The Ph.D. Pay Gap

[GeoDUDE!]

PhD positions in other countries are treated and regulated like industry jobs - thats the way it should be in the US, that is all I am arguing for. People should get paid parental leave (yes, male and female, raising a child dual responsibility), and vacations. While its a choice to go to graduate school, it is also somewhat ridiculous that the opportunity cost is so much. 

[rising_star]

OTOH, there are more liberal arts Ph.Ds than they need.  So the "smart" thing to do would be to raise barriers of entry.  

 

It depends on how you define "need". In the sense that many PhD students in the liberal arts teach general education courses, then they might be needed. I mean, they could be replaced with adjuncts or full-time faculty but, that also might not happen. I know that in my PhD program it was considered cheaper or equivalent in cost to hire a PhD student to teach a class rather than an adjunct (we had relatively high adjunct pay whereas the university subsidized some of the grad student stipend). At most large universities, if you got rid of half the liberal arts PhDs, there'd be a lot fewer people around to teach English 101, introductory history courses, and other gen ed courses. Moving beyond the liberal arts, I'm assuming you'd have to find lab TAs somewhere for all those intro chem/bio/physics/math classes that get taught...

 

Anyway, I'm glad this has sparked an interesting discussion. I think the issue of children is separate from the issue that this article focuses on. The wage gap between disciplines (and sometimes within disciplines) can be a real problem for graduate students. Is there any reason that a political science PhD student makes $18K, an English PhD student makes $14K, and a biology PhD student makes $25K? 

[ProfLorax]

Rising_star, back to your original questions, I didn't consider stipend so much as the entire package. Some financial aspects were unique to my situation: for example, in the DMV area, my spouse could transfer offices and keep his job and salary. Others, though, definitely helped: good health care plans (including family plans), paid parental leave, and travel funding. Those financial benefits helped. 

 

As to your second question, I would support a movement to ensure that grad students are paid fairly. Our standard stipend is $7,000 below the poverty line for our area (which is an expensive area). I think at the bare minimum, universities should ensure their students are living at or above the poverty line (and the leftist that I am, I'd suggest that ALL university workers make at or above the poverty line). 

 

As for the dependency stipend: y'all can chill. That was an offhand suggestion by TakeruK; there is no mention of such a policy in the article, nor is any national movement to do so. 

[ProfLorax]

Also, we need to stop talking about having children as an individual choice or sacrifice. Sure, it is, but the wellbeing of children is also a collective community concern. We pay for subsidized preschool, public education, and Pell Grants through our taxes, even if we don't have kids, because of the belief that our society will be better off if our next generation is an educated one. We also pay for free meals at school and health care for children through taxes because of the belief that society will be better off if our next generation has been fed and cared for. The children today become the voters, doctors, teachers, social workers, and politicians of tomorrow, so yes, we should all care about the wellbeing of children. And sometimes that means supporting parents. Like I said before, no one is actually arguing for an increased stipend for parents. But I would love to see heavily subsidized childcare and better paid family leave. And that family leave should be for everyone, because it's disgusting that a grad student can get diagnosed with cancer and not continue to receive her stipend or her benefits. Or that a grad student caring for a sick parent can't take time off without hurting his time-to-degree. But most importantly, we grad students should be supporting each other, fighting for each other's needs and concerns because administrations sure won't.

[ballwera]

This is something that's been talked about on here before but, this piece brings numbers and stories to the issue by focusing on the University of Houston: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1012-the-ph-d-pay-gap

 

My favorite part might be this from a business PhD student with $33,000 per year in stipend support. 

 

I have to say I'm having trouble feeling sorry for her. 

 

That said, this is very much a real issue for graduate students. So, I'm curious. Did/do you consider how much of a stipend is offered when you decide where to apply? (I'm assuming people consider it when deciding where to enroll but I'm wondering if it's something that gets considered before then.) Would you support a movement on your campus to raise the pay university-wide for graduate students? 

 

I chose not to apply to schools in California/Boston/New York, because I didn't feel the stipend would be enough for a married couple to live in these areas. Other that, no I didn't consider it at all during my applications. It did however become one of the deciding factors in the program that I ultimately chose. 

