advocacy

Bargaining for BU’s First Grad Student Union Contract as a DMA Student

October 26, 2026 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Sophie Lewis, who recently completed her DMA in Music Education at Boston University. Sophie served on the bargaining committee for the BU grad student union through their first contract negotiation, which included a nearly 7-month-long strike. She shares the incredible accomplishments of the union over that period as well as what didn’t make it into the contract and how the strike finally ended. Sophie’s own pay rate and personal finances radically changed for the better through that same period, both because of the union’s efforts and her personal actions.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Bargaining for BU's First Grad Student Union Contract as a DMA Student

Teaser

Sophie (00:00): Our argument the entire time we were in bargaining was that you should be able to afford to attend the institution that you’re working for based on only the job that you do for the institution that you attend. Um, and I think we’ve gotten a lot closer to that. Obviously, Boston is an expensive city, but it’s nice to know that we played a part in making it a little bit more affordable for people at BU.

Introduction

Emily (00:31): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:00): This is Season 25, Episode 5, and today my guest is Dr. Sophie Lewis, who recently completed her DMA in Music Education at Boston University. Sophie served on the bargaining committee for the BU grad student union through their first contract negotiation, which included a nearly 7-month-long strike. She shares the incredible accomplishments of the union over that period as well as what didn’t make it into the contract and how the strike finally ended. Sophie’s own pay rate and personal finances radically changed for the better through that same period, both because of the union’s efforts and her personal actions.

Emily (01:41): I’m looking for interviewees for Season 26 of this podcast! This is your official invitation to volunteer to be interviewed. I love that on this podcast I get to feature PhDs and PhDs-to-be who are almost exclusively regular people and learn and share their real-life stories and strategies. If it’s been in the back of your mind to volunteer, please go to PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ and fill out the quick form, and I’ll be in touch over email. I look forward to interviewing you this fall! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s25e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Sophie Lewis.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:38): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Sophie Lewis. She recently completed her doctorate in music education at Boston University, and we actually met a few months ago. We’re recording this in September 2026. We met over the summer at the Graduate Career Consortium annual meeting, and I was just so taken with Sophie and the way she spoke about finances and specifically her experience with the union, the Grad Student Union and unionization movement at BU. And so I invited her on the podcast to tell us much, much more about that. So, Sophie, thank you so much for agreeing to come on, and would you please introduce yourself a little bit further?

Sophie (03:16): Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so nice to be back. My name’s Sophie. I just graduated in August with my doctorate in music education, technically a DMA. I’m one of those, uh, professional doctorates, as they like to call us in higher ed. Um, and I researched, uh, career preparation for music students in higher education and how, uh, post-secondary policy shapes the way that students feel prepared for careers after they graduate, and how they understand the value of the work that they do. Uh, unionization was a really big part of how I came to understand the value of what I do, and so it was really cool to bring those two things together. I also worked as a graduate assistant for the graduate and postdoctoral success department at Boston University, which is how we met at GCC. Uh, and my role was to help to administer the professional development micro-credential series online that Boston University runs. Um, happy to be graduated and, uh, speaking about my experiences at BU as someone who’s no longer at BU.

A $5,100 Annual Stipend as an International Student at BU

Emily (04:28): Absolutely. And so we’re kinda in this interview gonna go through your journey in graduate school and kind of parallel that with how the union changed or what shifted and what you learned and so forth over the course of that time. So let’s start with your arrival at BU. What was going on with, you know, your own employment and what was going on with the union when you first arrived?

Sophie (04:50): Yeah. So I came to BU in September of 2022, and I remember vividly right across… I played the cello, and I had a instrument locker in the basement of the music department. And across the hall from where my cello locker was, there was this poster about BU Grad Workers Union, and I was so excited, uh, because I’m from the UK where unionization is super common, and I was entering BU as a graduate research assistant in the College of Fine Arts on a salary of about $5,100 for the year for a 10-hour position. So I was like, any opportunity to get involved with a union that might help me to advocate for better pay was really, really welcome. You know, you’re used to low pay in the arts, but, uh, I was paying rent with loans for my first year of my doctoral studies. It was, it was a fun time.

Emily (05:57): Pause on that for a moment because… So were you an international student that’s – Like were you on an F1 visa?

