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Acquiring Substantial Debt While in Grad School: How Much? How Common?

Brian Leiter

A PhD student at a top program writes:

I'm finishing up the 2nd year of a program that I expect to finish in 5 years total. I'm married; we've got a young child; and we'd like to have another in the next couple years. As an undergrad, I took out about $15,000 in student loans (which, as I understand things, is about average). But for each of my first 2 years of grad school, I've had to take out a HUGE loan. My wife is well educated and could work a full-time job, but if she were to do so, we'd have to pay for child care. Decent child care is absurdly expensive in this area (and extremely difficult to come by); and even if we could afford it, we'd rather avoid it (for personal reasons). So she works a part-time job, and stays at home during the days with our child. So it's looking like I'll have to take out yet another HUGE loan this summer (and, if conditions remain the same, the summer after that and the summer after that). And by the time I actually earn the Ph.D., we could be looking at student loan debt well into the six figures. I'm at a wonderful, highly-respected program, so I'm confident (relatively speaking) that I'll find a job. But then, from what I hear, my starting gross yearly income might be LESS THAN HALF of what I owe in student loans. I've always heard that student loan debt is "good debt," especially if you're in grad school, but that no longer makes me feel any better.

 

My questions are these: Is this anywhere close to normal (for other grad students similar situations – married, with children, etc.)?   Should I be thinking about possible new career paths, or will that sort of student loan debt be manageable as a philosopher? Any idea what sort of monthly payments I'll have to make?

 

I'd really, really appreciate hearing some advice, testimony, etc., from others around the discipline … and I imagine that there are many other grad students that could benefit from such a discussion.

 

Comments are open; it is OK to post anonymously on this thread, but please include a real e-mail address (it won't appear).   Please post only once, as comments may take awhile to appear.

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50 responses to “Acquiring Substantial Debt While in Grad School: How Much? How Common?”

  1. anonymous

    Of course, everyone's situation is different. But when I decided to attend grad school (I'm at a Leiter top-10 program), one restriction I placed on myself is that whatever offer I took, I had to be able to get through without taking on any (or much) more debt. I couldn't figure out how would make sense to come out of grad school owing 6 figures. (And now especially given the economic mess, who even knows what the future holds?) So since matriculating, I have actually taken on zero debt.

    Now, if I had a wife who planned on re-entering the workforce as a corporate lawyer once I graduated, or if I had a wealthy family to provide some sort of a safety net, maybe my assessment of the situation would be different.

    Anyway, that is my 2 cents.

    Reply
  2. Gualtiero Piccinini

    Taking loans while doing a Ph.D. in philosophy is generally a bad idea, especially if the loans are "HUGE". With a decent tenure track job, you might be able to make a large (~$1K) loan payments, although you may not qualify for a mortgate if you want to buy a house.

    But what if you don't get a tenure track job? What if you have to take a postdoc or an adjunct position? Pending more information about your independent wealth etc., I would strongly recommend avoiding any more loans. Better to tighten your belt.

    Hopefully your "wonderful, highly respected" program gives you enough support to pay for rent and basic living expenses. I don't see how it could be "wonderful" otherwise. Since your wife also works part time, why isn't that enough to at least get by without taking more loans? If you need some extra money during the summer, why not teach a class somewhere?

    Reply
  3. Michelle Rasssmussen

    I am a student in a top humanities PhD program. I decided to go to graduate school only if it meant coming out with no debt (I will finish this year owing nothing). I do not believe that student debt accumulated while getting a PhD in the humanities and social sciences is "good debt." Why? There are so few jobs and starting pay so small that coming out of a PhD program in philosophy with a six figure debt can mean financial ruin. Let me illustrate. My husband graduated from law school with $160,000 in debt. We pay about $12,500 for his loans each year. Given his salary (nearly 200K ) we have little problem paying this. But given the starting salary of an assistant professor (let's say 45K-70K), paying such debt would be nearly impossible when you figure in other expenses. As such, the debt would negatively amortize and just get bigger, while your credit score withers. This can be disasterous for long-term financial health.

    Simply put, I think that if you are lookint at a six figure debt coming out of a PhD program in philosophy (or any other humanity or social science), it's time to find another profession.

