Agreed with @ColdWombat that $40–50k PhD stipends are outliers (at the high end), and by a lot. (And a lot still don’t even hit $30k, even in the sciences/engineering. The financial treatment of doctoral students is an underdiscussed scandal.)
And before banking on a funded PhD to offset the cost of grad school, remember that in most—though not all—fields a masters is expected (or at least very helpful in terms of getting the good fellowships) before going on to doctoral work, and funded masters programs exist but are rare.
I don’t know about the humanities, but none of my son’s friends going into a PhD are going into a masters first. Math, CS, Physics, Chemistry, Bio, or Engg.
There is one econ kid from Tufts who is going into a masters at Uchicago before the PhD. Yes. I thought he as an outlier.
Here’s a recent survey on PhD stipends (keeping in mind that they’re rising because of unionization moves and protests): http://www.phdstipends.com/results
So happy ex is getting s23 on tours. Im confident the final choices are down to 3-4 schools but he was in the area so checked out an accepted school anyways. Todays tour made kid feel more confident about final decisions.
I guess free narcan was mentioned by the tour guide twice and another guide mentioned having to watch a video on LSD.
Most of my D’s offers 2 years ago for Astrophysics stipends were in the low to mid 30s. UT Austin was in the 20s and they mentioned no state taxes. At Yale she’s getting like 38K but apparently the Sciences were getting more than Humanities. Yale just unionized and one of the things is uniformed stipends and she’s hoping for a raise. Princeton is definitely an outlier but they were in the mid 30s until a couple of years ago and made a big deal of making it 45K (33% increase I believe) with all of the outcry of the stipends being so low.
At temple they just ended a strike over poor pay. The average stipend was only 20K:
Looking at the link from @1NJParent, some of the salaries really are scandalous. When I was in a doctoral program over 20 years ago, my stipend was higher than some of the stipends are now at some well-known schools. Granted, it was at a Big Name private school (in the humanities), but considering what tuition increases have been like over the past 20+ years, the stipends should have definitely had better increases than they’ve had.
I believe there are some inconsistency in the survey. Most PhD offers are based on 9-month employment, but some are based on 12-months. PhD candidates in some fields (e.g. CS) can easily supplement their incomes with summer PhD internships.
My spouse’s fully-funded master’s stipend in STEM was just shy of $15,000/9 months way back in 2000. The PHD stipend wasn’t much more, and I was so thankful when his post-doc actually paid a real living wage since we had a toddler and a baby by that time. I had tuition covered for my masters and PHD, but no stipend (non-STEM). Looking back on it, I have no idea how we made it work!
A quick review of the stipends now shows a range from the mid 20s to low 30s, which would be impossible in this city as a single person now.
Mine either. {insert whatever the conceptual opposite of a smiley is here, but not a sad face} The one of them who might actually have some interest in that direction (C25) has decided that they want to go the MLS route instead. (Dream job: Working for the Congressional Research Service, though really that might require a PhD anyway.)
And my spouse got a PhD along the way, as well, but after watching me being faculty and seeing what the life of an assistant professor in engineering would be like (read: chasing grants 18 hours per day), she opted out of academia and went back to private industry.
For PhDs in the natural sciences, they are generally year-round full-time positions and you can’t pick up extra work in the summers because you’re working all summer. I know a few people who did side jobs on top of a full time PhD position, but it can be tiring. If you’re being paid off of your advisor’s grant, as many students are, they’re certainly expecting all your effort. Not sure about engineering and other fields. But “fully funded” often is from a research grant.
As for master’s degrees, those have fallen by the wayside in many natural sciences fields. It’s now customary to go straight from BS to PhD. Masters are still done sometimes in some fields (e.g. ecology/evolution, natural resources, geoscience, wildlife). Some profs won’t even take masters students anymore.
Spouse and I had our first child while one of us was in a PhD program. We had a family income of $21K. We paid $5K of that to get health insurance for the family. We made $1K too much for food stamps and medicaid. But we did qualify for WIC. It was an excellent PhD program in a well-ranked department at an R1. Right after that, the other one of us did a PhD. We’ve never really caught up financially.
I truly read this as Major League Soccer and was trying to imagine how that related to the child going from professor as an option to pro athlete!
Addendum: the one thing S23 is certain he does not want to do is any kind of teaching. Contingent faculty is as big or bigger a scandal than the doctoral students. He’s witnessed too much of that!
Hey, I just saw this on a local (non CC) board and I thought it might be something for your daughter to monitor her email for:
“DC was first deferred and then WL at Case Western. They emailed estimated financial aid - (if DC gets off the wait list), which includes a large merit aid award. Is this possibly a sign that DC is likely to get off the waitlist? Or do they mark up tuition and give everyone large merit aid? Just seems odd to provide a merit aid award to someone on a waitlist.”
Son got the same email. Also included a $20k scholarship. And a “grant” - I assume need-based aid.
Still would leave $50k, and still not affordable, and he’s still on the WL, so I don’t really know what the purpose is.
Case is explicit about giving aid estimates to help students decide if they’d like to accept a spot on the waitlist. I think it’s nice, though it’s certainly not the norm amongst colleges. My son got one today (very generous aid) and does not expect to get off the waitlist. But @ProudDad_of_D23’s kid might indeed get a good enough offer to want to stay on the waitlist, since they (like us) qualify for need-based aid.
My PhD stipend started at the equivalent of just over $5000 per year in the early 1990s and I was paid separately for teaching, about another $1500 per year. Fortunately I had no expenses beyond (subsidized) rent and food. A big advantage of doing it right after undergrad and finishing at age 24. Spouse also did a PhD with a similar stipend but I was out of academia and earning money by that point, so we could afford to buy a house.
I had expected S18 might do a PhD but now I think he likes earning money and won’t go back to college. However, S23 thinks he wants to be an astronomer, and that’s not likely without a PhD.
We got one, but COA is still pretty high (over 40k, vs 23k at Grinnell and still under 30K at SLC), I don’t think they looked at the updated financials I submitted through CSS.
Now the question is, do we ask them to confirm and potentially hurt chances to get off the waitlist by ‘needing’ more, or just keep quiet and IF a miracle comes and D gets off the waitlist ask then?
Leaning towards just waiting. Likelihood of coming off waitlist is low, but if it happens it means she checks some boxes they want (major, gender, stats, etc.) so I would think we might be able to treat that as an ‘estimate’ and ask for reconsideration.
We may try to have a verbal, ‘hypothetical’ conversation……
