<p>We have one son who is finishing up his Pharmacy PhD. He ended up taking out loans for most of the cost. Scholarships/grants do exist for some professional degrees. When I got my MBA degree in the 80’s, I received scholarships/grants that covered my second year, including living expenses. I had enough saved for the first year, so I didn’t apply for financial aid. I was told that they gave few scholarships/grants to first years anyway. I’d guess the scholarships/grants still exist, but likely don’t cover as much as when I went.</p>
<p>Our youngest, have been accepted into the Chemistry PhD program at two schools. He’ll be receiving tuition and a stipend for the first year. From what little we’ve been told, he’ll likely be covered for the remaining years, but may need to apply for and get grants for the later years. Also, time in the program varies from 4-6 years. I think if he takes classes outside his discipline, he’d have to pay tuition for them. One thing that warms our hearts is that he’ll have medical coverage, including dental/vision, while in the program.</p>
<p>Masters programs are funded much less often than PhD programs. And especially in the humanities, and especially at fiscally challenged universities (think the UC system), departments in the humanities have been known to accept more students into the PhD program than they can fund. So some offers will be for full funding for the students they really really want, while others can come and provide their own funding, at least for the first year.</p>
<p>As others have written, many PhD students are able to generate funding in 2nd and subsequent years through TA, RA and instructor jobs. The more courses and sections that need to be taught in the discipline, the more TA and instructor jobs there probably will be available.</p>
<p>Advice I’ve often heard in the STEM fields is not to go to a PhD program that doesn’t fund you. That sounds reasonable in those fields, but the advice is not as clear cut in the humanities.</p>
<p>If you have any left over 529 money you can spend it on yourself. There are quite a number of educational programs I’d love to take. We will fully expend our 529 funds on our kids, however.</p>
<p>I had paid off undergrad loans before I started my Masters. By then, I received FA based on my own income, which was pretty low, so I had loans, but not large ones. I’m sure my Masters helped me get into my fully funded PhD program in psychology. I did take out some small loans for living expenses because I was sick of living frugally, but it all worked out. They were very low interest loans or I wouldn’t have considered it.</p>