Sophie (06:03): I sure was.

Emily (06:05): So to come to the US as an international student, my understanding is that you have to show that you can provide for yourself financially. Um, so did this… Did you arrange the student loans beforehand or like how did your funding in particular work with respect to being an international student?

Sophie (06:22): Yeah. Uh, I had organized the loans in advance of coming to BU. Uh, I’m really lucky to have an aunt and uncle who are US citizens, uh, who were able to co-sign loans for me for that first year. Um, and a lot of, like, what proves that you have the money is just that you have access to it. It doesn’t need to be liquid. Uh, so my family were able to show that we had access to that money, but they weren’t willing to pay my rent, uh, because I’m 27 and was paying my own rent. Uh, so <laugh> that was kind of how that balanced out, was we were able to use a combination of loans and family money to get my visa. Um, and I just ended up paying my rent with loans once I got to BU.

Emily (07:15): So you just told me a shockingly low number for your stipend. And tell me, was that just, like, strict, like, hourly pay for that 10-hour week position? Did it come with any benefits like tuition waiver or, like, how did that part of it work?

Sophie (07:28): Uh, it did not come with any other benefits. So part of being a professional doctoral student at Boston University means that you are not eligible for the five-year funding package like a regular PhD student is. Um, and this was really one of the main reasons why I wanted to get involved in unionization, was that we were doing the same jobs as our peers and PhD programs, uh, and those students were receiving tuition waivers and health insurance benefits and vastly higher pay than we were receiving in the music department. Uh, this was common for all of my colleagues in the music education doctoral program. Uh, so I actually was also paying for my health insurance and paying tuition, uh, for my doctoral program, um, which is uncommon and, uh, not something I would do again. <laugh>

Emily (08:26): Well, what was, like, the plan? Like, coming into this, you didn’t know about the union yet, right? Or what changes might be coming. So was your plan like, “Yep, I’m gonna keep this assistantship position 10 hours per week, this is my pay, and everything else is on loans?” Like you were comfortable with that for the duration of your program?

Sophie (08:42): I wasn’t super comfortable about it for the duration of my program. My plan was always to be applying for more scholarships and fellowships and see what I could do to kind of increase my funding package. I was planning to appeal my financial aid. That’s something that I’d done, uh, in my master’s program, which I did at the University of Denver. And I’d managed to increase my funding package to cover my tuition for that. So I kind of knew that that was an option to negotiate with the university for my funding. So I’d kind of gone in with a plan to, to take on a second job, uh, and to do some negotiation alongside applying for fellowships and scholarships and other sources of financial aid.

Emily (09:26): Okay. You just mentioned a second job, but how does that work with the visa situation?

Sophie (09:30): As long as you’re under 20 hours a week, you can have on-campus –

Emily (09:33): So it’s like an on-campus job.

Sophie (09:34): Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Formation of the Boston University Graduate Workers Union

Emily (09:36): Gotcha. So that’s so interesting that you came in with a plan of obviously finding another job to get up to 20 hours a week, and then also an individual negotiation plan. But this obviously morphed into… Or maybe you did, still did that, but it obviously also became a collective negotiation, uh, plan. So we understand what your status was when you started. <laugh> What was the status of the union? When did it form? What contract were you in?

Sophie (09:59): So we, uh, had not yet voted to be recognized as an official union yet when I arrived. Um, the union students had been organizing things for a long time before I arrived at BU, and I kind of arrived just at the right time as we were getting ready in the spring of 2023 to vote on whether we wanted to start bargaining for a contract. So I connected with some members of the union in advance and asked how I could become involved, what it would look like in my department. Um, and through that, I participated in the vote to, uh, recognize the union officially. Uh, and then I was elected to represent the College of Fine Arts on the bargaining team. So I got very heavily involved pretty quickly in, uh, writing the contract and organizing my department and speaking on behalf of my department at the bargaining table, uh, which kind of started in the summer of 2023 and went through to 25, might have been the end of 2024, 25.

Emily (11:18): What kind of mandate was the vote? Like, at what percentage did it pass? And, like, what were the key issues that were motivating graduate students to take that step?

