Income
2023 Survey Results: Graduate Student Income (guest post)
How do current graduate students in philosophy PhD programs perceive their financial situation?
In the following guest post, Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced) shares information about current graduate students and recent philosophy PhDs gleaned from the most recent Academic Philosophy Data & Analysis (APDA) survey.
(A version of this post first appeared at the APDA Blog.)
2023 Survey Results: Graduate Student Income
by Carolyn Dicey Jennings
The 2023 APDA Survey included the following new questions for current graduate students of philosophy PhD programs:
- How satisfied are you in your financial situation? [very unsatisfied, unsatisfied, neutral, satisfied, very satisfied]
- Please elaborate on your previous answer.
- Including all sources (e.g. stipends, employment, gifts) what is your approximate annual income? (Please provide in US dollars or name the currency you are using.)
- If you needed access to $1000 or its equivalent for emergency purposes, could you get it? [yes, no]
The mean annual income was $30,183 (n=288; median is $29,000). The mean satisfaction value was “neutral” (16% very unsatisfied, 24% unsatisfied, 19% neutral, 30% satisfied, 11% very satisfied). Satisfaction with one’s financial situation corresponded with income. Those who answered “very unsatisfied” had a mean income of $24,892, whereas those who answered “very satisfied” had a mean income of $38,086.
PhD graduates now in temporary academic jobs had a mean salary of $51,314 (n=149) and those in permanent academic jobs had a mean salary of $81,507 (n=364). The mean U.S. salary is $59,384.
Of those who also answered the question about emergency funds (n=319), 24% could not get access to $1000 or its equivalent for emergency purposes. In contrast, only 7% of graduates say they cannot get access to such funds (n=658). While the majority of Americans are reportedly in this position, comparative survey questions have asked specifically about access to cash or savings, not access to funds overall:
“All too many Americans continue to walk on thin ice, financially speaking, with fewer than half indicating they would pay an emergency expense of $1,000 or more from savings,” Bankrate Senior Economic Analyst Mark Hamrick says.
Here are some select comments from those graduate students who report being “very unsatisfied“:
The rent burden where I live can be anywhere from 70 percent to 95 percent of the total graduate student earnings. This is not acceptable.
I can barely afford to live as it is, and we have no pay whatever during the summer. It’s just not sustainable unless you are rich, have rich family, or are willing to rack up credit card debt or student loan debt.
I took out a lot of student loans. I did not finish my PhD in my five years of funding, my sixth year was competitive funding that I needed to apply for, and then it was necessary for me to find a full-time job before finishing my dissertation. I am in a lot of debt.
from those who report being “unsatisfied“:
The most significant drawback of pursuing graduate school in philosophy is the sacrifice to one’s finances. Setting aside the significant opportunity costs of obtaining a PhD, it is extremely difficult to build any savings in graduate school. This is particularly true in rent-burdened locations like San Diego, where cost of living has spiraled out of control–especially in the last three years. The response of universities has been, to my mind, inadequate. Adding to this the reality that it is no longer feasible to expect secure (if not well-paying) employment after graduate school, inadequate finances remain the primary reason why I would caution anyone from pursuing a PhD in Philosophy.
Our stipend is on the higher end for many programs yet I still struggle to afford daily necessities. It doesn’t help that we are often expected to pay up front for conference travel, etc. and wait to be reimbursed. I end up putting it on credit cards and having to pay interest which I can’t afford. We also need nicer clothes for professional events. I face casual disparaging comments about using an old laptop and students say things about how useful/helpful e.g. tablets are and suggest I get one as if I could afford to suddenly spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on new technology. Students pay annual fees to have personal websites. Socializing happens over drinks and expensive dinners so I miss out socially. We aren’t permitted to have outside employment yet I have a family to care for. I understand that many of these problems are common to many careers. But given philosophy’s interests in becoming more inclusive, it’s worth noting. Graduate students who come from wealthy backgrounds are at a significant advantage.
As a single person, my stipend allows me to make ends meet, living modestly. But 6+ years on a fixed income that is low (but just high enough to not qualify for benefits) produces a dearth of savings, right at the moment when you go on the market and are likely to need it most (i.e. to tide you over if you don’t get a reasonable job offer).
from those who are “neutral“:
I would feel serious financial stress if I didn’t have a partner outside if academia. Just a few thousand dollars more per year would make a huge diffence to our grad student’s financial security.
I am able to subsist with careful planning and supplementary summer work. I teach a lot for what I am paid and wish I could be compensated more. I am very aware that this arrangement has taken time away from my ability to research and publish more.
It is enough to live on, but not enough to escape frequent financial anxiety.
from those who report being “satisfied“:
The stipend is generous for a graduate program in this field, and the premiums for the insurance are included. However, if the stipend doesn’t increase with cost of living, it would be disastrous.
expensive cost of living in my city, but the stipend stretches fine for my needs. i also am coming from a place of financial privilege though (no undergrad debt, no dependents, no chronic illness), and if that were not true, i think the stipend would be much less sustainable
I get enough money during the spring and fall semesters, but not enough during the summer.
and from those who report being “very satisfied“:
I am independently wealthy.
