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Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

I have zero sympathy for universities that work grad students to the bone, pay them a mere $25k stipend, and take >50% grant money for “overhead”.

The academia model is deeply, profoundly broken.

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For what it’s worth, I remember well that I thought a 40k stipend in 2017 was an AMAZING opportunity, and was very excited to pursue a PhD for that reason (granted 25k today is significantly less). My requirements are different now, but at the time that was a great opportunity for me. Don’t knock the low-pay-opportunities too too hard, the most desperate people really want that offer, and it is still be a better stepping stone than a 0k stipend. Of course I’d also like if the offer was better.

> the most desperate people really want that offer

I don't think it's great the PhD programs disproportionately attract desperate talent willing to work for poverty wages.

I'm not saying the labs need to pay crazy BigTech wages. But the status quo is downright abusive. And nevermind all the perverse incentives around publishing.

Unfortunately in many areas its the only way to have a viable career, even if you aren't planning on going in academia (very few can) a PhD is a definite plus / nearly required in many industries.

That's like half of what I got hired for in the Tampa area (notoriously low pay) in 2011 with like 6 months of SQL experience and no college degree.

That's really depressing to be honest.

lol welcome to mechanical engineering. At the time, I think a good starting pay for a mechanical engineer was ~80k total. Getting half of that while pursuing a PhD seemed like a great deal.

It's almost as expensive to hire a PhD student as a postdoc.

A postdoc makes something close to the median wage. While not great, it's enough that people in general are expected to buy homes and start families with incomes like that. You can't reasonably expect more from an early career job that doesn't produce anything with a direct monetary value.

A PhD student earns much less, because the rest is used to cover tuition. And that is the root issue. Neither the federal government nor the states pay universities to train PhDs. The tuition must be paid by the student or from another source. The former does not make sense if you are not rich. If tuition is paid from grants, stipends will be low, as funding agencies don't want to pay more for trainees than qualified researchers. And if the PhD student works as a part-time teaching assistant, undergrads are effectively paying their tuition and stipend. Raising undergraduate tuition fees to pay PhD students more would not be very popular.

The tuition is bunk. You take maybe 1 or 2 years of classes in your phd and its not a full courseload at all. At least in stem. The rest of the time you sign up for a fake class that doesn’t meet anywhere so you qualify as a full time student for health insurance. Except the rub is they still charge your pi for that tuition for the class that doesn’t exist.

Tuition is also used to pay the supervisor. Direct one-on-one mentoring by a tenured / tenure-track professor is more expensive than classes, which are often taught by adjuncts.

Your advisor pays your tuition for this class that doesn’t exist.

Exactly right.

I had been lucky to supplement my phd stipend with big tech internships, but phd life was hell for most of my friends.

I have seen students living in slum-like conditions, 4-6 people sharing two bedroom apartments, having to get free canned food from the university, being forced to buy dangerous 20+ year old cars, and so on. These are the brightest minds of our generation.

It's sad to see so many of the comments coming out strongly in support of the status quo. Don't let your hatred for whoever the boogieman of the day is dictate your rational mind!

With a whole 8.6% of PhDs showing evidence of suicidal planning[1], I think the stats support this view. I wouldn't wish the mental turmoil I went through in grad school on anyone.

[1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39671991/#:~:text=Sixty%20st...

They could have more grad students if they reliably graduated them with a PhD in four years. I was once a lab tech for two grad students that had been there 11 and 13 years respectively.

Thats insane. In experimental science there is actually an incentive for the PI to keep the grad student around (assuming they're productive) because their training is a sunk cost but its very hard to justify more than 7-8 years.

Well it’s going to be totally destroyed now, so good job. Can’t have academia challenging the president with objective truth, can we? I’ll bet the new replacement funding, will have some sort of loyalty pledge to Trump strings attached.

Turns out I was right:

https://bsky.app/profile/luiszaman.bsky.social/post/3ljsazk6...

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