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Comment by fburnaby | Hacker News Reader

A very cool experiment, and I hope it goes well. But don't you get funded to do a Ph.D? Isn't this more expensive (i.e. no stipend) than actually going to a school?

I suppose it may be hard to interest a university in some research on open education...

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Some Ph.D.'s get funded, but even then the amount is laughable (try living off $20,000/yr in NYC).

It isn't particularly difficult to live off $20,000/yr while going to school in NYC. As long as you don't live in Manhattan, you should be fine.

Why does the going to school bit make it cheaper? Are you eating less? Requiring less shelter?

My point is that you don't need to live in NYC even if you attend school there, so the comment of "try living off $20,000/yr in NYC" is irrelevant.

He might as well have said "try living off $20,000/yr while living in NJ and spending $1000-1500/month on bling bling." Yes, you'll have a hard time making ends meet. So what?

There are locations in Manhattan that are cheaper than locations in NJ (I live in Harlem, for example). Besides that, the expense of NYC is not just housing. Food is more expensive. Transportation is more expensive. Forget about going to the movies ($12.50 for a ticket).

And yes, I have been making ends meet with part time jobs on the side. The issue that I have with funding is that a student going to a university in Indianapolis where everything is cheaper and an apartment can be had for 1/5th of the cost of the NYC area gets the same $20,000 from the NIH. The government would probably get more efficient use of their research dollars if stipends were pegged to cost of living.

$20,000/yr is less than I get from the CSE program at Michigan. Surely you're exaggerating?

NIH predoctoral stipend for FY2009: $20,976 (source: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-07...)

Most other biomedical/chem funding levels are pegged to this level (since the NIH actually has odd restrictions on paying students more than the stipend level).

My stipend is only $17000. That's up from when I started four years ago at $13500. That covers rent and food, but obviously not books. Of course, Baltimore is far cheaper than New York, but it's still possible to live on.

What are you doing?

Political science (major: international relations, minor: comparative politics). I've talked to some of the students in hard sciences (e.g. bio) and they report stipends of $23000. It's probably just set department-by-department, and mine either happens to be poor or stingy.

That's exactly what I'm getting, and living on (though not in NY admittedly). Hardly the -$45,000 claimed by in the article, and either way, it's better than the $0 involved with doing the research independantly.

Except, I would imagine, doing the research independently leaves her more time for part-time work or even a full day job.

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