How much should a grad student be paid?

[MorganStar32]

I am having an issue with my office mates. We all applied for a prestigious Fellowship, but I am the only one who got it. As a result, I have been making roughly twice their salaries for the last couple years. I also took on a side project that was unpaid at first, but they were so happy with my work they extended it and carved out some salary for me. 

 

This doesn't mean I'm rich, by any means. I'm married and have more bills and financial obligations than my office mates. They are still living the single, super-frugal college life. That's great for them, but if my husband and I want to work hard and make a little bit more, why should they have a problem with that? 

 

I have been sensing this underlying hostility whenever money comes up. At a recent conference, there were a lot of assumptions about what I would be paying for. I rented a car in my name for everyone to use, and ended up getting stuck with the rental bill AND the gas, even after everyone said they would pitch in. They also made snide comments after I showed up with a new Patagonia backpack - never mind that it was a gift from my mom. Also, it's not like they don't have nice things, so I don't know why I receive extra scrutiny. 

 

Next semester, my Fellowship is over and I will be making the same amount as my office mates working as a TA - about half as much as what I have been making. I applied for a grant to do a small research project and get additional funding. It's really not much, but it will help. When I shared the good news that my grant had been forwarded to the next round of review, my office mates became kind of snotty. One of them said "you already have funding, what do you need more for??" 

 

Am I being greedy? Or are they just being jealous? 

[Lisa44201]

They're being jealous, and a little immature. That said, I would suggest not mentioning grants and the like in front of them, as it seems to be adding fuel to their fire. It's slightly ridiculous, but it's the way it is.

[TakeruK]

I don't think this is reasonable behaviour from your office mates You did not do anything wrong in securing more funding and to me, it does not seem like you flaunt the additional stipend in front of your officemates. This scenario is one reason why I am glad my department pays every student exactly the same (or within one or two thousand depending on external fellowships).

 

If I was in your shoes and my officemates became snotty of my ability to win fellowships, I think the best course of action is to just stop mentioning anything stipend related to them. I enjoy celebrating with and for my colleagues who are successful but if they don't want to be a part of it, then I'll find someone else to share good news with. 

 

In my opinion, I think this is something that might be worth it if the graduate student body addressed this to the department. A factor of 2 difference in funding is extremely strange, to me. Even for the students who get the increased funding, it's very tough to balance budgets when your income changes this much over a year or two! It sounds like the "default" stipend rate might be really low if it's possible to get twice as much through an external fellowship. 

 

And to your question of "how much should a grad student be paid?", I would say that the value of our renumeration package (stipend, "tuition" and benefits) should be comparable to what someone with an undergraduate degree in your field could be making if they joined the workforce right after college, adjusted for cost of living in that area. I put "tuition" in quotes because I don't think the full value of your tuition waiver should always be included since a lot of it is weird money paid from the school to another part of the same school. So, I would say that you should only count the "value" of your education and that is very subjective with no real metric!

 

However, I think I would personally agree with an estimate of somewhere around $10,000/year as the value we get from courses that we don't have to pay for. I think that a recent BSc graduate makes between $40,000-$50,000/year, and a health insurance plan is usually worth around $3000/year, so I think a fair stipend for a graduate student in the sciences is between $27,000 to $37,000 per year. My school's lower and upper limits on student stipends are $28,000 to $38,000 per year. So, these two numbers agree pretty well. (The sticker price of our "tuition" is about $40,000 per year but it's that weird funny money).

 

Alternatively, if you don't want to use a "value of work" argument, you can consider "how good of a life does a PhD student deserve?". This is a lot more subjective. My argument would be that a PhD student should live well above the poverty line in his/her area. You can use federal poverty level numbers, or use the "rule of thumb" that "affordable housing" means that rent+utilities should not cost more than 25% to 30% of your total income. In my opinion, a PhD student should earn enough so that either sharing a 2 bedroom place with 1 person or splitting the rent with a partner on a 1-bedroom place should be "affordable". In my (very expensive) city, this costs about $800-$900 per month which is $9600-$10800 per year, so the range of affordable housing stipends should be from $32,000/year to $43,200 per year. This roughly matches the stipends at my school but we are going to use these numbers to make an argument for raising the range of stipends at my school (they haven't changed in several years now). 

[Sigaba]

Did the terms of your fellowship allow you to work on the side?

[bsharpe269]

Hmm how much money should a grad student makde? I think I disagree with TakruK that a grad student should make the same amount as an entry level job in the field. In an entry level job, everything you do relates to what will make money for the company. They should be paying you a decent salary because you are bring in money or offering a service that is needed for the money to come in.

 

Grad school is different in that we of course do research or teach, but alot of what we do is for us, not for the school. I take classes and study for them which takes up a lot of time so I don't think I should make as much money as someone who can devote that time to work. There is also the issue of incentive... if a phd program pays the same as an entry level job then many more people may try for phd... I mean why not if they make the same amount of money either way? I think that this could create a pattern of people going into PhD programs who do not actually have the commitment necesary to get finish. I think that the fact that students are willing to sacrifice money going into the program shows that they truely want the phd and will make additional sacrifices for it.

 

As for the students in your program, I have a couple thoughts. One, I do think that they are being rude and immature. Two, it sounds like you could be sensitive and not mention grants and stuff around them when you are making significantly more money than they are. Also, I dont think its fair to say that since you are married, you in a way need the money more. If you are married then your spouse can work too so I would actually argue that if anything, you need the money less than someone who will not be combining incomes. Either way, I am sorry that they are acting like this! I would get money from them up front in the future so that you dont have to deal with situations like that again.

[QASP]

People are ridiculous. I am taking a cut to half of what I made in the working world for graduate school, you can bet I'm going to be busting my ass for every dime I can get out of any scholarship/fellowship/work opportunity (within reason and the terms of stipend). I don't think it's greedy to want to live a halfway to decent life. Proving you can attract a lot of funding is super important for after you graduate as well, it can be a real factor in getting a TT or similar research position.

 

That said I agree with Bsharpe's comment about married individuals actually being less in need of funding, not more (what I wouldn't give to have the advantages of a combined income again, le sigh).

[TakeruK]

Hmm how much money should a grad student makde? I think I disagree with TakruK that a grad student should make the same amount as an entry level job in the field. In an entry level job, everything you do relates to what will make money for the company. They should be paying you a decent salary because you are bring in money or offering a service that is needed for the money to come in.

 

Grad school is different in that we of course do research or teach, but alot of what we do is for us, not for the school. I take classes and study for them which takes up a lot of time so I don't think I should make as much money as someone who can devote that time to work.