Sophie (11:26): Yeah. Uh, I, I’m pretty sure we were a really high percentage that voted to form the union. Like, I think it was, um… I’m sure I could find this information somewhere on Instagram, but, uh, as far as I remember, we voted in the high 80%s to form the union. And then, um, most of the issues we were organizing around was a cost of living adjustment and tying wages to the cost of rent in Boston. Um, so our, our main priority was to alleviate all graduate workers from rent burden, which is around, you should be spending less than a third of your income on rent, I think, was the number. Um, and so that was the main things we were organizing around, because I think at that time, the lowest paid PhD student was getting around $23,000 a year, um, which in Boston is not, not really enough to, to pay rent in Boston. Um –

Emily (12:35): Yeah, you, you could pay rent.

Sophie (12:37): And nothing else.

Emily (12:37): And nothing, nothing else. <laugh>

Sophie (12:39): Um, so I think it was primarily the, the movement was centered around that cost of living adjustment, and we were also campaigning for better childcare provisions for, uh, working parents, uh, and just other supports for international students and students with disabilities as well. That was a big part of the movement.

Emily (13:03): All right. So you’re on the bargaining committee. <laugh> Tell us about a view that not many people get to have directly, right? So, like, just tell us about that experience.

Sophie (13:13): Yeah. Uh, so I worked really closely with a lot of the non-PhD students, so people like master students who held hourly jobs on campus, people in other professional doctoral programs like I was in, that includes, like, the doctor of physical therapy and ed students, um, a lot of the programs that make up a lot of the student body but aren’t covered by a five-year funding program. Um, and we did a lot of research into how much would the hourly wage have to be in order for us to be non-rent burdened in Boston University dorms, because that’s, that’s where I was living at the time. I was, like, living in a campus dorm. Um, and so we did the math on how much money we’d have to make in order to afford a BU dorm, and we ended up with an hourly wage of around $45 an hour. So that was kind of where we entered into our negotiations, was everybody on an hourly job needs, uh, this much an hour.

Emily (14:24): Our – But sorry, going back to the, the rest of your funding package. Was that considering how much would be paid towards tuition, et cetera?

Sophie (14:31): No, that was purely looking at how much would it cost to live in Boston and attend the institute, like, to, to live in the city where you go to school. Um, we had a separate group working on tuition remission, uh, which was the biggest, uh, from my perspective, the biggest sticking point, uh, when we went into negotiations with the institution, um, mostly because we thought that if you were working for the institution, you should receive the same benefits as anyone else, uh, but the institution argued back that it would be too difficult to track master’s students who, like, came in and out, um, and that that tuition remission was too high of a benefit. So that was one of the things that we kept putting back into the, the contract, and the university kept asking us to take it out, um, and it ended up not making it to the, to the final contract, um, which is still one of my, like, my bugbears if I was on the, if I was on the union again, I’d go back and really fight even harder for that tuition remission, especially for professional doctorates who are doing, you know, research the same as any other PhD student. Um, it’s kind of tough to, to be paying to write your dissertation. Um –

Emily (15:58): Something that I hear often and, and, and say from time to time is, like, the university, you know, they view these student workers… It’s a, it’s a dual thing, right? When it’s convenient to the university the student worker is a student, and when it’s convenient to the university, the student worker is a worker, and they kinda get to dictate how the relationship is viewed. Um, so it sounds like they were really trying to keep, um, those of you outside the PhD programs still students um, as more of a worker and… But a part-time worker. Not like a full-time worker who gets full-time type benefits, which would include things like tuition reductions. But rather this, like, part-time worker, but really just a worker kind of status, and really viewing you in a different category from the PhD students. That is what I’m hearing.

Sophie (16:47): Yeah. And I, I would say that that’s how it felt as well. Like, I gradually, throughout my time at BU, transitioned away from working as a research assistant at CFA to being employed, uh, full-time per international student regulations at the GPS office. Um, and those two worlds were completely separate for me. Like, my job at GPS had absolutely nothing to do on paper with my, my status as a student at the CFA, um, the College of Fine Arts. And a lot of the time, those two things never crossed paths. Um, so what I was doing in the provost office was completely separate from what I was doing as a student in the music education department. Um, and certainly, like, I, I left and went to GPS because there was more opportunity for better pay and better opportunities for progression in that position than working as a research assistant. Um, but it, it really did feel like I was doing a second job on top of writing my dissertation because there was no overlap. It wasn’t like I was, you know, doing research for my dissertation that got paid. I was doing a dissertation and working 20 hours a week for a different position.