[_kita]

I'm just looking for a minimum amount to live with my significant other. We're looking at houses for rent, which actually drop costs from about 1200/mth to maybe 850/mth, and with my car payment being paid off at *hopefully* the time that I'm starting a doctoral program, I'd be quite happy with a $20,000 stipend with some wiggle room even. 

 

However, we've also agreed that neither one of us wants to start a family & marriage until I can contribute equally (both time commitment and fiscally). If that happens in the program, cool; however, neither of us expect it. 

[Cheshire_Cat]

It depends on how you define "need". In the sense that many PhD students in the liberal arts teach general education courses, then they might be needed. I mean, they could be replaced with adjuncts or full-time faculty but, that also might not happen. I know that in my PhD program it was considered cheaper or equivalent in cost to hire a PhD student to teach a class rather than an adjunct (we had relatively high adjunct pay whereas the university subsidized some of the grad student stipend). At most large universities, if you got rid of half the liberal arts PhDs, there'd be a lot fewer people around to teach English 101, introductory history courses, and other gen ed courses. Moving beyond the liberal arts, I'm assuming you'd have to find lab TAs somewhere for all those intro chem/bio/physics/math classes that get taught...

 

Anyway, I'm glad this has sparked an interesting discussion. I think the issue of children is separate from the issue that this article focuses on. The wage gap between disciplines (and sometimes within disciplines) can be a real problem for graduate students. Is there any reason that a political science PhD student makes $18K, an English PhD student makes $14K, and a biology PhD student makes $25K? 

What I mean by "need" is that the supply outweighs the demand.  You have a lot of people with liberal arts Ph.Ds who are unable to find jobs.  TAs are taking up jobs that better qualified people could have, if their were not as many.

 

The pay gap will continue throughout your career.  It's just economics. I chose accounting, while my brother chose marketing, and now I make more than him.  Admittedly, if he really put his mind to it, his earning potential is 10x more than mine.  My friend chose teaching.  You could have chosen business instead of English.  When you made the decision of your discipline, you agreed to making less than some others in other disciplines.  I decided that I didn't want to go through the hell of studying for the GMAT again, so I'm going to a lower ranked school than I possibly could go to if I had studied and reapplied. That decision will affect my earning potential.  There is a reason for the difference in earnings, and it is a lot of math.  There isn't a way to "fix" the pay gap without creating a lot of other issues.

[victorydance]

It depends on how you define "need". In the sense that many PhD students in the liberal arts teach general education courses, then they might be needed. I mean, they could be replaced with adjuncts or full-time faculty but, that also might not happen. I know that in my PhD program it was considered cheaper or equivalent in cost to hire a PhD student to teach a class rather than an adjunct (we had relatively high adjunct pay whereas the university subsidized some of the grad student stipend). At most large universities, if you got rid of half the liberal arts PhDs, there'd be a lot fewer people around to teach English 101, introductory history courses, and other gen ed courses. Moving beyond the liberal arts, I'm assuming you'd have to find lab TAs somewhere for all those intro chem/bio/physics/math classes that get taught...

 

Anyway, I'm glad this has sparked an interesting discussion. I think the issue of children is separate from the issue that this article focuses on. The wage gap between disciplines (and sometimes within disciplines) can be a real problem for graduate students. Is there any reason that a political science PhD student makes $18K, an English PhD student makes $14K, and a biology PhD student makes $25K? 

 

I think one of the reasons is diversity of skills. It's similar to the marketplace where if you have more skills at your disposal, and the more technical they are, the higher you are likely to be compensated.

 

Simplified way of looking at it: someone who is able to do literature reviews and analysis (English) is less skilled than someone who is able to do the same things + statistical/quantitative analysis (political science) is less skilled than someone who is able to do the same thing + design experiments and be a lab technician (hard science). 