    Reply
  4. anon grad

    I took on no debt, but like the first poster that was a deal I made with myself. More importantly, it was aided largely by bigger life decisions. I had a working spouse for the last half, no children, and professional skills that allowed me to get well-paid outside work. (Not to mention the facts that both my wife and I have parents that funded our undergraduate educations, that our families are relatively stable and financially secure, and that I had worked and saved a bit before returning to school.) I’ll note, too, that I attended graduate and professional school where both were well-funded, even though that meant turning down programs that have better placement records. I viewed it as a tradeoff between being debt-free and having somewhat better job prospects. I am not sure whether that was the right choice overall, but it has been a relief to avoid loans. It eases some of the job market anxiety.

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    Hi-

    I followed the path you describe, taking on a large amount of debt in order to get through a good but poorly paying grad school. I now have a well-paying TT position and a spouse with an income and should be out of debt in a few years. So I have felt your concern and have come out the other end of the process relatively unscathed.

    Even though I have since pulled it off, so to speak, I think it was not very wise. Had I not landed a good job, I would likely have been in dire financial straits. What's more, that debt magnified the job market stresses greatly.

    Of course, I don't know how else I could have proceeded, given that my spouse was also a full-time student when I was in grad school and so was not able to support me (nor do I have a wealthy family to do so, as some of my grad school friends did). Nevertheless, I agree with Professor Piccinini.

    Reply
  6. fiscally irresponsible grad

    I'm curious about what people consider 'huge'. I'm (hopefully) a year or two away from finishing at a top ten program; during my time as a grad student (including my MA at an unranked program) I've taken out two loans of about 10k. (One was to pay off credit card debt, which I don't regret doing; the other, I regret.) These seem like huge loans to me, but compared to $160k of law school loans… Anyway, just wondering what others on this thread think is a large or huge amount of debt to take on.

    Reply
  7. Mark van Roojen

    About 15 years ago I came out of grad school with about $10K of student debt which was racked up to supplement a rather low stipend not unusual in that era. At that level even with a relatively low paying Nebraska starting salary, this debt was manageable. But my rates were also pretty low as I recall. This was during the market down turn at the beginning of the 90s and I surely was worried about not getting a job. Still at that level of debt I did not absolutely have to get a job in the field in order to be able to pay back that amount of debt.

    My thought is that some debt to supplement funding makes sense, but racking up huge debts to cover the whole cost of 5 years is probably more gamble than most people could safely take. Chances are that having to self-fund by borrowing all of what you need to go to grad school also correlates with having less chance of landing a job easily, at least right off the bat.

    Reply
  8. Iain Martel

    Some crude calculations:
    Assuming you make approx $15,000/year (after tax), and take out $20,000/year in loans. (I'm ignoring your wife's income here.) You are living on $35,000/year after tax.
    After graduation, you will owe $10,000/year in debt repayments. So, to maintain your current spending levels, you will need to earn $45,000/year, after tax. That is, unless your starting salary is over about $60,000, you will take an effective pay cut upon graduation, even if everything goes according to plan.
    Add to this the significant risk of 1. not finishing in 5 years, 2. not finishing at all, or 3. having to bounce around for several years in temporary jobs before landing that coveted tenure-track job or moving out of academia, and any significant amount of debt looks like a bad idea.
    My advice? More ramen, less debt!

    Reply
  9. K. Brown

    Note that recent legislation has created a program called Income Based Repayment. Under the IBR program, monthly student loan payments are capped at 15% of "discretionary income" (defined by one's Adjusted Gross Income from one's tax return, minus 150% of federal poverty rates assessed by family size, divided monthly). Additional principal or interest beyond that payment cap is dumped to the back-end of the loan, and then the remainder is automatically forgiven after 25 years. Furthermore, employment in the public sphere (e.g. at a public university) qualifies borrowers for forgiveness of the remainder of the loan after making 120 payments during public employment.

    More information available at these sites:
    http://www.finaid.org/loans/ibr.phtml
    http://www.ibrinfo.org/can.vp.html
    and in this document:
    http://www.law.georgetown.edu/news/releases/documents/Forgiveness_000.pdf

    Of course, complications and restrictions abound. One notable issue is that as it currently stands married couples have payments capped according to their joint income, but this situation is likely to change soon. Another notable issues is that as current tax law stands the forgiven amount counts as income, so the tax year when forgiveness occurs saddles the borrower with potentially a whopping tax bill. That bit of tax law needs to be changed before the first wave of forgiveness under this program occurs in 2017. Lawyers who wish to work in the public sphere or for non-profits are all over this legislation and pushing for fixes to these issues.