Emily (18:14): I think that’s a really important thing, especially for prospective graduate students to understand about how money <laugh> works in graduate school. It’s like having a research assistant type of position when, as you just said, your research goes into your dissertation, it’s very holistic. You get to spend your 40 hours a week or whatever, you know, however much you’re trying to do, um, on all things that are furthering your own professional development and progression towards, you know, graduation. Whereas if you have… Like what I would say, like, I would put a umbrella term over your position as like a graduate assistantship, like it’s more administrative type work, um, and also to some extent teaching assistantships. Those are things that you have to spend time on that don’t directly contribute to your research. Now, maybe if you’re lucky with the teaching especially, there could be some degree of overlap, but for those kinds of positions, you really have to be more like looking that you’ve found something that is furthering your own professional development so that it’s helping you in that next stage of your career, even if it’s not directly helping you write your dissertation.That’s the way that I think about it. Is that also similar to how you think about it?

Sophie (19:18): Yeah. I think I developed a completely different set of skills working for GPS. Like, I, I got to speak at conferences about graduate student professional development. I helped to initiate completely new systems at the university that are now being, you know, used after I’m gone. And I got to see how administrative positions work in higher education, which was worth way more than anything I was doing in a research assistant capacity, um, because I got to be in the room where those conversations were taking place. Um, so that… Like I don’t regret having that job, but it… There’s nothing I did there that I could then take into my dissertation. Um, and it’s, it’s a different set of skills that I can put on my resume and my CV now, and I’m looking for jobs in administrative positions. Um, but it also isn’t like I can show a university a teaching role and say I taught undergrads this position. Like, I’ve definitely got to work harder to communicate how those skills transfer into what traditional faculty positions are looking for.

Emily (20:33): Well, let’s go back to the, the bargaining, um, table, the bargaining experience. So you shared what didn’t make it into the final contract that was most relevant for you and your peers. Um, can you share with us some things that did change, um, through that bargaining process, and also maybe some other things that ended up not making it in that you were attempting?

Sophie (20:52): Yeah. Uh, so I think our biggest win overall, something that I’m so proud of and have got to see really make a difference to a lot of my colleagues’ lives was that we raised the minimum PhD stipend from, as I said earlier, like $23,000 for the lowest paid to the mid – 40s. I think it’s around $45,000 now. So we’ve effectively doubled the lowest paid PhDs salary, um, which made a huge difference. I have friends who were like, “Oh, I can breathe now and I don’t have to work an additional job outside of my PhD. And like, I can afford to maybe go home and see my family every now and then.” Um, and that was, that’s made a huge difference, uh, across our student body, I would say. And I think that’s something I’m really proud of, is that we managed to get that, that quality of life improvement for so many students.

Commercial

Emily (21:55): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2026. These educational workshops guide you in identifying, calculating, and reporting your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2026 tax season starting in January 2027, I’m offering live and asynchronous workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Unionizing and Striking for Higher Stipends

Emily (23:16): I happened to interview, um, a PhD student at Boston University a few months ago. It came out in season 24, episode 3. Richard Coca’s my guest. And I believe he was in like a neuroscience type field. And he shared that, um, his stipend didn’t change too much. It went up, I think, a little bit, um, but his program was already paying close to that, um, what became the new minimum. Um, so I just wanted to point out, like, it wasn’t like everybody across the whole university was being paid at that 23. There was a huge disparity um, in the stipends. And I think that, you know, absent a unionization push, like, I don’t really see universities, you know, equalizing their stipends or, or setting a higher minimum, like, across the board. Um, I, I’ve seen it happen very successfully under the unionization conditions or the, or the threat of unionization, um, but not without it. So yeah, what, what’s your insight about that? Like, was there any motivation for those programs to raise their stipends, like, absent y’all’s efforts?

