post by Invictus0 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #57

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Where is all this tuition even going to? I have a family member who works in the “alumni relations” department of a small, regional public university. Probably ranked like #300 or something. There are like 5 people in the department. They make a magazine, email newsletter and schedule alumni events. It was really surreal when they explained their job and that the department exists. There’s an admin costs problem in…

You haven't presented enough evidence to show that there is a problem. If the alumni relations department is bringing in donations greater than their salaries, they are a net benefit to the university. Even if they don't bring in that amount every year, it might still be a net plus: it might bring in better students, spread the word about the university, and it might lead to big gifts later down the line.

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

#76

Post by tombert » Mon, May 23, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #54

tombert wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, if you graduate in four years, and are alright with state universities or community colleges, and major in some kind of field that allows you to be an engineer, university doesn't have to put you in lifelong debt. 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. That's a lot of money, but generally not a life-ruining…

> 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…

That's entirely fair, I'm a big proponent of making colleges either free, or extremely heavily subsidized by the government. I completely agree that it's still ridiculous to leave with $30,000 of debt.

I'm just saying that, for someone working an engineering job, that is not generally a life-ruining amount of money, especially in comparison to the increased earning potential that a degree affords you (which is, I suspect, why they get away with charging such exorbitant tuition in the first place).

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

#77

Post by Aperocky » Mon, May 23, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

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…

It can be argued that the credential to land a PhD in CS in any of these university would have most of the time guaranteed a much much higher paying job in the industry, and potentially less stressful one at that.

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

#78

Post by notch656a » Mon, May 23, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

hwbehrens wrote: post #35

IMTDb wrote: post #2

Note that this applies to biology PhD. Isn't a solution to reduce the amount of fellowship offered and increase the stipend. This would reduce the amount of publications, but potentially increase the average "quality" if more money means that students won't have to look for money on the side, and also if there is a more careful selection of the candidates.

> Note that this applies to biology PhD. While the article specifically calls out biology programs, at my university the CS department is similarly affected. (Stipends are set at a standard rate for all engineering depts.) If your stipend is $19K, a single student's take-home pay is $16,734, less ~$1,600 in required departmental fees. So, you've got about $1261/mo to pay for everything. If you split a 1-bedroom for $…

If you know you're going to be living on $1261 / mo there are plenty of decent engineering schools in low cost of living areas. I don't know why on earth you would choose a place with that kind of housing market if you know you're going to live on poverty wages.

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

#79

Post by the_svd_doctor » Mon, May 23, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

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…

A PhD is a full-time job, time-wise. I'm not sure how _really_ feasible a part-time PhD + part-time job really is. Maybe for some, but most likely not for most imho. Agreed that it would help financially though.

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

#80

Post by haakonhr » Mon, May 23, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

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…

I don't think it is fair to compare with Europe. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, as an example, got around 1b USD over the national budget. Stipends and loans to students are provided by another governmental body (Lånekassen), but in the US some students get a "full ride" (incl. accommodation and so on). However, the amount of debt you hear some americans ending up with is crazy.