 

Another reason is the demand of the discipline. Using English vs. political science as an example...political science as a field is more in demand as a field, which means that political science departments get better funding from universities, hire more professors, bring in more research grants, and often bring in more tuition because of more students wanting to study it. It then goes without saying that these departments are going to have a lot more fluidity to pay graduate students more because of their resources than say an English department. Even further, natural science departments often have large labs that bring in a lot of money, making it easier for those departments to pay grad students more in order to get more competitive students to enter the program. 

 

Most top political science programs pay their students ~$25K in base stipends. Whereas chemistry students of the same universities often bring in $30K+. I don't have a problem with this personally because I understand the greater learning curve and time that goes into learning the skills required to work in a lab and conduct experiments. 

 

Now, that doesn't mean any political science or natural science major can come in and do an English person's work easily. But I do recognize that there is a whole slew of technical skill sets that the former two have to learn to be successful in their field while the English major doesn't. 

[victorydance]

But most importantly, we grad students should be supporting each other, fighting for each other's needs and concerns because administrations sure won't.

 

I don't agree. I have my needs met and I don't personally care about other people's needs for the most part. The argument that students should have some kind of automatic collective sense of connection or community is absurd to me.  

[dr. t]

Simplified way of looking at it: someone who is able to do literature reviews and analysis (English) is less skilled than someone who is able to do the same things + statistical/quantitative analysis (political science) is less skilled than someone who is able to do the same thing + design experiments and be a lab technician (hard science)... Most top political science programs pay their students ~$25K in base stipends. Whereas chemistry students of the same universities often bring in $30K+. I don't have a problem with this personally because I understand the greater learning curve and time that goes into learning the skills required to work in a lab and conduct experiments. 

 

As someone who has had experience in both STEM and the Humanities, you're buying wholesale into a pernicious myth. The skill sets are different; there is no "greater learning curve", one discipline is not "less skilled" than another. It was not somehow easier for me to master Latin than it was for me to understand differential equations.

Edited May 26, 2015 by telkanuru

[dr. t]

I don't personally care about other people's needs for the most part. 

 

Yeah, you've made that abundantly clear.

[victorydance]

As someone who has had experience in both STEM and the Humanities, you're buying wholesale into a pernicious myth. The skill sets are different; there is no "greater learning curve", one discipline is not "less skilled" than another. It was not somehow easier for me to master Latin than it was for me to understand differential equations.

 

I am aware that the skills sets are different, and that for example English majors are better at certain things that political science majors are. However, is there really that much different in the general skills sets between an English major and a political science major BESIDES the additional quantitative and statistical skills the latter possesses? I don't really think so. 

[dr. t]

I don't really think so. 

 

 

That doesn't stop you from being wrong.

 

What exactly do you think those English grad students are doing during their 8-year programs? 

Edited May 26, 2015 by telkanuru

[victorydance]

telkanuru if you want to actually debate this then go ahead. Or else you can continue to just snip little statements and troll. I don't really care.

[dr. t]

telkanuru if you want to actually debate this then go ahead. Or else you can continue to just snip little statements and troll. I don't really care.

 

I don't know how to debate this. There is literally nothing I can say except that you're wrong and you need to gain some experience outside of what you already "know".

[victorydance]

I don't know how to debate this. There is literally nothing I can say except that you're wrong and you need to gain some experience outside of what you already "know".

 

Wow, bullet proof argument there.

 

Then please, enlighten us all why there exists such a large pay gap between graduate students in different disciplines? Is it only because of the demand of the field? Is it something else?

 

I am trying to provide a good discussion. You are doing nothing but making snide and condescending remarks. 

[rising_star]

Simplified way of looking at it: someone who is able to do literature reviews and analysis (English) is less skilled than someone who is able to do the same things + statistical/quantitative analysis (political science) is less skilled than someone who is able to do the same thing + design experiments and be a lab technician (hard science). 

...

Now, that doesn't mean any political science or natural science major can come in and do an English person's work easily. But I do recognize that there is a whole slew of technical skill sets that the former two have to learn to be successful in their field while the English major doesn't. 

 

It seems like what you're saying is that anyone can do what people in English do. If that's the case, then why aren't the political science, chemistry, biology, and sociology grad students and faculty teaching the first year writing courses? I mean, if the English folks are less skilled, why not get someone with more skills to teach them the same thing?