    Summary: there are programs readily available to help manage large student loan debt.

    Reply
  10. Patrick

    We had a child while we were both in the middle of grad school. We ended up having
    to borrow around $15k, and are still paying it off (7 years later) at about $150/month. We also both worked part-time jobs to avoid borrowing more. Job hunting season caused great stress; the risk
    of not finding any job is high, even from the excellent programs we were in. Our debt is
    certainly manageable on my Asst Prof salary. $1000/month would be problematic.

    Reply
  11. Christopher Pynes

    Let me give an example similar to the author.
    $15K for BA; $24K for MA: $0K for post MA to PhD (I lived on my funding).

    That 39K after 10 years or so of school and being an adjunct for two years ended up being just a tad over 50 grand of debt. Thanks to consolidation at a 3.275% rate, the payments are only $290 a month for 30 years. Given inflation, it is basically an interest free loan. If you think you are going to make more money and have the life you want as a philosopher, then it is a $300 a month tax until you retire. At least that is how I look at it now. And when I purchased a home, the bank considered that debt in a different light than credit card debt. Don't do CC debt!

    For me, that $50,000 was really worth it. But I did lots of things to make it work without borrowing while in grad school. I would say to suffer more now instead of suffering to pay it back later, but I would do it again. I would, however, try to do it for less.

    I hope that helps.

    Reply
  12. soon-to-be-grad

    So far, most of the posts have stated that one shouldn't go into any debt for graduate school. But if it is absolutely necessary to take out loans, what sort of debt would be reasonable/manageable? I will be entering an MA program in the fall, and I am going to have to take out loans to pay for it. My undergrad debt is already paid, and I am estimating that my grad debt (MA) will be under 30K. Assuming (hopefully) that I can get a funded offer for a PhD program afterwards without the need of any more loans, would 20-30K in loans be reasonable?

    Reply
  13. Alastair Norcross

    When I went to grad school in 1984 my stipend was equivalent to $11,500 today. Pretty low. I lived on cheap noodles and even cheaper beer. Old Milwaukee. (Let me tell you, if it doesn't get any better than that, bring on the hemlock.) Not only didn't I take on any debt, I didn't even have a credit card. Half-way through grad school I got married. My wife was also a graduate student, with an even smaller stipend than mine. Somehow, we managed without taking out any loans. Of course, we didn't have a child until I had graduated and she was ABD. I tell all my students that taking out loans to pay for philosophy graduate school is a really bad idea.

    Reply
  14. anon phd

    To the first question (what's normal for others in similar situation?):

    I'm finishing 3rd year PhD at a Leiter top-5. I've been married since my 2nd year undergrad, did a 2 year MA, and have a 2 yr old child. My wife was unable to work during the MA (immigration restrictions) and has worked part-time for the last 3 years. We have no debt. And, no, we haven't been getting money from our parents or anyone else. Before doing the MA, we had made some money on some property deals and used that to supplement my MA stipend for 2 years. Since starting the PhD, we've lived off my income and wife's part-time income. My (thus far) income consists of a 3 year external fellowship supplemented by one term of teaching each academic year.

    Reply
  15. mkp

    I deeply regret going into debt to complete graduate school, as the monthly payments (which pay off far more interest than capital) are not worth whatever tangible awards graduate school provided.

    My advice to you: Do whatever possible to minimize your expenses now. Don't take on any more debt if you can help it.

    My advice to generations to follow: Unless you just can't see yourself doing anything else with your life, unless not going to graduate school would grind your soul to powder, stay out. It isn't worth it, now less than ever.

    Reply
  16. Anonymous

    I graduated in 1993 with 16k in undergrad student loan debt.
    It felt like a lot, then. I then decided to go to a school where I would have to take out a lot more in order to attend. I was so excited to attend grad school and study political philosophy and the history of philosophy that I used loans to pay my way on top of the mere pittance this school threw my way. I now sit with about 165k in debt total. I got a tenure track job, I love what I do, and I live within my means. I wish I didn't have the debt, and worrying about the first four of my total ten years of grad school was actually a drain on my energy. However, I would do the same thing all over again given how amazing my experience was and where it has led me.