 

I disagree with you here. The coursework that I completed in my PhD is not "for me". I have absolutely no use for it outside of academic work. It is not going to make me any more employable. And the research I do is also not "for me". The school owns everything I produce and therefore all of my research work is for the school. Teaching is clearly something we do for the school. 

 

I agree that a PhD is an in-training phase where I am being trained to become an independent researcher. But, in my opinion, trainees are not equivalent to free labour--they are entry level employees. Even in "real world jobs", every hour I had of training, no matter how mundane, has been paid work (at the full salary rate). So, I think it's expected that a school would pay for a PhD student's coursework because it is part of the training required to become an academic researcher and a PhD program is really hiring an academic-researcher-in-training.

 

I'm not saying PhD students should be paid the same rate as actual fully qualified researchers (i.e. those with PhDs already). But we should be paid according to our output and qualifications.

 

There is also the issue of incentive... if a phd program pays the same as an entry level job then many more people may try for phd... I mean why not if they make the same amount of money either way? I think that this could create a pattern of people going into PhD programs who do not actually have the commitment necesary to get finish. I think that the fact that students are willing to sacrifice money going into the program shows that they truely want the phd and will make additional sacrifices for it.

 

A PhD position is a job, like any other professional field. A good/desirable job would naturally have a lot of people wanting to do this work. There's nothing wrong with more and more people wanting to be a PhD researcher. When the market is saturated, then this will mean it will be a lot tougher to get a PhD position--the admissions standards will go up. This is not a bad thing. 

 

I think it's terrible to say that "in order to become a PhD student, you must be willing to make sacrifices or you don't truly want it". This is currently the case--PhD students are expected to make monetary sacrifices. This is a bad model as it prevents people who are qualified but have expenses greater than $30,000 ish per year (perhaps sick family members, or they have children) from affording a PhD so they end up going to work in other fields that pay them the wage they are qualified for instead. Even if a person can afford to live on grad student stipend right now, this effectively prevents PhD students from taking on other expenses such as raising a child or other things that they might want to do that cost money.

 

In my opinion, when you purposely devalue a worker's labour and make up criteria that are not related to the labour (e.g. "have to love the job so much that they are willing to live on less"), then you are creating extra barriers for disadvantaged people from entering the field. This restricts academia to only those who can afford to do this.

 

As for the students in your program, I have a couple thoughts. One, I do think that they are being rude and immature. Two, it sounds like you could be sensitive and not mention grants and stuff around them when you are making significantly more money than they are. Also, I dont think its fair to say that since you are married, you in a way need the money more. If you are married then your spouse can work too so I would actually argue that if anything, you need the money less than someone who will not be combining incomes. Either way, I am sorry that they are acting like this! I would get money from them up front in the future so that you dont have to deal with situations like that again.

 

This is partly true. As an international student, at first my spouse could not legally work so being married was an extra expense, not an extra source of income. My spouse now has authorization to work and this has definitely increased our income so that our combined income now meets our combined expenses (my school is in a high cost of living area, otherwise we would be saving quite a bit of money). However, this is still not enough money to start a family if we chose to (especially since one of us will have to stop working since childcare costs is about the same as one of our incomes!)

 

However, this part is a lot trickier. One way my school tries to help out students with dependents is to subsidize a small amount of extra costs (e.g. $100/month/dependent for health insurance, up to $4000/year for childcare if both parents are working [or if only one parent]). This is a good thing, but I feel it's still a little bit low (dependent health insurance through my school is $7200/year for adults, $3000/year for children and childcare is $20,000/year). 

 

In the ideal world, I think graduate students (actually, everybody) should be paid based on need. Someone with a serious health condition should get extra help on their medical bills etc. However, in practice, I cannot think of a fair way to implement this without the school making value judgements for students (i.e. whatever they subsidize would mean that they "approve" of certain things but not others, which can easily lead to unfair situations).

 

Right now, although my school can effectively increase a student's income by up to 20% through need-based benefits/subsidies, it is not that much. I don't think it currently poses the unfair problem I just mentioned because this is low enough to not really make a huge difference. But I think it is just a little bit too low to make an impact, which means increasing the subsidies might cause a fairness problem (but not increasing it also makes it unfair) so I don't really know what the right path forward is.

[juilletmercredi]

Here's how I feel about money: Why live with less when you are awesome enough to make more?  Not to mention that applying for grants is a GOOD thing.  "You already have funding, so why bother?" is the exact wrong mindset to take and probably explains why your colleagues are stuck making half what you do.

That said, I agree with the advice not to talk about grants or money in front of them, because they are reacting with jealousy.  I also would be careful to never split anything big with them unless they are paying up front.

I agree, though, that it's weird your external fellowship has doubled your stipend.  Most external fellowships I know of pay about $30K per year, so that would mean that your stipend is $15K?  That's super low, and might explain some of the resentment - if they are struggling just to pay their rent and eat, the resentment may be towards the program but misdirected onto an easier target (you) whenever it comes up.

I also like TakeruK's answer to the question in your title - except that I think the stipend itself should be equivalent to what someone with an undergrad degree in the field would make, on average.  In most fields that's right around $30K.  In some higher-paid fields (STEM, especially the T and E part) that might be closer to $40K.  And that would mean that postdoc salaries need to be pushed up to around $50-60K, which is what I think they SHOULD be, and I think professors should be starting around $70-80K.  Alas, I do not run the world.  Most humanities stipends at my university, I think, are between $20K and $30K for 9 months.  The STEM salaries I think tend between $30K and $35K.  I live in a very expensive city, as well; splitting a 2-bedroom can cost pretty much any amount (sky's the limit) but in reasonably affordable but safe areas of the city is generally between mmmm about $900-1100 a month.

Hmm how much money should a grad student makde? I think I disagree with TakruK that a grad student should make the same amount as an entry level job in the field. In an entry level job, everything you do relates to what will make money for the company. They should be paying you a decent salary because you are bring in money or offering a service that is needed for the money to come in.  Grad school is different in that we of course do research or teach, but alot of what we do is for us, not for the school.

 

I swear that TakeruK and I must share a brain sometimes because so often he says exactly what I'm thinking.  Basically everything he said in the above post is what I was going to write.

