If you don’t follow Karen Kelsky of The Professor Is In, she’s doing an amazing thing: collecting the information on the debt thousands of PhDs have accumulated in the process of getting that degree.
I know I had a lot of shame wrapped up in the debt I accumulated. I was “fully funded,” but I knew exactly one person who was able to get by on the stipends we earned. That she was able to do it convinced me I should be able to do it, but I wasn’t.
We earned $800 a month. I lived in a college town that is miles cheaper than any city, but even though I took on managing the apartment building I lived in (free rent!), it wasn’t enough. I had two surgeries during grad school. I had ongoing health care costs. Food allergies meant the cheap stuff wasn’t going to sustain me. Books cost $500 a semester. Maintaining any kind of mental health meant leaving the house and doing things with friends. My car broke down. I had to buy clothes to bolster my own authority, being a short, young and young-looking woman. $800 a month just didn’t cut it.
I wasn’t able to make it work, and I was incredibly privileged. I got out of undergrad debt free, because my parents had saved for college and because I did undergrad in three years to maximize that money. (My undergrad had a set fee for “full time,” so 15 credits cost the same as 21.) I was fortunate to be able to find lots of flexible work during undergrad to pay my bills. I got full funding for my graduate program. I owned my car (thanks to my father). My dad helped me fund the job search, and my mom bought me suits. I knew, at the end of the day, that my parents could and would help if things went terribly awry.
Short of a major trust fund, that’s a pretty good setup. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough before the market got so unbelievably terrible, when everyone I knew got some kind of full-time, TT job, even if it wasn’t the one they wanted most. It wasn’t enough even when getting a job wasn’t a dream.
We talk sometimes about academic salaries and how abysmal they are in certain fields. They’re worse, much worse, for adjuncts. But we don’t talk about the debt it takes to even get that far, because our culture has so much money shame.
Kelsky’s survey showed that it’s not uncommon for PhDs in the humanities and social sciences to end up with six-figure debts. When full rides don’t actually cover all the expenses and you’re not legally allowed to work elsewhere*, the system is set up to put you into debt.
You did not fail. You did not do it wrong. The model, that old apprenticeship model that assumes you’ll achieve master status with all of the perks thereof, was never true, and it’s even less true now.
*My assistantship contract actually spelled this out. I had a few colleagues do it anyway, and the department head looked the other way, but it was risky beyond simply limiting the amount of time you had available for school and sleep.
Yes, when I was considering PhD programs the “full funding” schools offered (which, hello! Was really a friggin PAYCHECK FOR TEACHING!) was a joke. Schools in San Diego and Santa Barbara expected me to get by on like $10K a year and didn’t blink an eye when explaining that to me. EVERYONE around me pushed me to do the PhD no matter what. NOT 1 OF THOSE PEOPLE would tell me how I could avoid financial devastation or be sure of a good job on the other side. Not 1. It was criminal. And requiring PhD students not to work? CRIMINAL! There’s absolutely no excuse for this wreckless and dangerous system! I hold schools completely responsible for the ruined lives they’re creating! And bollocks to the idea that “students should know what they’re getting in to.” (Words uttered while happily pocketing your student loan dollars.) How are you supposed to know what you’re getting in to WHEN NOBODY AROUND YOU IS TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT IT!!
The world OUTSIDE the academe can be pretty shaming about stipends, too. I’m a Canadian who went to grad school in the U.S. so I crossed the border a lot, and I remember several border officials accusing me of running some kind of scam because I was “making money” (my princely $14k stipend) while “not doing anything”. It’s funny how we internalize these criticisms; it got to a point where I really started to believe I was pulling some kind of fast one on the system, even though I had no car, no nice clothes, and very little to eat for 7 years.
Even though these are things that I’ve always told myself about my own graduate student debt, it’s so helpful to see it codified here. I had a similar situation with my undergraduate studies and had an assistantship with full tuition and stipend (also around $800/month)during the second year of my master’s, but I’ve still come out with a staggering amount of student debt. Now as I consider whether or not to embark on further graduate studies, the idea of being fundamentally poor (especially in a non-academic family that doesn’t understand why I can’t get a ‘real’ job) is weighing heavily on me. Thanks for sharing your own experiences so openly.
I’m not always convinced when I read these stories – yes…convinced that it is impossible to live on 10k/year, but not convinced of the rationale behind your thinking.
If you know that 10K won’t cut it – and you don’t have capacity to either earn more, or attend a school that supports you at a higher level, perhaps the choice is to attend a program that allows part time study? Work at teaching where you do get more than 10K a year…and pay tuition.
Going on for the highest degree of study can also be considered a luxury. Less than 1% have the degree, and it isn’t even clear if those pursuing the degree have completely decided that their career path requires the additional credential.
Sage, I’m not arguing that it was smart to make this choice, or that I would make the same choice now. I was 19 when I applied to graduate school, and I certainly wasn’t figuring out how the logistics would work five years down the road. I was told I should go to graduate school by everyone around me, so voila. I went. There might have been other options, but all I knew is I should only take an offer that came with support, which I did.
In 1993, no one was talking about this. No one was talking about how much debt it would take to make it work, because the assumption was that student loans were good debt, and you’d get that tenure-track position and pay them off. By the time I graduated, it was still a somewhat reasonable proposition, because most people were still getting jobs, even if the pay wasn’t quite up to “paying down debt” standards. At this point, however, when the cost has skyrocketed and the payoff has become so very risky, it’s a much worse proposition yet.
If by having these conversations out loud, we help people who are considering graduate school now make better choices — or at least know what they’re in for? That’s a win. If we can help dispel the individualized shame by looking at the structural pressures and situations that helped create all of this debt? That’s a win.
I started grad school at about the same time (early 90s). A relatively large city. Our stipend was 1000 a month. I saved enough to take a trip to Australia, bought a car–new, and had more money than I’d ever had. The 1000 was easy to live on. I ended up with a bit of debt because we weren’t paid in the summer. After the first year, I went home, so no debt. The next two years, I had to stay and work, so I incurred some debt to live over the summer (about a thousand per month I wasn’t getting paid for those couple of years). It was pretty easily paid off, though, once I got out and into a postdoc that paid. I can’t imagine how anyone could get in that much debt as a grad student. You don’t have time to spend money. Sorry. I was given the advice by an undergrad prof: grad school is worth doing, but NOT if you have to pay for it, so there was no way I was going to shell out real money.