    Reply
  17. Another MA Student

    It seems that many of us who are looking at the prospect of debt are prospective MA students, since most PhD programs should fully fund (though I sympathize with the poster's case). So here's a tough choice I face now: is it better to go into significant debt at a Leiter MA program, or less debt (~20k less) at an unranked program?The Leiter school is 9 hours from my fiancee's program, which accounts for much of the extra cost. Is the extra $20k (and added personal burden) worth the cost for the ranked program? Or will attending the same unranked school as my fiancée be worth the savings?

    Reply
  18. Jason Brennan

    I didn't incur any debt from graduate school, but I finished grad school with $15000 in debt left over from my undergraduate studies. My monthly payment is $119. Not a problem at all. If I had $150,000 in debt, that would be a different story. I could afford the payments on my monthly salary, but it would be more difficult and I'd have to make sacrifices.

    Reply
  19. harry brighouse

    It's hard to know what is a reasonable amount of debt right now. Its true that nominal interest rates are spectacularly low, but real rates might be relatively high (we don't know what inflation is going to be like, but it is low, and may go negative before we're through this). Borrowing substantial sums to get a Philosophy PhD is not a good bet. 10k, 15K, may be fine, but substantial debt is not.It will haunt you in your early years of having a job.(3 figures is hard to believe — a better alternative might have been to take some time out from school to look after your children while your wife, who can earn, works full time; women do this all this time). Professional degrees are different; the expected premium is worth investing in. Not a philosophy degree.

    Reply
  20. MG

    I am facing a similar situation as Another MA Student. I'm just a week or so away from having to decide whether to attend a Leiter MA program for $20,000, or join an unranked (funded) PhD. I know the MA will open up opportunities for a much better PhD, but I'm wondering if the $20,000 extra (on top of the $32,000 I had to take out for undergrad) will be worth it. It seems like there's a strong bias toward it not being worth it here, but man, I really love philosophy.

    Reply
  21. MG

    I am facing a similar situation as Another MA Student. I'm just a week or so away from having to decide whether to attend a Leiter MA program for $20,000, or join an unranked (funded) PhD. I know the MA will open up opportunities for a much better PhD, but I'm wondering if the $20,000 extra (on top of the $32,000 I had to take out for undergrad) will be worth it. It seems like there's a strong bias toward it not being worth it here, but man, I really love philosophy. And if the extra $20,000 means the difference between going to an unranked PhD and not getting a job, and going to a better program and being able to teach (while making substantial payments), I'd count it worth the burden.

    Reply
  22. Another MA Student

    As an answer to soon-to-be-grad, I think your loan debt estimation is manageable. It all depends, of course, on your job prospects and how soon you want to be debt-free. Are you looking at working in research universities or CCs? Are you married or will you have supporting income during and after grad school? Look at an amortization calculator (there are many online) and see if you want to be paying debt off that long. Make sure you have a reasonable budget, too. We have a multi-tabbed Excel spreadsheet with our pre-grad budget, monthly in and after our MA programs, one for each year of our MA programs, and one for our total owed. Doing it this way is like writing a clear business plan and helps prepare you. It should help you clarify your debt needs and limits.

    Like I said, though, at first blush $30k seems reasonable. It's what I have in _undergrad_ debt, and I could get by now on my current pre-grad income (earned with just a philosophy BA). So even in a worst case scenario you should be fine. Besides, instrinsic worth is always undervalued in these discussions. I'd rather go into debt doing something I love and value than stay debt-free in my current job.

    Reply
  23. Anonymous

    If you can get out in five years and get a job, you will probably be able to manage taking out 10k a year in debt. I did it, and the monthly payments on the protracted plan (20 yrs) are about $500 a month. I am making the payments just fine. I plan to pay more when I get a raise.

    I think it is not wise to take out more than 10k a year. I think that the idea of going to graduate school without a standard-size financial assistance package (around $15k a year) would be a terrible idea. A friend of mine did it, and once he racked up 100k in debt (over seven years), he had to leave the profession due to an unforeseen tragedy. He is really regretting that, now.