This is not really directed towards you, bsharpe269, but I believe that this is a partial fiction that graduate universities hand to us to keep graduate stipends low.  The truth is, though, universities need us.  Why do you think so many universities run so many low-ranked PhD programs?  Doctoral programs bring prestige and federal monies to universities.  In many STEM fields graduate students do work that is necessary to keep labs churning - without us, professors would be hiring research associates that they would pay the same amount or perhaps more to do the same work.  They also need us to help teach their classes - grade their papers and give their exams so that they have time to do the research they want to do.  In humanities fields (and sometimes, in the social sciences and pure math), students are often sole teaching basic service classes, sometimes in their first year.  In fact, it's become such a problem at some universities that students are taking many more years than necessary to graduate because they are stuck teaching freshman comp or sociology 101 to survive.

 

Besides, I think that the benefit to paying a decent salary is that you attract good students who might have done something else.  I disagree that students will go to PhD programs who don't have the commitment; if you could make the same amount of money doing something else in the field, it would probably be overall easier to just do that.  (Now if the stipend were a lot HIGHER in a PhD program, yeah, then we'd get a lot of dud apps.)  Instead, I think we'd get students who love research and really wanted to do a PhD, but have family obligations or got tempted by a more highly-paid job within the field elsewhere.  I also think it's difficult for working professionals to leave their full-time jobs and lives to take a significant pay cut and get a PhD - but the experience gleaned in work before a PhD is very valuable!

I also personally think the grad school = sacrifice trope is kind of bs, to be honest.  I can truly want a PhD without being willing to sacrifice my personal or financial well-being for it, especially if I have children or a mortgage or other family responsibilities to take care of.

[MorganStar32]

Thanks everyone for the great responses! 

 

First, to answer Sigaba's question - I discussed the side job with my Project Officer and he gave his approval, so that wasn't a problem. 

 

As for the salary/stipend offered by our school, it is ridiculously low in my opinion. We are in a low-cost area of the country, but it is still much less than what I would expect most people to live on (roughly $1000/month stipend). My office mates are younger than I am, and most of them are living with multiple roommates and cutting costs down that way. My husband and I are living as frugally as possible, but we like having our own place and our own space. My office mates also still get some financial help from their parents. My parents don't really understand why I'm still in school at my age (early 30's). They come from a very blue collar town and I am definitely the only person from my high school to get a graduate degree, so they don't really see the purpose in it. That's not to say they aren't proud of me, but they don't see why they should still be helping me financially at my age. Not to mention, I really don't want to ask them for money. That puts extra pressure on me to not only pay my bills, but to have extra money to cover emergencies. 

 

I am glad that TakeruK mentioned the international student conundrum. My husband is also an international student and unable to work at the moment, so it does become an expense. He is embarrassed by it - he wants to be the breadwinner. So I never mention to my office mates that I am really the one paying most of our expenses. I'm sure they assume that we have two incomes. He does do little odd jobs whenever he can find them to get a few hundred dollars here and there, and that helps. But he is not pulling a regular salary, and until he is I am the one who has to make sure we're covered. I am ok with the arrangement - we discussed it at length before we decided that we would both go for our graduate degrees in America. 

 

You're right that I just shouldn't mention grants in front of them anymore, which is exactly what my husband said. When I brought it up I wasn't even thinking of it in terms of funding, I was just excited to be able to do the project that I proposed! I thought we could share in the excitement. But from now on, I will just keep my mouth shut and only discuss my dissertation with them. I realize I am lucky to be so well-funded, but I also worked very hard to get the funding I have and I don't appreciate anyone making me feel like I don't deserve it.

 

As far as the larger question of how much a grad student should be paid: it obviously varies quite a bit from school to school, but I think it is ridiculous to ask students to live below the poverty line. The result of such low stipends is that many students end up taking out loans to cover costs, which leads to graduating with massive debt. As Takeru said, we obviously shouldn't be paid as much as those who have graduated and are working in actual faculty positions, but the disparity is so great in some areas that there must be room for improvement. 

[MorganStar32]

 if they are struggling just to pay their rent and eat, the resentment may be towards the program but misdirected onto an easier target (you) whenever it comes up.

 

I think you really hit the nail on the head here. I know it has been tough on them. I guess I just resent them assuming that it hasn't been tough on me too. You never know what someone's financial situation truly is unless they choose to discuss it with you. 

 

At any rate, like you said, applying for grants is a good thing! They could do the exact same thing I'm doing - apply for external funding. In fact, I have offered to bring them in on grants I am writing. They don't want to do it because they feel they couldn't handle the added responsibility. I understand that - we all have a lot on our plate. But if I CAN handle it, I'm going to write the grant and get the funding!

[DeleteMePlease]

 

The school owns everything I produce and therefore all of my research work is for the school.

 

What do you mean with that?

Don't you work on research you want to do (you picked the school and adviser after all) and that will make you "famous" in your field eventually?

[Sigaba]

 

Am I being greedy? Or are they just being jealous? 

 

MS32--

 

I think that what is going on is neither greed on your part nor jealousy on theirs but rather an ongoing erosion of rapport due to a lack of mutual respect for differing lifestyle choices.

 

As you're the older person in the group, you may be better equipped (because of your life experiences and the way the human brain develops) to take a step back and to put yourself in their shoes. That is, from their perspective, are you measuring your success against your own aspirations alone or are you also keeping a scorecard of sorts over who is making more money than whom, who is getting support from whom and who is more "independent"? 

Edited June 3, 2014 by Sigaba

[rising_star]

TLDR version: Grad students make more than adjuncts. If universities are reliant on grad students (and they are), their teaching tasks could be easily replaced by any number of adjuncts and cost the university less money. Most grad students don't make $30K/year. Apply for all the grants you can and celebrate your successes with those who are happy for you. Ignore the haters.

 

 

I disagree with you here. The coursework that I completed in my PhD is not "for me". I have absolutely no use for it outside of academic work. It is not going to make me any more employable. And the research I do is also not "for me". The school owns everything I produce and therefore all of my research work is for the school. Teaching is clearly something we do for the school.

I'm just choosing a few parts of your long comment to reply to. Okay, so this is probably a field difference but my school does NOT own the research work I have done. While teaching is something we do for the school, we are also paid to do that teaching. The alternative might be to pay PhD students as adjuncts (which really is the job that many PhD students are being trained for these days whether or not people want to admit it). If that were the case, the $30K/year you suggest is definitely way more than they would be making without a significant increase in their teaching load.

 

Also, for the record, that $30K/year is definitely NOT common in most of the humanities or social sciences, at least outside the Ivy League and elite private institutions. I don't think there's a single program in my field with a stipend that high, unless you are being externally funded via NSF GRFP or NSF-IGERT.

