CHE: Why I’m Planning to Leave My Ph.D. Program

[Mobius]

It could be doable with SNAP, WIC, and Medicaid. Head Start is available once the kid is older. Taking out loans to pay for daycare is insane for if his spouse isn't working. I understand respite care.

I don't know what familial responsibilities that bar full-time employment mean.

[ergative]

For what it is worth, many of the more ambitious people in my PhD cohort dropped out and did something else. And most of them did quite well for themselves.

One year at our graduation the invited speaker was a former PhD student who left the program and got some great career in Hollywood (yes, yes, that's another dice roll). The gist of the speech was, 'Welp, a PhD wasn't for me, but I had a great time while I was here, made some good friends, put the education I got to good use, and I have no regrets. Remember to explore all career paths!'

At the time---and possibly still---I thought that the speaker was invited more because Hollywood!shiny, than academia!prestige (since no PhD). But in retrospect, I also think it's a really good idea to remind people that there are other career paths, even if I'm not at all sure how much that reasoning featured in the decision to issue that particular invitation.

A bit late in the day if you don't hear the speech until you're sitting in the auditorium in your gown and tam, to be sure.

[jerseyjay]

It could be doable with SNAP, WIC, and Medicaid. Head Start is available once the kid is older..

The question is, what is "it"? At the end of all this sacrifice and hard work the student would get, what? A chance to adjunct at the local community college?

I don't think anybody should have to go onto welfare (or into never-ending debt) to pursue education. But to do so for a degree that is likely not all that valuable is even worse.

(I have nothing against an English PhD per se. If somebody where to tell me they were going to do this for a history PhD, I would strongly advise them against it.)

[apl68]

It could be doable with SNAP, WIC, and Medicaid. Head Start is available once the kid is older. Taking out loans to pay for daycare is insane for if his spouse isn't working. I understand respite care.

I don't know what familial responsibilities that bar full-time employment mean.

They can mean many things.  Whatever it is, it reduces the family's options.  That may not be fair, but it is their reality.  It's better to bow to reality late than never.  If he's lost only four years to grad school, he should still be quite young enough to retrain for a new career.  He could even pursue a professional Master's of some sort, which should be quite doable for somebody who has already proven the ability to do Master's-level work.  Though I'd advise working in the field for a time to see whether the aptitude and interest are really there, and get a foot in the door, before committing to another grad program.

I don't wish to seem callous.  I've been in this situation of having to give up on the PhD dream myself.  It's an awfully hard row to hoe, even without the additional consideration of being responsible for a family.  The good news is that there can be life beyond such a failure.  It's best to start pursuing the new possibilities sooner rather than later.

[wellfleet]

I have a PhD in English and this writer's stipend is equal to or often less than I was I was earning in the 1990s in a similar program.

I left my uni for a full-time job (two, actually) and then completed my diss later. That's not a fun route, but a lot of us have taken it. Of course the program doesn't want students to do this, as it benefits from their poorly-paid labor when they stay on campus, but individual faculty may be more supportive.

Given the current job market, finishing the dissertation later would likely be a passion project, not an employability one.

[jerseyjay]

I don't wish to seem callous.  I've been in this situation of having to give up on the PhD dream myself.  It's an awfully hard row to hoe, even without the additional consideration of being responsible for a family.  The good news is that there can be life beyond such a failure.  It's best to start pursuing the new possibilities sooner rather than later.

I think one problem is that we confound getting a PhD with the dream of being a professor. Obviously, you (usually) need the former for the latter, but most people who do have English (or history) PhDs will not become full-time professors.

I think it is harder to learn this lesson after you get your PhD than before. I got my PhD in history, after quite a bit of personal and financial sacrifice. It took more than a decade to get a tenure track job--and that by luck. I was over 40. I guess my story has a happy ending--except that there are so few history jobs, I am essentially stuck where I am forever. I like where I am, but compared to my friends who chose other professions, I cannot say that, in retrospect, deciding to do a PhD in history was the best choice. If I had not got my current job, I would have definitely thought it was a bad choice.

I am happy that I earned my doctorate. I had fun researching it, and I like history. I like teaching and being a professor.  I like seeing my book on my shelf. But I tell my students that they should not pursue graduate education in history.

As I said, I think it is better to learn this before starting a PhD. But better to learn it 4 years in rather than 10 years in.

[Mobius]

It could be doable with SNAP, WIC, and Medicaid. Head Start is available once the kid is older. Taking out loans to pay for daycare is insane for if his spouse isn't working. I understand respite care.

I don't know what familial responsibilities that bar full-time employment mean.

They can mean many things.  Whatever it is, it reduces the family's options.  That may not be fair, but it is their reality.  It's better to bow to reality late than never.  If he's lost only four years to grad school, he should still be quite young enough to retrain for a new career.  He could even pursue a professional Master's of some sort, which should be quite doable for somebody who has already proven the ability to do Master's-level work.  Though I'd advise working in the field for a time to see whether the aptitude and interest are really there, and get a foot in the door, before committing to another grad program.