    Reply
  24. Another MA Student

    MG, I would suggest attending the Leiter school over the unranked PhD. $20k is nothing in the long run. You love philosophy and want to do it professionally; ostensibly I assume you'd like to do research as well. And what is the likelihood you can do so after your unranked PhD program? I'd say from what I know that your chances are slim. This is to say nothing about you personally, but you should always plan that you will be the rule rather than the exception. And the rule seems to be that unranked programs lead to less worthy jobs. The ranked MA will open so many better opportunities for so little investment. Do it, I say.

    Out of curiousity, what MA program are you considering? With only 13 listed by Leiter, we may well be considering the same school.

    Reply
  25. Justin

    Alastair Norcross's story is not uncommon. Living simply and frugally during grad school is not only wise but, for many of us at least, easily doable.

    And if you don't like Old Milwaukee, try Natural Light.

    Reply
  26. anon

    I finished my PhD from a top 5 program in 2005 with $100,000 in student loans. I got a job at a top 30 school starting at $50,000 (now make about $60,000 a year). I pay about $500 a month on the student loans–it's doable. Fyi, pbr is the best cheap beer.

    Reply
  27. Nicole Wyatt

    What Alastair Norcross and Harry Brighouse say is correct. No matter how shiny or Leiter beloved the program is, taking on debt for graduate study in philosophy is a bad idea. It

    Like Brighouse my eye was caught by this line:

    "My wife is well educated and could work a full-time job, but if she were to do so, we'd have to pay for child care."

    Let just repeat what he says – many many women have completed PhDs while they did the majority of the child care and their partners worked full time. The correspondent may well have good reasons for not pursuing this solution; we don`t have enough detail to know. But a generic man in a similar situation would do well to consider it rather than take on 6-figures worth of debt. That kind of debt for graduate school in philosophy is a casino gamble, not a financial plan.

    Reply
  28. Brian Leiter

    I'm not quite sure what "Leiter beloved" means, but I assume it means highly ranked in a survey of 300 philosophers around the world. I should note that the PGR has, since forever, explicitly advised students against taking out loans to pay for PhD study in philosophy, period–and for the kinds of reasons noted above. Such advice is always defeasible. But the original correspondent, whose message I posted, now has the debt and so needs to think about how to proceed.

    Reply
  29. Karl S.

    If you'll allow me to dissent from the opinion of "anon" above, PBR is not the best cheap beer. Even the hipsters are over it.

    Support your local cheap brew. It will reduce your carbon footprint with every sip.

    Oh, and that seems like far too much debt to take on. Sorry.

    Reply
  30. David

    No one should incur debt in the humanities. At both the MA and PhD level, there should be assistantship and fellowship opportunities. Programs that pretend to prepare one for professional work (or for further study leading to professional work) in the academic world MUST provide tuition, health insurance, and a stipend enough for a studio apartment and humble food for the nine months of the school year, at minimum. Failure to meet that standard is unethical, in my opinion. The accruing of debt to attend an unethical program is a clear error. Programs that would offer such support, but "don't have the resources" are programs that don't have the resources to offer a graduate degree, in my opinion, and should see those programs terminated.

    Debt to accrue debt to make possible other life choices (stay-at-home parenting) is a decision outside the scope of the above ethical minimums. The decision-making process (it seems to me) would be no different for the grad student than for the lawyer, secretary, the janitor, or the fry cook.

    Reply
  31. Gualtiero Piccinini

    A comment for the prospective MA students. It's hard to give advice without more information. But other things being equal, I would advise going to the school that requires less debt, even if it's ranked somewhat lower on the PGR. Even if you go to an unranked Ph.D. program (over a ranked MA program), you can try to move to a better Ph.D. program in a year or two with the help of your new teachers (assuming they think you are good enough). Your chances of moving up are likely to be the same as if you go to a PGR ranked MA program. The situation is analogous when you choose between MA programs. The most important factors determining your chances of getting into a good Ph.D. programs are the usual ones (quality of writing sample, strength of letters of recommendation, GRE scores), not the rank of your MA program.

    Reply
  32. Original correspondent

    I should say, since I didn't make it clear in my original description of the situation, that the program is doing everything I can reasonably expect it to do. My tuition has been waived; my health insurance is covered (though it would cost a fortune to add my wife and child to the plan); and I make a stipend that – were I neither a husband nor a father – would be enough for me to avoid having to take out any loans. The problem is not a lack of funding on the part of the program. The problem is that the funding is nowhere near enough to support a whole family (and understandably so).