 

A few examples just to illustrate my point. University of Washington Political Science: "Full-funding awards, regardless of the categories of funding, amount to over $45,000 for the 2013 - 14 academic year. This consists of a 3-quarter tuition waiver; a quarterly stipend of $5,034 per quarter ($15,102 per year with three quarters of funding); and health insurance http://www.washington.edu/admin/hr/benefits/insure/gaip/index.html with medical, dental, and vision coverage for each quarter of fellowship or employment as an RA or TA." That is in Seattle, certainly not an area known for its low cost of living. Arizona State University Department of English: "$13,000 for students with a bachelor's degree and $15,000 for students with a master's degree, or 30 hours towards the Ph.D." University of Colorado Boulder Political Science: "This year’s stipend is $16,881.55 (50% appointment) for teaching assistants. The department also provides in-state tuition and subsidized health insurance ($1,350/term of the $1,515.00) for those offered teaching assistantships." Anthropology at the University of South Carolina: "A typical assistantship for M.A. students pays $4500 per semester and students work 14 hours per week.  Assistantships for Ph.D. students pay $5500 per semester and require 20 hours of work per week." I assume that's sufficient to demonstrate my point. At my PhD university, the only students with stipends above $25K were in the sciences and engineering. Those in education, humanities, and social sciences were making $13-18K/year depending on the department and the availability of summer teaching.

 

That said, I know plenty of graduate students who had children before or doing grad school or dealt with serious medical expenses (long-term illness in several cases that I know of) or various other things. There's no rule that says unless you make over $30K/year, you don't have enough money to raise a child, you know?

 

I agree, though, that it's weird your external fellowship has doubled your stipend.  Most external fellowships I know of pay about $30K per year, so that would mean that your stipend is $15K?  That's super low, and might explain some of the resentment - if they are struggling just to pay their rent and eat, the resentment may be towards the program but misdirected onto an easier target (you) whenever it comes up.

...
This is not really directed towards you, bsharpe269, but I believe that this is a partial fiction that graduate universities hand to us to keep graduate stipends low.  The truth is, though, universities need us.  Why do you think so many universities run so many low-ranked PhD programs?  Doctoral programs bring prestige and federal monies to universities.  In many STEM fields graduate students do work that is necessary to keep labs churning - without us, professors would be hiring research associates that they would pay the same amount or perhaps more to do the same work.  They also need us to help teach their classes - grade their papers and give their exams so that they have time to do the research they want to do.  In humanities fields (and sometimes, in the social sciences and pure math), students are often sole teaching basic service classes, sometimes in their first year.  In fact, it's become such a problem at some universities that students are taking many more years than necessary to graduate because they are stuck teaching freshman comp or sociology 101 to survive.

So I agree with the first part of this. It's always great to apply for funding. That said, my PhD program was one where getting the NSF GRFP or EPA STAR did almost double one's income over those on a departmental stipend, which definitely leads to vast differences in what is affordable. Those people were the ones able to buy houses in our grad school city or live in nicer places while the rest of us rented.

 

Now the point about entry-level stipends is an interesting one. Entry-level stipends vary widely and, in some cases, don't really exist because there aren't jobs available with a BA. Plus, that stipend wouldn't account at all for the classes grad students take and the time spent advising them (though you could argue that the latter is equivalent to having a mentor at work or an on-the-job training program).

 

Also, while yes, universities do need us, they could also continue to hire temporary labor for much of the same work. At the institutions I've been at (3 thus far post-bachelor's), all have admitted that hiring adjuncts is cheaper than admitting graduate students. Why? Not only do TAs make more money, they also require that faculty teach and train them (so teaching and service on the part of faculty). Adjuncts don't require that. So I don't know that it's fair to say that graduate universities need us since most grad student TAs could be easily replaced by adjuncts. That is probably part of what keeps graduate stipends low.

 

As far as the larger question of how much a grad student should be paid: it obviously varies quite a bit from school to school, but I think it is ridiculous to ask students to live below the poverty line. The result of such low stipends is that many students end up taking out loans to cover costs, which leads to graduating with massive debt. As Takeru said, we obviously shouldn't be paid as much as those who have graduated and are working in actual faculty positions, but the disparity is so great in some areas that there must be room for improvement. 

Devil's advocate: Here's the thing are graduate students really being asked to live below the poverty line or are they choosing to by accepting those offers? I say this as someone that accepted an offer close to the poverty line for where I was and based on my household size but I did this knowing that it would require budgeting and being careful about what I spend. Is that so different than people in many other occupations, especially entry-level ones? Not really. I see lots of full-time entry-level jobs that pay $23-32K/year. Those are full-time, so theoretically double the number of work hours as a grad student puts in. In fact, I was encouraged to apply for one such job during my PhD and decided not to because the salary for the FT job was not quite double my FTE rate as a grad student. And I'm in the social sciences in a field where no one is making $30K.

 

Other part of course is that most of academics working these days are adjuncts not making $30K/year. Most of academia is contingent labor, so it may be useful, at some point, to remember that grad students often make more than adjuncts. At my current university, the English grad stipend is around $13.5K/year for teaching two sections of freshman comp per semester. Adjuncts in English make $1550 per course. So the grad student gets $13.5k/year (and gets health insurance) while the adjunct gets $6200 pretax for the same amount of teaching. And that's ignoring that the adjunct is paying social security and medicare taxes while the grad student is not.

 

Okay, this post is now super long. Apologies for the length. What I want to say to the OP is that you should keep applying for grants. You never know when you will get one and when you won't. Improving your CV is one of those things you have to do for you to maximize your chances of success. My graduate program had some people who try to diminish or make you feel bad about your successes so I stopped talking to them unless absolutely necessary. Good luck, OP!

[Vene]

Hmm how much money should a grad student makde? I think I disagree with TakruK that a grad student should make the same amount as an entry level job in the field. In an entry level job, everything you do relates to what will make money for the company. They should be paying you a decent salary because you are bring in money or offering a service that is needed for the money to come in.

I understand this viewpoint, but I think this creates a serious problem for academia where it's not the best and brightest who enter a PhD program, but instead people are going to be constrained by financial limitations. There are a lot of people who are already severely strained during their undergrad years, I see no reason to add to that suffering, especially since the top schools are typically in high cost of living areas. Supposedly academia wants to encourage diversity, well, to do so they have to acknowledge that real financial barriers exist which prevent various demographics from seriously pursuing an advanced degree.