 

Note also, victorydance, that in the process of writing this you've assumed that everyone in the hard sciences designs experiments, can be a lab technician, and has strong statistical and quantitative skills, which is not universally the case. You've also assumed that all political science students do statistical and quantitative analysis, which again is not the case. And somehow magically they're all good writers (at least as good, if not better than the English students) without needing any training in that, at least according to what you say. So now I'm curious, what universities have you been at where all of these things are universally true? Your experiences/assumptions don't match my experiences at any of the now 5 universities I've been at, so I'm trying to understand where these departments full of "hard" scientists that can write well, are quantitative whizzes, and can design experiments are, especially ones that don't have any exceptions to this.

 

(Note: just trying to understand victorydance's logic here, not at all saying I believe this is true.)

[victorydance]

It seems like what you're saying is that anyone can do what people in English do. If that's the case, then why aren't the political science, chemistry, biology, and sociology grad students and faculty teaching the first year writing courses? I mean, if the English folks are less skilled, why not get someone with more skills to teach them the same thing?

 

"Now, that doesn't mean any political science or natural science major can come in and do an English person's work easily." I am pretty sure I made myself quite clear with this statement.

 

 

Note also, victorydance, that in the process of writing this you've assumed that everyone in the hard sciences designs experiments, can be a lab technician, and has strong statistical and quantitative skills, which is not universally the case. You've also assumed that all political science students do statistical and quantitative analysis, which again is not the case. And somehow magically they're all good writers (at least as good, if not better than the English students) without needing any training in that, at least according to what you say. So now I'm curious, what universities have you been at where all of these things are universally true? Your experiences/assumptions don't match my experiences at any of the now 5 universities I've been at, so I'm trying to understand where these departments full of "hard" scientists that can write well, are quantitative whizzes, and can design experiments are, especially ones that don't have any exceptions to this.

 

(Note: just trying to understand victorydance's logic here, not at all saying I believe this is true.)

 

I never said it was a zero-sum equation. It was a generalization. Of course not all majors of X fields are good at all the things you listed. However that doesn't mean that most hard science majors can't design experiments or work in labs...considering they kind of need to do this to get a Ph.D. unless we are counting the ones who flunk out. And no, not all political science majors are great at quantitative methods, but they are also the ones that are getting shafted in the current job markets as well. 

 

In our current society quantitative and technical skills are valued. This isn't up for debate. I was trying to provide some reasoning why the pay gap may be different based on these skills that are in demand in comparison to those that are not. My intention wasn't to disparage certain disciplines. You go into the private market place and if you have more technical skills then you will have more opportunities and probably be paid more. This is not false. Why would academia be any different?

[TakeruK]

Regarding abuses: Yes, there will be a small number of people that abuse this kind of system and it will be at the expense of everyone else. But it will also help the majority of other people in need. To me, this is worth it. This is why I support socialized healthcare in Canada, even though some argue that people who don't take care of their own health (e.g. choose to smoke, eat unhealthily etc.) abuse the system and cause an extra burden on everyone else. But, socialized healthcare also helps a ton of other people--people that would have no access to care otherwise. It's worth it, in my opinion. But I understand that there are other ideologies that do not agree with this. I'm just stating mine.

 

Regarding the choice to have children (and other industries etc.): Choosing to raise a family is a choice. And I agree that there are already existing programs from the government that help low income, so the burden shouldn't just be 100% on the school. Someone brought up the point that other jobs don't do this. I'm not arguing that academia should do this because other jobs are doing it. I'm arguing that we know that our community is marginalizing and pushing people who can't handle the financial expense of being a grad student out of the field. Therefore, we should do something about it. If we value the diversity of ideas and backgrounds in academia, and if we don't want academia to only include people that choose career over children, then we should do something about it.

 

Anyway, I'm glad this has sparked an interesting discussion. I think the issue of children is separate from the issue that this article focuses on. The wage gap between disciplines (and sometimes within disciplines) can be a real problem for graduate students. Is there any reason that a political science PhD student makes $18K, an English PhD student makes $14K, and a biology PhD student makes $25K? 