    I've heard the "don't go to grad school if you'll have to go into debt" advice before, but it always struck me as more of an ideal than a rule. After all, for some of us, the choice is this: either (a) go into debt, but have a fulfilling career, or (b) avoid debt, and be unfulfilled. And it's at least not obvious to me that (b) is really the better of the two choices.

    For the record, I really appreciate everyone's feedback. And thank you, Professor Leiter, for opening this up for discussion.

    Reply
  33. reader

    A strategy- This may have alreday been mentioned. If so, I apologize. If you have any unsubsidized loans (i.e., loans that are growing will you are stuioll in school) then one way to ease the burden is to borrow subsidized loans to payoff the unsubsidized ones. This is possible- you can actually instruct the direct loan people to apply payment to the unsubsidized loans first. You just have to let them know taht you want to do this. I had about 20,000 in unsubsidized loans from an MA that were gatheirng interest as I work on the Phd. I didnt need any money since teh PhD funding is okay, but I took out the maximum amount of subsidized loans available per year (@$8,500)and I then used this to immediately payoff a portion of my unsubsidized loans. It has helped stop the bleeding, though the wound itself is still quite large. But, at least I won't bleed out before I finish! 😉

    Reply
  34. DM

    I actually took out six figures of loans during grad school, and did it intentionally. Call me crazy, but I borrowed some $70k for school and living expenses over 7 years, plus $30k to pay off credit card debt that had gotten excessive (from the years prior to starting grad school). I trade interest rates of 15%+ for 3.75% in the process of converting the credit card debt.

    It took me four years of postdoc jobs to secure a tenure-track position, during which I put my loans on the MAX+4 repayment plan with Sallie Mae: interest only payments for 4, ramping up over the next four years to the full repayment amount for the remaining 22 years. With about $102,000 of principle, my payment starting in a couple years for the remaining 22 years will reach $525 at its peak (I won a permanent interest rate reduction by making the first few years of payments on time). If the interest rates are good, and you love the job, it's probably not a bad investment.

    Prior to the current credit crunch, I was even able to get a conventional mortgage on a $120,000 house (yay for Midwestern house prices). With the credit crunch, I will probably not be able to get a mortgage again without a 20% down payment, but my total student loan debt amounts to about 15% of my after-tax, after-benefit pay. That's survivable.

    Of course, that's with the proviso that you get a secure tenure-track job, which is becoming less certain. On the other hand, I figured that I am not without certifiable skills as a result of my graduate training, and almost anything else I might do for a living would likely pay more than academia.

    Reply
  35. grad with a family

    I've been in grad school for the past two years. I'm married and we had a son right before I started grad school. The school I'm at now does not pay very well at all. We're moving to a new school next year–one that pays a lot more. We are lucky not to have any undergrad debt and a little bit of savings, but we have managed just fine on the paltry amount I get paid. My wife didn't work at all for the first year, and now she works ~10 hours a week. I imagine we'll be able to save about 10k year at the new place. We never even considered taking out loans.

    I have no solid evidence that we are an outlier case. I know that other people in my program who don't have families or kids often have large credit card debt; so that's some evidence we are outliers. Nevertheless, it's possible to do fine financially with a family in grad school.

    Reply
  36. soon-to-be-grad

    In response to Another MA Student, one can only wish to land a job at a research institution, but realistically, I would be happy to take a tenure-track job at a liberal arts college or a state university. I am single and will not have any support while working on the PhD. However, I am still rather young (21 years of age), so my relationship status may change during the PhD.

    As long as I stay below 30K, I think I will be okay. The interest will add more on, but a portion of the debt will be in subsidized loans.

    Reply
  37. Josh S.

    Horse piss. PBR is the best of the cheap beers, period. Then comes the champagne – the High Life. Supporting your 'local beer,' if it's any good, will run you &8 a 6-er and $15 a 12-pack. Grad students, don't be deceived: just because Dr. Norcross survived on the Beast doesn't mean you can. Go PBR.

    Reply
  38. Josh Smith

    To the original commenter: you wanted to know what your monthly loan payments will be like. Go to this calculator, https://loanconsolidation.ed.gov/loancalc/servlet/common.mvc.Controller?controller_task=startCalculator. It's the loan consolidation calculator for all Federal loans. Loan consolidation will be the right idea after your program completion. I also suggest you look into figuring out your amortization schedule by going here: http://www.bretwhissel.net/amortization/amortize.html.