[bsharpe269]

I understand this viewpoint, but I think this creates a serious problem for academia where it's not the best and brightest who enter a PhD program, but instead people are going to be constrained by financial limitations. There are a lot of people who are already severely strained during their undergrad years, I see no reason to add to that suffering, especially since the top schools are typically in high cost of living areas. Supposedly academia wants to encourage diversity, well, to do so they have to acknowledge that real financial barriers exist which prevent various demographics from seriously pursuing an advanced degree.

 

By this logic though, shouldn't masters and undergrad programs also fund their students so that they end up with the best and brightest students? Many people cannot go to college out of high school due to financial constraints... I dont think this means that universities should be paying them to go.

 

Even though I agree that labor could be hired to do research and teach at the same cost as a grad student, I think that the labor would end up doing a lot more work than grad students do. The head phd student in my lab does a decent amount of work for the professor or school, but alot of his time is spent doing things for himself like his dissertation proposal. PhD students usually have big distractions that prevent them from working on tasks that benefit the university full time like classes, qualifying exams, dissertaions. When only 20-30ish hours or so a week are actually going to things that benefit the university and the rest of your time goes to tasks that benefit you, it makes sense that the university would not pay you a large salary.

 

Anyway, those are just some of my thoughts... I do see the other point of view as well that many people are taking out loans/ living in poverty to get through grad school. I guess I just view this as a choice that was made by the student. A PhD is a long term investiment in your future just like undergrad, finishing high school, internships, etc. At any point in the schooling process, we could have chosen to work a job that was in high demand in society instead of going through more school. We chose more school though because of the long term benefits. Being a nurse or secretary pays a lot more money than taking classes, research as a PhD student. This makes sense to me since society has a much high demand for nurses than they do for students.

[TakeruK]

What do you mean with that?

Don't you work on research you want to do (you picked the school and adviser after all) and that will make you "famous" in your field eventually?

 

(and also to the others who asked the same question): Yes, this is a fair point. When I say the University "owns" the research I do, what I mean is that I cannot personally use my work for personal gain separate from the University. That is, let's say I spend my PhD years writing a very useful piece of code that analyzes astronomy images. The University "owns" this code now--I cannot, for example, personally benefit by doing something like turning this code into proprietary software that I then sell as an app or something. (Note: this doesn't mean this can't ever happen: I can reach some agreement with the University to create spinoff from my research). Similarly, the dissertation that I write will be copyrighted to me, but the University also owns a royalty free license to distribute or use it if they ever want to.

 

As for the second part, yes, I will still have a lot to gain from my (hopefully good) work that I produce while I am a PhD student. But this is not a reason for me to be paid less, nor should it be considered a form of compensation. For example, let's say I am a lawyer and I work for Law Firm X and work hard to do really good work with X. My ability is noticed by other firms and eventually, Law Firm Y wants me on their team and they make me a job offer based on my good work record with X. This doesn't mean that I should be happy to work for X at an unfair salary because I'll benefit from doing good work because all this time, X is also gaining a lot from my good work. 

 

Maybe this is really a difference in field, but in mine, grad school isn't really about pursuing some pet project that we have. Instead, we are basically hired as research workers to work on our supervisors' projects. Initially, we probably just work on their ideas but eventually we also come up with our own ideas and contribute to the research. So, yes, while publishing paper and presenting at conferences has the benefit of exposure for me, my research output also directly benefits the University and my supervisor's research group, so I should be paid a fair wage for it. 

 

I agree that when we are talking about "salary" for graduate students, we should only consider the number of hours that we work "for" the school. But, when I count up my hours, this is about 35-40 hours a week working for the school, equivalent to a full time job. At this point in my grad program, with all coursework completed, pretty much 100% of my working hours are working for the school. Eventually, I will probably spend time working on my dissertation, and if the work is solely on dissertation related things (e.g. formatting the thing, writing extra chapters) then those hours should not count as working hours. However, I expect the majority of my dissertation to be a collection of papers I am currently writing for peer-reviewed journals right now, and those hours do count as work for the school. 

 

While teaching is something we do for the school, we are also paid to do that teaching. The alternative might be to pay PhD students as adjuncts (which really is the job that many PhD students are being trained for these days whether or not people want to admit it). If that were the case, the $30K/year you suggest is definitely way more than they would be making without a significant increase in their teaching load.

 

Also, for the record, that $30K/year is definitely NOT common in most of the humanities or social sciences, at least outside the Ivy League and elite private institutions. I don't think there's a single program in my field with a stipend that high, unless you are being externally funded via NSF GRFP or NSF-IGERT.

 

I actually do think that PhD students should be paid as adjuncts. I think that Canada does something like this, although it's not clearly labelled as "adjunct" work all the time. But basically, my pay in Canada came from 3 parts: TA work, RA work, and fellowships. Each pay source was handled differently and it's a very clear separation of our 3 working roles. 

 

Our TA pay comes from the department and our salaries were negotiated by our Union in a Collective Agreement and they were set so that a graduate student's wage is some proportion of the wage of an adjunct. Here are some numbers to compare:

 

At Queen's University, the current Adjunct collective agreement sets the salary for a "0.5 credit course" (this is a standard semester length course in Canada; i.e. 12-13 weeks, 3 hours per week) to be $7406 in 2011 (increases to $7821 in 2015), so a 3/3 load would be around $44k per year. This is the "base level" (with 0 years of experience). An experienced adjunct (let's say 5 years experience) starts at $7961. In addition, there is a ~10% pay raise if your course has more than 120 students enrolled, to compensate for the extra work. Source: QUFA Collective Agreement (http://www.queensu.ca/provost/faculty/facultyrelations/qufa/collectiveagreement/WEBSITECAWITHLINKSSept252012.pdf)

 

At Queen's University, the standard TA rate in 2011 (when I was there) was just under $38/hr. My total salary from TA a "0.5 credit course" (i.e. the same length as above) was 54 hours * $38/hr = $2052. I think this is a fair amount of pay given the amount of hours I put into the course compared to someone who was actually in charge of the course.

At Queen's University, in the humanities, graduate students at the PhD level are often fully in charge of a course, and they are called "Teaching Fellows". TFs are basically adjuncts and as you said, they are actually paid exactly the same as an adjunct with 0 years of experience (the only difference is that time as a TF does not count as experience in terms of getting raises in future years). Sources for TA and TF rates: PSAC 901 Collective Agreement in 2011 (http://www.queensu.ca/provost/faculty/facultyrelations/psac/collectiveagreement/CAAug1612updatedwithlinks.pdf)

 

(Note that ALL of the above applies to ALL employees on campus, regardless of the field they work)

 

Our RA pay was also based on a certain amount for a certain amount of hours worked and the remaining pay came from fellowships, which do not come with any work requirements but in effect, are meant to supplement our pay so that we have a livable stipend. Typically, at Canadian schools, undergrad researchers are paid around $15-$20/hour and graduate students in the $20-$25/hour range. Note that in most of Canada, minimum wage is $10.25/hr currently (Ontario is going to go to $13/hour soon). So, I think this is a fair wage to pay someone with the qualifications of a BA or BSc. I agree that this should only be counted on the hours we actually work for the school though!