 

Sorry to have derailed the topic, but I brought up children because of a tangent to this point you're making. I think it is a real problem that there is such a big wage gap between disciplines. My point was that when I work to improve stipends of graduate students, my goal is to target the bottom--I would prefer to make life significantly better for the bottom 20% than to incrementally improve everyone. Raise the minimum, rather than the average. Some student parents are in this category. At my MSc school, I worked on the TA union to improve conditions for students in the humanities and social sciences mostly. As a physics grad student, all of my needs were met and I had no problems with how my department treated us. But, the drive and need for unionization came from the humanities and social sciences side, and we worked to improve conditions for those who needed it the most. We used the way STEM departments were treating their students as the model to what to negotiate for in our collective bargaining agreement, so that everyone can be treated better.

 

For example, the University provided the union with X dollars per year as health benefits to distribute as we see fit. We had a choice between writing every student a small cheque, or creating an "emergency medical fund" that students can borrow or be awarded money from, based on need. We went with the latter, because it would help those who needed it most.

 

I don't agree. I have my needs met and I don't personally care about other people's needs for the most part. The argument that students should have some kind of automatic collective sense of connection or community is absurd to me.  

 

Obviously we disagree here and I don't think anything we say will change each other's mind. But just to be clear, I am not saying that students should have an automatic collective sense of community. I personally have a very strong sense of community and I think all workers in any field would benefit from collective action. Personally, I think the individual is better off when the community is better off. But this isn't automatic, this is something I decided over time and something I work to convince people about, when they are interested in listening. 

[dr. t]

Wow, bullet proof argument there.

 

Then please, enlighten us all why there exists such a large pay gap between graduate students in different disciplines? Is it only because of the demand of the field? Is it something else?

 

I am trying to provide a good discussion. You are doing nothing but making snide and condescending remarks. 

 

It is a curious thing, how you can state that you don't care about others, bash an entire discipline (and, by extension, several others) in which you have no experience or knowledge, and then accuse me of being snide and condescending. Hilarious.

 

Why would it be because of demand in the field? Are the acceptance rates of top graduate programs in the sciences much higher than those in the humanities? Is there a desperate, unmet need for graduate lab assistants driving up salaries? Not as far as I can see.

 

The difference in pay is the source of the funding for the stipends.

[Cheshire_Cat]

I think we need to make a distinction between skill, inherent value of an occupation, and market value of an occupation.  My BFF is English, and she is just as brilliant as I am, but the market value for someone who is in English is less than the market value for an accountant.  Does that mean the person or job is really less valuable?  No.  I'd say that the most important job in the world is being a parent, and you get paid diddly squat for that.

 

A trash mans job is way more important than mine, but he gets paid less because there are more people who can do his job than can do mine.  He is less "skilled" than I am.

 

An artist may be incredibly skilled at art, but since a lot of people don't pay for art, they don't make as much.  IMO, art adds a lot more inherent value to the world than my job, but it doesn't add value in the marketplace.

But really, accountants get paid as much as they do partially because no one else wants to stare at a spreadsheet all day.  It is boring.  The people who do accounting value the money it will provide over the other things they could be doing.  You have to pay them more money than you have to pay a teacher because the job is less internally fulfilling.
 

Really, skill and need, as well as a lot of other factors play into how much you get paid.  But it all comes down to how much the market thinks the service you provide is worth.  Not how much you are worth as a person, or the inherent value of what you do.

[victorydance]

It is a curious thing, how you can state that you don't care about others, bash an entire discipline (and, by extension, several others) in which you have no experience or knowledge, and then accuse me of being snide and condescending. Hilarious.

 

Why would it be because of demand in the field? Are the acceptance rates of top graduate programs in the sciences much higher than those in the humanities? Is there a desperate, unmet need for graduate lab assistants driving up salaries? Not as far as I can see.

 

The difference in pay is the source of the funding for the stipends.