    Re: your general weariness over loan debt, I think you were right to suggest that student loan debt is "good debt." One should view this as an investment which carries its own type of risk. The risk is that you do not end up in a TT position somewhere that affords you the luxury of speedily paying off your loans. The rewards are obvious. It seems worth it to me, even if it might be scary now. My only caveat is to be as thorough with your finances as you would be with your research. Plan well, and reap the rewards.

    Reply
  39. Dirk Baltzly

    As graduate coordinator for our department, I'll throw in my two cents worth. Of course you want to do your PhD at the best institution for your particular research interests. I'm inclined to think that doing an MA as an intermediate step is good idea. Not only will it open doors to PhD scholarships, it also extends the period of time you are studying philosophy. That matters because it is important that you have publications out or forthcoming when you go on the market. Given the time it takes to get things published, the longer you're in grad school the better.

    A second question is whether it is worthwhile to take out a loan to pay for an MA. Other people have commented on this already. But it seems to me worthwhile to point out some graduate programmes don't distinguish between PhD and MA applicants when it comes to eligibility for scholarship. It is by no means easy to get an international scholarship here at Monash, but if you can do so, it doesn't matter whether you propose to do the MA or the PhD. (It's quite not as hard to get a scholarship if you are an Aus/NZ citizen or permanent resident.) We've done pretty well in placing our MA graduates into good northern hemisphere PhD programmes.(One at Cornell last year, another at NYU this year, and a third recently at Oxford.) I think it helped that two of the three of our graduates had publications out or forthcoming when they applied.

    Perhaps it is worthwhile to look at trying for an MA with scholarship in preference to paying for the PhD. Moreover, make it clear to your MA thesis supervisor that you really want to go on for an academic career. He or she will help you identify chapters from your thesis that you should try to get published even before the thesis itself is finished.

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  40. David Sobel

    The way I remember it, and all this did happen over a dozen years ago, not having a lot of money in grad school didn't matter to me much because I was hanging out with fellow grad students who were similarly poor. I felt poorer upon getting a decent paying job because I was then hanging out with faculty and I had no accumulated wealth, unlike them. Obviously this is only true above a threshold, but my cohort in grad school seemed to uniformly think our average stipend above the threshold. Now I did not have kids and perhaps my parents helped out in ways I am not remembering. But I suspect that the more my fellow grad students took out loans and starting living noticeably higher on the hog than me, the more tempted to take out loans I would have been. But with none of us taking out loans (I believe) we felt financially ok.

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  41. Anonymous

    Student loans aren't the only financial danger of graduate school. When the grad student gets $4k/year, it can be tempting to live a dual-income lifestyle anyway, aided by credit cards. These, of course, are not capped at 15% of discretionary income and are not forgiven by 10 years of teaching at a state school.

    Also, if you have a Trader Joe's near you, "Simpler Times" lager is $4 for six cans and actually tastes decent.

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  42. Jonathan

    I took on some $75K for both undergraduate and MA work. I'm not going on to do PhD work, so the borrowing is capped off at that amount. I'll be teaching grade school next year making about $45K, which may be equivalent to a TT Philosophy job at RandomCommunityCollege or RandomStateU.

    I'm not married, nor do I have children, so the loan money wasn't absolutely necessary. But I did want to live comfortably, eat well, and maintain good hygiene while in school.

    1. One option is to try to live on just one salary when you and your wife both land permanent jobs and to use the other salary to make aggressive loan payments. It might be really annoying to do it that way, but it wouldn't require that much of a lifestyle adjustment compared to your current situation, and then you'll be finished with time to save up for college tuition for the kids.

    2. Another option is to consolidate loans if you haven't already done so. Sometimes you can get a better interest rate, although it's been a while since I've looked into it.

    3. You could try the debt-snowball method or the reverse-debt-snowball method to shorten the payment period and save some money on interest.

    4. As was mentioned above, if any of that debt is credit card debt, it would be better to take out more loans to pay the credit card debt off.

    Student loan debt isn't bad debt; it's just a hassle.