 

So, my point here is to illustrate an example of a University pay scale that basically pays its students fairly for the work they complete and that paying graduate students as adjuncts make sense if they are doing the work of an adjunct. Overall though, I am surprised to learn that at the places you mentioned, adjuncts actually make less than graduate students! But in my opinion, the problem is that adjuncts are paid too little, not that graduate students are paid too much!

 

That said, I know plenty of graduate students who had children before or doing grad school or dealt with serious medical expenses (long-term illness in several cases that I know of) or various other things. There's no rule that says unless you make over $30K/year, you don't have enough money to raise a child, you know?

There is definitely no rule, but keeping graduate stipends low basically creates a strong disincentive to either keep students from starting a family or discourage those who have families/want to start families from entering graduate studies.

 

Devil's advocate: Here's the thing are graduate students really being asked to live below the poverty line or are they choosing to by accepting those offers? I say this as someone that accepted an offer close to the poverty line for where I was and based on my household size but I did this knowing that it would require budgeting and being careful about what I spend. Is that so different than people in many other occupations, especially entry-level ones? Not really. I see lots of full-time entry-level jobs that pay $23-32K/year. Those are full-time, so theoretically double the number of work hours as a grad student puts in.

 

If I really put in 10-20 hours of actual work "for" the school each week, then yes, I agree a stipend of $15k-$20k is a fair one. But in my field, this is not true. I try to maintain approximately 35 working hours ("for the school", so coursework etc. is on top of that) each week. My stipend is $30k/year. I get 2 weeks of unpaid vacation, so let's say it's 50 working weeks a year and 35 hours per week makes 1750 working hours per year, which makes my average hourly rate be just over $17/hr. In my opinion, this is a little low compared to how much researchers in Canada get paid, but minimum wage in California is also only $8/hr, so I'm at about 2x minimum wage here, just like when I was at about 2x minimum wage in Canada. So, in that sense, I'm at about the same level. However, the cost of living here is way higher than where I was before, so I think graduate students here are not doing as well as other places when compared to the living wage.

[TakeruK]

Just to clarify -- if being a graduate student means spending most of your time working for yourself (on your dissertation that you choose, independently of your advisor etc.) then a lot of the stipends make sense since like others said above, the graduate student is only putting in about half of a FTE worker. 
But, in the fields I'm used to, graduate student is a full time entry-level job. In these cases, I think it makes a lot more sense to argue for higher salaries that reflect the quantity and quality of work completed.
 
PS to juilletmercredi, who said:
 

And that would mean that postdoc salaries need to be pushed up to around $50-60K, which is what I think they SHOULD be, and I think professors should be starting around $70-80K.  Alas, I do not run the world.

At many major Canadian universities (Canada being small so this is also "most" university jobs in Canada), these numbers are indeed almost true. The minimum starting salary for an assistant professor at Queen's, from the same document I linked above, is around $66.5k, but higher offers can be made to attract some applicants. At my undergrad school, one math prof I talked to said he started at the $80k level. 

 

Canadian Postdocs, on average, don't make as much as you would like them to make though, with the median around $45k instead of $50k-$60k (see Fig 12 in http://www.mitacs.ca/sites/default/files/caps-mitacs_postdoc_report-full_oct22013-final.pdf)

 

If you can't run the world, perhaps you could at least run Canada

Edited June 4, 2014 by TakeruK

[Sigaba]

.In an entry level job, everything you do relates to what will make money for the company. 

 

 

I understand the point that you're making.

 

However, my work experience suggests otherwise. Depending upon how things are budgeted and the org chart is set up, certain categories of workers, from entry level to old hands, are considered overhead and even if their contributions make a company more efficient or profitable or sustainable, they are not considered money makers.

 

 

At any point in the schooling process, we could have chosen to work a job that was in high demand in society instead of going through more school. 

 

At one point this statement may have been true and, at some point in the future it may be true again. However, in today's job market this statement is inaccurate. For example, I work for a firm that, before the recession, hired for internships undergraduates. Now, many of this year's crop of interns have master's degrees. This is to say that it is an employers' job market. I urge every member of this BB to keep this point in mind if you're thinking about leaving the Ivory Tower for greener pastures--for the present, many of those pastures remain blasted lunar landscapes. 

[Vene]

By this logic though, shouldn't masters and undergrad programs also fund their students so that they end up with the best and brightest students? Many people cannot go to college out of high school due to financial constraints... I dont think this means that universities should be paying them to go.

Yes, but I am willing to say it doesn't have to be the duty of a university, but from society as a whole as the society benefits from having an educated populace. A society also has an interest in nurturing the talents its citizens have regardless of whether or not they were born to the right family. A brilliant child in a poor village in West Virginia deserves the same chances as a brilliant child growing up in a wealthy suburb of DC.

[danieleWrites]

I don't know about anyone else, but my "pay" is a stipend plus tuition. While I don't have to declare the payment of tuition as income on taxes (um. gonna go panic and make a screaming phone call in the morning to an accountant now), it is part of my "pay" package. So, I make about entry level or more per yer in my field.

I don't have a fellowship, but I am an older person with a significant retirement income from my days in the military. Frankly, I make more money per year than the chair. I have been told, to my face, that I should be ashamed of taking a TA spot from someone who needed the money and that I should not go after grants and fellowships because I don't need the money like people starting out do. One person has even spread it around that I shouldn't be in grad school, taking up the space from someone else, or potentially taking a job from someone else, because I have resources to fall back on.

I, and you, we're not "taking" from anyone. These things are earned based on merit. I do not justify my choices to my cohort and neither should you. The only thing I've ever said to these people, when I bothered with it: be honest with yourself, if you were in my shoes, you wouldn't give up grad school, the assistanceship, or a job either. These people are not worth arguing with, nor are they worth extending the kind of help one would to a friend. Civility, yes; friendship, no.

You earned your assistancehip, your fellowship, and any grants that come your way. Nothing stopped your office mates from applying for these things; the fact that they're awarded on merit, not need, is not your problem.