I don't wish to seem callous.  I've been in this situation of having to give up on the PhD dream myself.  It's an awfully hard row to hoe, even without the additional consideration of being responsible for a family.  The good news is that there can be life beyond such a failure.  It's best to start pursuing the new possibilities sooner rather than later.

We know stipends are bad, but was the stipend the issue or their family circumstances? We got by during my doctorate. We were broke, but qualified for SNAP, WIC, and Medicaid, so that helped a lot. If one partner can't work at all, it is going to limit your options even if they were working FT.

[artalot]

It sounds like this student was both willfully ignorant and a little misled. The students notes that they have no health care - that is not the norm at many grad programs and is something they should have looked into before starting. The stipend is low, but until students unionized, the graduate stipend at the University of Indiana was a low as $19 K.
If you have a young child, the partner really needs to earn $55K or more in order to make day care financially viable. I've known several PhD candidates whose partners didn't work precisely because it was actually more affordable to stay home. It sounds like medical bills were also an issue and I think that's where this person chose poorly. I can't believe anyone would start a multi-year graduate program that did not offer health care.

At the same time, I think graduate programs should have frank discussions with applicants about what purchasing power the stipend has and how current graduate students make ends meet. They should have to publish the average amount of debt students take out to attend, the average completion rate and length and career outcomes and loan default rates. Students should receive financial counseling on how much debt is sustainable and the kind of repayments they will have to make.

I wish this person well and hope they find a fulfilling career.   

[Wahoo Redux]

I have a PhD in English and this writer's stipend is equal to or often less than I was I was earning in the 1990s in a similar program.

I left my uni for a full-time job (two, actually) and then completed my diss later. That's not a fun route, but a lot of us have taken it. Of course the program doesn't want students to do this, as it benefits from their poorly-paid labor when they stay on campus, but individual faculty may be more supportive.

Given the current job market, finishing the dissertation later would likely be a passion project, not an employability one.

As a trailing spouse, I finished remotely too.  In some ways I found it much easier to do the work as an adjunct with a spouse working as the bread-winner.

Of course, we do not have children, which really changes the equation, and I had a phenomenally wonderful chair who worked with me remotely.

[Anon1787]

I would say that since a PhD in English is not very valuable in the non-academic job market the student should not get the degree if the student is close to finishing because the student might be tempted to enter horrible academic job market and waste precious time or end up as a struggling adjunct.

At the same time, I think graduate programs should have frank discussions with applicants about what purchasing power the stipend has and how current graduate students make ends meet. They should have to publish the average amount of debt students take out to attend, the average completion rate and length and career outcomes and loan default rates. Students should receive financial counseling on how much debt is sustainable and the kind of repayments they will have to make.

Yes, they should, and make universities at least partially liable for student loan defaults.

[arcturus]

As a child of a perpetual graduate student, I am grateful for the various governmental support programs that helped keep food on the table in my youth. However, I do think that there are unreasonable expectations by some of the current generation of graduate students. Graduate students are still *students* and should not expect to be living a comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle based on their stipend alone. Indeed, graduate student stipends reflect the fact that the contracts are for half-time work (20 hrs/week). If you include the fact that compensation includes tuition remission, graduate students earn significantly more for those 20 hrs/week than entry-level workers in most fields (and most definitely more than adjunct professors in their fields).  Having said that, I do understand that low stipends and long time-to-degree programs can have a significant negative impact on students' life and livelihoods. Increasing salary and reducing time-to-degree is a winning combination that all programs should strive to achieve.

[Parasaurolophus]

Half-time work? Really?

FWIW, our stipends didn't include tuition remission. It made that 21.5k/year even more meagre. (That's common in Canada, but not in te US.) I'm surprised about the half-time claim, though. Do you mean in terms of TAing?

[arcturus]

Half-time work? Really?

FWIW, our stipends didn't include tuition remission. It made that 21.5k/year even more meagre. (That's common in Canada, but not in the US.) I'm surprised about the half-time claim, though. Do you mean in terms of TAing?

The half-time work is for the TA/RA duties. In my field it is common for the RA research to be similar (i.e., identical) to the research students are doing for their dissertations, but they are only on contract for 20 hours per week. If they are working on research not related to their dissertation (and if they are a TA), they are only expected to work 20 hours per week on that activity. The remainder of their time is spent on their dissertation research (or classes), which they are completing in the auspices of being a student. Indeed, at my current institution, students must sign up for credit hours associated with their dissertation research, so the split between paid work and student work is a bit more explicit than elsewhere.

Also, the tuition remission is much more of an issue in the USA. As an example, I had an external fellowship for my first year of graduate school. The check that corporation wrote to the University was much much bigger than the check they wrote to me!

[apl68]

The tuition remission for grad student assistants is mostly administrative slight of hand.  Even with that, the schools a getting a fantastic deal for cheap, exploitable labor.  I've never felt obligated to give my graduate alma mater a red cent when their alumni begging letters come by.  They got their money's worth and more out of me and my fellow teaching fellows.

[arcturus]

It is not slight-of-hand to my grant!