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  43. anon

    I am about to finish a Ph.D. (next year) and have loan debt from both my undergraduate and my graduate studies (it will be a substantial amount when I am finished). I realize that incurring this debt is going to hurt later but I have had no help from anywhere else to pay for my education. I absolutely love what I do (and hope that a TT job will eventually come my way, but I am aware of the realities of the job market) and would not trade it for anything (including a debt free life). My (admittedly risky) suggestion is that one do what they need to do to do what they want to do and let the chips fall where they may.

    As far as beer goes learn to brew your own. It is a great hobby, cheaper than buying even the cheapest brands, and much much better.

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  44. MG

    Another MA, I wondered the same when you mentioned that you were looking at a $20,000 Leiter MA program. I'm considering Brandeis. (It's actually $37,000 a year, but I'm counting on the $8,000ish need-based scholarship, and I got another scholarship that takes it down to $20,000). Same place?

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  45. ABD, 123, You and Me, Girl

    I'm an ABD grad and I'll definitely have over $100,000 in debt (including my wife's undergrad debt) by the time I get out. Many would tell me to quite grad school and stop taking on debt. But I think it's important to stress the words of MKP from a comment earlier: "Unless you just can't see yourself doing anything else with your life, unless not going to graduate school would grind your soul to powder, stay out." My soul would indeed grind into said powder if I couldn't do this. So it's a fairly easy choice.

    I figure later on my situation won't be much different from many American families that pay $800 or more a month for the payment and insurance on their two SUVs. My wife and I will just have one vehicle with a low payment (if any); the rest will go toward our education. SUV or the life or examination… I'll go with the latter, thank you. 🙂

    But this is just my situation, which is likely doable mainly because my wife works full-time, we have no kids (yet), and we own our home. These should all help. It's still a risk, though. I could end up broke and extremely unhappy. But I doubt it.

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  46. Karl S.

    I don't know where Josh S. is getting his numbers, but it can't be from reality.

    For example, where I am, a 24-pack of Iron City goes for 13.99.

    A 24-pack of High Life (against which I have said nothing) goes for 12.99.

    Then again, a bottle of Thunderbird goes for a lot less than either.

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  47. Brian Leiter

    I think we now have a lot of excellent beer information here, so I'm calling a moratorium on more alcohol-related postings.

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  48. JJ

    So far, people seem to be considering two possibilities: either the person in question gets a TT job or he leaves and gets another job that is likely to be more lucrative than academia. But often those people who fail to get TT jobs or who just don't want to move for a TT job, choose to go back to school and do something more practical than a PhD. I was at a top 10 school and many of the people with whom I went to grad. school left for law school for one of those two reasons. If you incur significant debt during grad. school, how could you fund yet further education?

    Incurring 6 figures of debt for grad. school in philosophy strikes me as very, very risky bet indeed. JJ

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  49. anon

    There is an explicit contradiction between: the PGR has, since forever, explicitly advised students against taking out loans to pay for PhD study in philosophy, period
    and ranking or giving any merit to MA programs at all, period. As is apparent from the tenor of the comments above, many many undergraduate students unwisely consider getting an MA, based on rankings in the Leiter reports, and take on the debt. As is also apparent from the tenor of the comments above, there is hubris on the side of professors who do not seem to know the financial circumstances of their applicant pools. It is unfair (and uncommon among humanities disciplines) to present students with an option that pairs huge amounts of debt (MA programs invariably do) with brighter graduate and job prospects. It is becoming increasingly difficult to deter a bright idealistic college student from pursuing her dreams of becoming a philosopher, and correspondingly unwise and untenable for them to actually pursue those dreams. Unfortunately much of this is due to the proliferation of expensive MA programs. I have yet to find any such program which I can conscientiously recommend to any of my students who are not independently wealthy. Even if tuition is waived, living expenses are not. In any MA program, and certainly not in any ranked MA program. The proliferation of these MA programs, in my opinion, is also directly related to the extremely competitive ranking scheme presented in the Blackwell/Leiter reports. I suggest we would be better off focusing our attention on providing a uniformly acceptable minimum standard of graduate education in philosophy. It does not take a member of the academy of arts and sciences to tutor a decent philosophy dissertation and turn a good student into an excellent teacher and a philosopher who can hold their own.

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  50. Brian Leiter

    The last comment is just based on misinformation: many MA programs, and certainly the good terminal MA progras, offer financial aid to their MA students, much as PhD programs do.

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