[rising_star]

TakeruK, Canada and the USA are vastly different. If you check out the Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed, etc., you'll see that adjunct wages in the USA aren't typically anywhere close to the wages found in Canada. Most schools in the US aren't paying anywhere close to $7800 per course. The average (which I can't remember offhand) amount per course is in the 2-3 thousand dollar range. Which is where my original point comes from. Graduate students are paid more (not just in salary but also through their benefits of health insurance and tuition) than adjuncts are for teaching courses.

 

Your point about the nature of research in the lab sciences is interesting. I would guess that since you will ultimately derive benefit from the research, you might need to count more than just the specific time you spend editing and formatting for the dissertation. I worked primarily as a TA (though also as a RA) while in grad school so I was specifically being paid to teach (when I was an RA, the project I worked on was completely unrelated to my research so none of it was usable for my proposal, fieldwork, or dissertation). My research time was thus uncompensated except when I had a fellowship to collect data in the field. But, even so, if you were to double my teaching wages (you say you do research 40ish hours per week), then my stipend would actually approach yours. So, in that sense, the wages being paid in the social sciences and the lab sciences aren't all that different... Except that I do research at my own expense in that sense and you don't. It's interesting to me that you feel entirely justified in getting paid based on a 40 hour work week when the reality is that graduate students aren't and can't be full-time employees. There was something else I wanted to add but my brain is telling me to go to bed.

[TakeruK]

TakeruK, Canada and the USA are vastly different. If you check out the Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed, etc., you'll see that adjunct wages in the USA aren't typically anywhere close to the wages found in Canada. Most schools in the US aren't paying anywhere close to $7800 per course. The average (which I can't remember offhand) amount per course is in the 2-3 thousand dollar range. Which is where my original point comes from. Graduate students are paid more (not just in salary but also through their benefits of health insurance and tuition) than adjuncts are for teaching courses.

 

 You are right that although there's lots of similarities, this is one example where the two countries are a lot different. So it's not valid for me to compare the two directly. What I was trying to explain was that I think grad students should be paid some scaled down version of the wage of a teaching adjunct, for their teaching roles, and a scaled down version of a staff scientist, for their research roles. And my examples were supposed to be an illustration of how it might work (and how it does work elsewhere, not in the US). To give a US example though, introductory staff scientist like positions at my current school pays about double of the grad student stipend. I know this because when a graduate student defends but stays around to finish up a few papers or train a replacement etc., they are sometimes upgraded to a "staff scientist" position. But because the supervisor often cannot afford this, sometimes the arrangement is to hire them as a half-time staff scientist (i.e. twice the wage at half the hours) so the student works ~20 hrs/week to finish up papers and tie up loose ends from their research.

 

I am really surprised to learn that teaching adjuncts might earn less than $2000 per course, even if they are fully and completely responsible for developing course content, especially since these are workers with PhDs! Can we both agree that the problem is that these positions are underpaid? 

 

Your point about the nature of research in the lab sciences is interesting. I would guess that since you will ultimately derive benefit from the research, you might need to count more than just the specific time you spend editing and formatting for the dissertation. I worked primarily as a TA (though also as a RA) while in grad school so I was specifically being paid to teach (when I was an RA, the project I worked on was completely unrelated to my research so none of it was usable for my proposal, fieldwork, or dissertation). My research time was thus uncompensated except when I had a fellowship to collect data in the field. But, even so, if you were to double my teaching wages (you say you do research 40ish hours per week), then my stipend would actually approach yours. So, in that sense, the wages being paid in the social sciences and the lab sciences aren't all that different... Except that I do research at my own expense in that sense and you don't. It's interesting to me that you feel entirely justified in getting paid based on a 40 hour work week when the reality is that graduate students aren't and can't be full-time employees. There was something else I wanted to add but my brain is telling me to go to bed.

In Canada, it's also true that outside of the "lab" sciences (using "lab" very loosely since my "lab" is a computer where I run computations and simulations), graduate students often earn their RA money by doing work outside of their dissertation. But in Canada and the US, science graduate students are generally paid as RAs to do work towards their dissertation. I know this is not always true--sometimes a student takes on another professor's research project in order to earn RA pay, but in most cases this is true. 

 

The way I see it ("justify" it if you will), my labour/effort spent must be compensated in one of two ways: either 1) through course credit towards my degree completion or 2) through paid wages. (I guess there is a third option, where I freely choose to volunteer my time, such as when I choose to serve on committees). So, I don't count my time studying for exams (both course exams and qualifiers), doing homework, or working on my actual physical dissertation** as paid work since it meets category 1. Everything else though counts as paid research work. 

 

I would never do research work at my own expense. I do research because it is my profession--it is how I earn my living. To me, research is not a hobby or an interest that I can afford to pursue on my own leisure time at this moment. Even though I enjoy it immensely, I don't work for free. I find this equivalent to any other profession (let's say an event photographer). As much as these professionals enjoy doing their work and as much passion they have for their craft, they cannot be expected to work for free. Sure, they might do some extra photography in their free time, but their main priority is to work as a photographer for hire. I see my relationship with research in a similar way. 

 

I am curious as to why you doubt my ability to justify a ~40 hour work week. I don't mean this as an attack, and I don't think you do either--but I am genuinely curious as to why you don't think a graduate student is able to put in 40 hours of work for their school/employer. So I would be interested to hear more on this if you don't mind.

 

My main argument in this thread is that graduate students are indeed full time employees in practice, if not always recognized as such on paper. Most fully funded PhD programs in the sciences expect its graduate students to work as much as a full time employee, require that the student does not have other commitments that would make their PhD work drop below full time equivalency, and pay graduate students enough so that they can be completely dependent on this support for all their expenses.

 

Finally, I just want to clarify the ** note I made above when I mentioned dissertation work as "unpaid work". By this, I mean any work that actually does not have any benefit my "employer" in any way. In the sciences, the most common form of dissertation is to take 3 to 5 papers that the student wrote and published during their time in the program and reformat them to the school's dissertation format. Then, the student needs to add an introduction and conclusion chapter as well as write a little bit of additional text to weave these papers together into a coherent narrative. You might notice this if you read a science PhD student's dissertation--most of the chapters will say something like "This chapter has been reproduced in its entirety, with permission, from [reference to original paper here]" in the beginning.

