1. As far as I can tell, neither the form nor the data clean-up/standardization allows for inclusion of information about people who never took on any debt for education (like me). Although I’d suspect that the small number of people who never took on debt would not change the overall picture much, to leave it out gives the impression that the results are purposefully being skewed to make a point.

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   • we definitely have zeros in there, so i believe you can. a bunch of scientist responders had no debt.

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2. I’m 53, lucky enough to be tenured at a great SLAC, and just paid the last of the 38k i owed. It was student loan debt, but –like more than a few people i knew- I took it out while i was abd and adjuncting, so that I could buy student status to keep my crappy U of I health insurance while attempting to build a cv at 2k a course. Such arrangements are typical in a world where the average time to degree is so great; in my dept over a decade. STEM students had 1/3- 1/2 time to degree and built their cvs while being paid by the university, not adjuncting in corntown and soyville.

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3. At my public flagship institution in a Southern state, we are in the middle of a top-down culture change that is ugly and bullying. Many unwelcome changes are being foisted on faculty by administrators, and new rules have made tenure almost meaningless. But some terrible changes are also afoot for graduate students: in my College of Public Health, we have been told “we no longer want” students who are part-time or continue working a day job (even if their employer is covering the cost of their doctoral degree). Instead, we want students who are full-time only — who are all-in and will have no other distractions. However, we do not have money for assistantships for the vast majority of these students, so what we really want is students who must take out loans for both tuition and living expenses — fully indebted students. We are also being told “we no longer want” students who are considering a career in public health PRACTICE, but only careers in academia. So we are encouraging students to go heavily into debt for a limited number of lower-paying academic jobs. This seems like exactly the opposite of what a new trend should be… or the changes that should be imposed by a university (without faculty governance — again, it is all being handed down from the top). I am curious: is this happening at other institutions and in other disciplines? (Not asking whether it is something that has BEEN happening, but whether other places are seeing this as an emerging practice).

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   • This is horrible. Would you like to write an anon (or not!) guest post about it for the blog?

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   • I can see this was written a while ago, but this is exactly the trend I’ve observed in my current university (University of Lethbridge). This is a fairly low-ranked school, and even as such, the graduate program is one of the less-respected programs. I wonder if this is just a trait of less-respected schools in particular – the kind that don’t have the resources to develop their graduate programs, but try to do so regardless? I can’t imagine a reputable graduate program adopting this approach. I mean, how do you expect your students to focus exclusively on their work (be “all in”) if they’re constantly worrying about where their next meal is coming from?

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     • No, it’s across the board. The humanities stipends at even elite institutions are not remotely equal to the cost of living for most people,certainly those with dependents or a health issue.

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4. Pingback: Thoughts about going to graduate school | Katy Pearce

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