I am fortunate to receive a high stipend from my program and have been able to secure additional funding opportunities through my university (e.g. fellowships, research funds). Having entered graduate school with no student loan debt and the financial support of my spouse and our extended family, and living very frugally, I have been able to save some money during graduate school.
My financial situation is based on a lot of money saved before starting my PhD.
Discussion welcome.
The post 2023 Survey Results: Graduate Student Income (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.
Top Posts of 2023
Well, another year of blogging is over.
For me, it was a year of research themes. I spent the first half of 2023 debunking interest-rate orthodoxy. Then I spent the second half of the year studying the world’s billionaires. Here were the top 5 posts:
- Do High Interest Rates Reduce Inflation? A Test of Monetary Faith
- How Interest Rates Redistribute Income
- Interest Rates and Inflation: Knives Out
- Mapping the Ownership Network of Canada’s Billionaire Families
- Interest Rates and Unemployment: An Underwhelming Relation
A big thanks to my blog patrons, who’ve made it possible for me to do economic research outside of academia. If you’d like to support my work, you can do so here:
Thanks for reading,
Blair
The post Top Posts of 2023 appeared first on Economics from the Top Down.
Markets and Suppliers: HE and Energy
David Watson once wrote that the answer to the question as to whether universities were in the private or the public sector was “yes”.
He suggested that universities most resembled BAE Systems: a private company with a host of public contracts. Back in 2011, the Coalition white paper on HE opened by trumpeting “Higher education is a successful public-private partnership: Government funding and institutional autonomy.”
It was always the aim of second round of public sector reform (“Privatisation 2.0”) to create an education market that could be regulated like public utilities in the UK. And so the recent spate of collapses amongst energy “suppliers” prompted me to think about Watson’s comments through the lens of bankruptcy.
The measures taken by the regulator, Ofgem, reminded me that the government has pledged to take a similar approach to university “failure”.
Last summer’s announcement from the Department for Education of an HE “Restructuring Regime” (HERR) was badged as a Covid-related, “last resort” and outlined general principles covering possible government support pre-bankruptcy.
Consistent with earlier statements regarding its approach to the orderly exit of “unviable institutions”, the opening sections of the HERR made things clear:
§4 The Regime does not represent a taxpayer-funded bail-out of the individual organisations which make up the higher education sector. It is not a guarantee that no organisation will fail – though current students would be supported to complete their studies, either at that institution or another.
Providers approaching DfE for support will be considered on a case-by-case basis, to ensure that there is a sound economic case for government intervention, with loans to support restructuring coming from public funds as a last resort.
A precedent here can be seen in the “Task Force” established in 2012 when the government rescinded London Metropolitan’s right to sponsor international students.
There, a “clearing house” was even established to distribute around 2000 affected students to alternative courses at different providers.
HERR made the priorities clear for its case by case consideration of whether to lend to an institution that had exhausted all other options and ‘would otherwise exit the market’:
- the interests of students;
- value for money;
- maintenance of a strong science base;
- alignment with regional economies;
- support for “high quality courses aligned with economic and societal needs”.
Elaborating on the last of those, the 2020 document unsurprisingly picked out “STEM, nursing and teaching”. In sum, an institution in difficulties would be required to show that:
(i) it had a plan for future sustainability;
and (ii) that its collapse ‘would cause significant harm to the national or local economy or society’.
Alongside those points, it is worth recognising that it will be easier for the government to be sanguine about the disappearance of smaller institutions in areas that are otherwise well covered by universities (e.g. London).
Those that would be offered help will still find the “Regime” a deeply unpleasant experience: they mean it when the write about a “last resort”.
A bankrupt university will prove a bigger problem than an energy provider. But it is clear that the government will aim along those lines, such that a university bankruptcy will not be like a local authority issuing a “section 114”.
One should therefore reject any idea that financial deficits do not matter for universities.
Like private companies they face cash constraints. They can support an excess of expenditure over income so long as the cash outflow can be absorbed by cash reserves. When the latter are exhausted and debts cannot be settled as they fall due, then the institution will fall over without outside support.
Popular critiques of austerity and theories about governments and money might have misled people here.
Governments are not like households, but universities are, insofar as they need to generate more income than they spend.
As Watson noted, his answer about BAE Systems would make a lot of people uncomfortable. It’s even more discomforting to think that the government might view universities more like Igloo, Symbio, Enstroga et. al..
UPDATE – 7th October
By coincidence, DfE has just announced the closure of the “Regime” to “new applicants” with a deadline of 31 December 2021. They aim to move all applications “to a conclusion” by July 2022.
This decision reflects the fact that HERR was a pandemic measure, but, as I outlined above, the process and criteria set out there do give some indications as to how the department and regulatory bodies will approach bankruptcies in general.