 

Thus, all of the work described here (formatting, additional text, etc.) is solely to satisfy a one's course/degree requirements and I don't think this counts as time that one can "charge" as "paid work". If a student has been able to write enough papers to meet the minimum for this format, the general amount of time necessary to produce a dissertation, from watching many others do it, is approximately one month of prioritizing this work. An average PhD is ~5 years, so this is 1/60 or less than 2% of the total time in residence. So, while this should be accounted for (i.e. add up the total amount of wages paid throughout a PhD and divide by amount of time that one would actually "charge" for), an entire month working on the dissertation is not going to greatly change the numbers.

Edited June 4, 2014 by TakeruK

[MorganStar32]

I have been told, to my face, that I should be ashamed of taking a TA spot from someone who needed the money and that I should not go after grants and fellowships because I don't need the money like people starting out do. One person has even spread it around that I shouldn't be in grad school, taking up the space from someone else, or potentially taking a job from someone else, because I have resources to fall back on.

 

Thanks for your response, and all the responses. This is the kind of attitude I feel like I have been encountering. Nearly our entire department attends a week-long national conference every year, and they are always held in the most expensive areas of the most expensive cities in the U.S. They are very expensive to attend once you factor in airfare, hotel, conference registration, and meals (which are not provided by the conference). I applied for a travel award from one of the specialty groups and got it, and also received a small travel stipend from the Grad School. One guy in my department was very vocal about criticizing me, saying I should have left that money for someone who needed it. The truth was, I had to buy expensive equipment for my study off of my Fellowship stipend and didn't have as much for travel funds as he was assuming. I also knew that the specialty group travel award would look good on my CV. But I let him make me feel so bad that the next year I didn't apply for any other funding. When I went to the specialty group meeting they said they only had one applicant for the travel award!! So why am I letting them make me feel bad when they're not applying for these awards anyway??

 

I suppose it is like any other work place - there will be back-biting and pettiness. It's just too bad, because we should be supporting each other in all our endeavors. 

[Usmivka]

By this logic though, shouldn't masters and undergrad programs also fund their students so that they end up with the best and brightest students?

Yes. And in some cases, they do, though existing funding mechanisms in the US are not always ideal (scholarships and work study). Although I think there is a strong case to be made that everyone ought to be supported to some level, not just the "best and brightest," since socioeconomic factors tilt the playing field and make it hard to evaluate who can succeed coming straight out of high school. Some foreign goverments more heavily subsidize education costs (eg the UK) so that the excpeted financial burden is lower and thus the opportunity costs a little more evenly distributed.

 

Anyway, I also work somewhere where all research output is owned by the institution (I can't benefit form patents or discoveries). It isn't even research I'm particularly attached to, and I won't continue in the sub-field, so I have a hard time swallowing that it has concrete benefits for my career other than the premium of the diploma itself. And the least expensive technical staff that could be hired is almost five times more expensive than me on an annual basis once the overhead costs are taken into account (I think at most places this would be more like 2-3x, but we are entirely soft money with a very weird financial scheme). There are no undergrads here either, so grad students are the single source of cheap labor--research would be choked without us. I can't speak to the cost of hiring an adjunct, since my institution does not have such positions (what's the point with no undergrads?). But adjunct at our affiliated university make at least twice as much as teaching assistants in take home.

 

TakeruK, like me, is coming from the perspective of a grad student in the physical and natural sciences. I make less now than I did as a full-time research assistant following undergrad, and that seems to be a common experience for folks in my field. And students in my program make a lot more than the average in our field. I can look for a job with fewer hours and greater pay (eg go from 70hrs/week at $30k/yr to 40 hrs/wk at $50k)--these jobs do exist in my field with relatively little searching, so this really is an opportunity cost. Although I joke about it, getting a grad school position is harder, not easier than getting a job for me and others with a similar educational background. So I have clearly placed some value on the "training" I receive as a scientist--in this case about $20k a year and 1500 hours a year of otherwise free time.

 

I don't think it is unreasonable for folks in such a position to expect compensation for the work we do that is at least a sizable fraction of what a full time employee fresh out of undergrad makes in our fields, so in that sense I agree with the answer to "how much should a grad student make" put forward by TakeruK.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Usmivka

[rising_star]

TakeruK, I think you've missed my point entirely at least twice at this point. So, I'll just address a couple of things and then move on because this discussion is completely derailing the original post. First, yes, adjuncts with PhDs are being paid $2K per course in the USA. There's a reason the previous chair of my PhD department made a point of telling graduate students that it would be cheaper to replace us with adjuncts for our instructional responsibilities and that they were not going to allow that to happen. Yes, adjuncts are being underpaid but this is in part because they are willing to work for their wages. If no one applied for those jobs, then maybe they would have to either raise the pay or lower the qualifications in order to attract qualified candidates. (Also, for reference, there are teaching postdocs with 4/4 loads paying less than $30K, which you can find on the Academic Jobs Wiki.) I think many agree that grad student wages might rise if people were unwilling to accept the wages currently being offered. But, you're talking about broad systematic change, which I don't think is what the OP was asking (unless I misunderstood).

 

As for work hours, I'm not doubting that you or anyone else work 40 hours per week. I am questioning why you think you should be paid for all 40 of those hours when some of those hours are for your own work (because really, it's not like you get to include someone else's research in your primary dissertation). I'm not sure why you're contesting this so strongly. There are people in my field who have included co-authored publications in their dissertations. I checked with one of them today. He said that while yes, he worked more than 20 hours as a RA, he considered that fair because some of that work advanced his career while some of it benefited the lab more broadly. But what you're saying is that your 40+ hours of work per week should be paid as a FT employee. But, here's the thing, the FT employee might get their name on publications but wouldn't get to compile and submit them to receive a degree. Even if you don't want to see that as a difference, it most definitely is in the eyes of institutions and funders.

 

To the OP and anyone else: I was browsing the Chronicle and saw this article about a collective of Duke graduate students: http://chronicle.com/article/To-Make-Do-These-PhD/146851/. It's behind the paywall (sorry!) but hopefully your institution subscribes. The students (9 so far) are pooling their funds and anyone can take from the pool as needed. Maybe you could suggest something like this in your program, MorganStar, and see if there are any folks interested (even if you're not). It strikes me as an awesome idea with the potential to really help everyone. Even better, it could help even out the income inequality between graduate disciplines (so maybe there's some social sciences students but also some students in physics, biology, or chemistry earning higher stipends). I wish I'd known about this while I was a student!

 

MorganStar, don't let other people's jealousy keep you from applying for things. I always apply for travel funding if I'm eligible because it really, really helps with conference attendance. Getting those travel grants allowed me to attend and present at more conferences, expand my network, and learn about related and interesting areas of research. Plus, the line on your CV looks good!