MOVING TO FRONT FROM JANUARY 23–MANY INFORMATIVE COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME, INCLUDING CORRECTIONS OR UPDATED STIPEND INFORMATION
Previous discussions on the blog have noted the bad funding situation for PhD students in philosophy in Canada. The situation in the U.S., where many (but certainly not all) of the top programs are private (all are public in Canada), is more complex. In 2023-24, Princeton and Yale were offering stipends of $50,000, Chicago was offering $45,000, Berkeley was offering $40,000, and NYU was offering less than Berkeley (I forget the number). A graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin recently wrote to me:
Currently, incoming students are offered guaranteed funding for either five years, with the possibility of a sixth year depending on good standing, or for six years, with a possible seventh year. This funding is tied to our employment as Teaching Assistants (TAs) or Assistant Instructors (AIs), leaving students with the expectation of teaching throughout the entire program. Once a student defends their prospectus—usually around their third year—and completes a required teaching seminar, they are eligible to teach their own classes as AIs. This teaching opportunity is marketed to us not only as a chance to gain solo teaching experience but also as an opportunity to earn more money. However, the salary increase is minimal. While the annual TA salary is $21,000, the AI salary is $22,500….Moreover, only students in their first and second years (those who are TAing) receive summer support. This summer stipend is $5,000, which barely covers the three months during which no salary is provided. The rest only receive funding for 9 months of the year.
This leaves students in a difficult position, as they must either take on a side job during the summer months to support themselves or take out loans. The first option is not feasible for international students, as their visas prohibit them from seeking outside employment in the U.S.
As longtime readers may recall, I taught at UT Austin from 1995 until 2008, and it was also true then that graduate funding was not very competitive, and I am sorry to learn (from this student's report) that things have not changed. This is a perennial problem at public universities, I fear. Many years ago, Steve Stich and I were external reviewers for the CUNY Graduate Center's philosophy PhD program which then, like now, boasted a very strong faculty; but back then, the graduate student support was totally inadequate (most PhD students were teaching 3 or 4 courses per semester from the start of their graduate education!). The Graduate Center, much to its credit, and the success of the program, improved support substantially.
As another reference point: when I quite my job as a lawyer at a big NYC law firm in 1988 (salary: $65,000), it was to take a $10,000 year PhD fellowship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (about $27,000 today)–which was, as I recall, better than the graduate support at Yale.
Here is the question for readers (either faculty or PhD students): what kind of aid packages does your program offer (typically, exceptionally, etc.) to incoming PhD students? Are these packages adequate for the cost of living students face? As with everything else in the neoliberal order, the discrepancies between the private and public sectors appear to be growing (e.g., 21K at UT Austin, 50K at Princeton).
Students must post with a valid email address (which will not appear); faculty must post with a full name and valid email address (again, the email will not appear).
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