 

Saying things like this is condescending: "There is literally nothing I can say except that you're wrong and you need to gain some experience outside of what you already "know".

 

You have literally no idea what experience I have. None. For the record, I have taken multiple natural science courses (I once considered being a chemistry major for what it is worth) and am currently enrolled in an interdisciplinary program. I have plenty of experience with other disciplines, including the discipline you study, history. 

 

How is stating facts like society values quantitative and technical skills and certain disciplines don't have these bashing a discipline exactly?

 

Let's look at the facts:

 

Certain disciplines are getting downsized and are not hiring new academics at high rates. Certain disciplines are completely reliant on public funding for grants. Can you guess which disciplines these are?

 

Certain disciplines pay their academics much higher salaries and certain disciplines have a more seamless transition to the private workforce. Can you guess which disciplines these are?

 

For the record, I don't think any discipline is better than the other. But the simple matter is society as a whole values certain disciplines above others, and increasingly these disciplines are the ones that use technical and quantitative methods as a central component of their approach.

 

When society values something, the people involved in that something get compensated more than people involved in something that is less valued. Society has a downward pressure on academia. By demand for their skills, and students trained in these skills, and the use of funding to supply these chains of professionalization. So in other words, something that is valued by society is going to get more benefits in way of money to entice people to study and/or work on these things. 

 

This is a major reason why there is a pay gap between disciplines, but perhaps not the only reason. 

[rising_star]

At my MSc school, I worked on the TA union to improve conditions for students in the humanities and social sciences mostly. As a physics grad student, all of my needs were met and I had no problems with how my department treated us. But, the drive and need for unionization came from the humanities and social sciences side, and we worked to improve conditions for those who needed it the most. We used the way STEM departments were treating their students as the model to what to negotiate for in our collective bargaining agreement, so that everyone can be treated better. 

 

Yea, we tried to do something like this at my PhD University but the students in STEM fields basically said, "We've got ours. Good luck with that!" That was decidedly unhelpful to everyone else. But, we also weren't unionized. When students from the humanities and social sciences started to organize around the pay gap issue (as well as other things that were actually lowering our pay, like raising fees and reducing our health insurance coverage), there were subtle threats of having one's TA/RA contract terminated. Legally, the university could do that because we were in a "right-to-work" state where the employer can discontinue your employment at will, without even needing to show cause. My point is that the kind of solidarity you're talking about, TakeruK, is rare (as victorydance's attitude clearly demonstrates). The idea that someone studying the humanities doesn't need/deserve to make minimum wage is absurd and it doesn't help when those earning more in the STEM fields turn a blind eye to the issue.

[victorydance]

Really, skill and need, as well as a lot of other factors play into how much you get paid.  But it all comes down to how much the market thinks the service you provide is worth.  Not how much you are worth as a person, or the inherent value of what you do.

 

I completely agree with this and I didn't think I needed to make this distinction (thought it would be obvious to others, but I guess not).

[rising_star]

Let's look at the facts:

 

Certain disciplines are getting downsized and are not hiring new academics at high rates. Certain disciplines are completely reliant on public funding for grants. Can you guess which disciplines these are?

I'll answer these in order, based on what came to my mind first.

1) Downsized = philosophy, foreign languages, music, art, literature, history, sociology, anthropology. Some of this is due to a transition to more interdisciplinary programs (like Global Studies, Cultural Studies, regional studies) and some is due to a systematic disinvestment in the humanities because of a (I believe mistaken) view that studying the humanities contributes nothing to society.

2) Disciplines reliant on public funding for grants: I assume you mean things like NEH, NIH, NSF, DoD, NOAA, Dept of Energy, etc. So, that would actually include quite a few STEM disciplines, like biology, public health, chemistry, physics, etc. 

From your question at the end, it seems like you're trying to say that the humanities rely entirely on the public for grants. I'm not saying they don't (and far less grant money is available in those disciplines) but many disciplines in the US rely heavily on public funding for grants. Do you have any statistics that show otherwise? Are physics/chemistry/biology/political science departments primarily getting their grants from industry and not using grants from public sources to fund their research or graduate students?