Sophie (24:17): I don’t think so. And it, it actually became a little bit of a sticking point within the university was that, like, people whose departments were already paying above that minimum, uh, were not as incentivized to keep going for the students and workers who were below that minimum. Uh, so one of the areas of pushback we got when continuing to hold the strike on was that, you know, a lot of students were not, were happy with the concessions that had already been made, and so they didn’t wanna be on strike anymore, whereas we had some people in lower paid programs who were like, “No, this, this is still a big difference in my quality of life if we keep the… If we don’t push to get the minimum raised.” Um, so it’s certainly, like, it’s not all sunshine on the union side of things either where, like, the membership was in such a diverse space where you’re trying to convince people who already have a relatively good salary to hold out until the people who are far- farther behind can catch up to them. Um –

Emily (25:28): But it did happen. So tell us more about, um, the strike and how you all motivated the students to, you know, see it through.

Sophie (25:36): Uh, it was tough. That was a really long strike. And I, I think we might still be the longest grad worker strike in US labor history, which is, uh, something to be both proud of and a little bit, like, sad about, uh, because it was tough. I think everyone missed their jobs. Like, a lot of our people were teaching and they loved to teach. Um, and it was kinda sad, but we actually got a lot of good buy-in from the undergrads. Like, when, uh, when undergrads told their parents that, like, we were on strike and this is what the university was doing to try and, like… There was a, there was a moment where they tried to replace us with AI. The university encouraged, uh, professors to use AI to lead discussion groups instead of the grad students. Uh, and when that got out to parents, there was a lot of backlash. Um –

Emily (26:35): Boy, I can imagine. <laugh>

Sophie (26:37): It was, like, that was maybe not the best move that the university made. It was a really special moment for me to see people from all over the institution and our alumni network come together to support us and recognize that a rising tide lifts all boats. Like, the, the lecturer’s union was there to support us. We had local politicians and, uh, Ayanna Pressley, our member of Congress, came out as a BU alum to support the strike. Um, we had a, um, like a GoFundMe situation that we were using to, uh, support s – workers who were losing wages, uh, and that raised a lot of money. A lot of people in our alumni network, and, again, parents of current BU undergrads were really supportive, and other graduate workers’ unions from across the country donated to our strike fund to help to support students who needed to pay rent, even while they were on strike. Um, and SEIU were great as well with that. They had a strike fund as well, so as long as you came to the picket, um, or participated in other strike-related activities, like phone banking or, um, other kind of online… We had online opportunities as well, you were eligible for strike pay, um, which was another great way to just support people while they were engaging in the strike. So, um, it was long, it was tense. Uh, I think a lot of people, um, felt a little bit betrayed by the university just with all of the tactics that went on to try and figure out who was on strike and how they, they could dock wages for being on strike. Um, but I think it was effective, and we really… I felt really heartened to see how people came together to support one another, and all of the big community cooking sessions, and, um, being together through a really cold March. It was really, really cold, uh, every day to pick it outside on the campus. It was just, uh, a really unique experience.

Emily (28:58): So tell me a little bit more details about the strike. I don’t think I’ve interviewed anyone who’s participated in one as a graduate student. Um, h- how long did it go on for overall?

Sophie (29:07): Uh, nine months, I think.

Emily (29:09): Nine months. Yeah. That’s what I was… I was thinking it was, like, most of an academic year or something around that. So were people then, some graduate students, not being paid during that period of time? So, you know, you’re just mentioning other sources of funding. And how does that work for people who are… Do they still get to progress in their programs? Or, like, how, how does it functionally work maybe for, you know, you mentioned TAs, that’s, like, obvious thing of not participating in your TA activities. How would that work for, like, a research assistant?

Sophie (29:38): Uh, it was kinda complicated because we definitely encouraged people to keep working if they were… If it would s – if it would affect their progress to a degree. Uh, so a lot of the people that were on strike were people in TA positions, uh, administrative positions. Um, there was a distinction between what was considered like service and non-service, um, which I can’t honestly remember the exact detailing of, but it was, that was kind of how the distinction was drawn both in the contract and within the union. So if your job was considered, uh, service, then you would strike. And if you were non-service, uh, which like my position within graduate and postdoctoral affairs, as we used to be known, uh, was non-service because it wasn’t related to my degree. Um, so I was on strike as a research assistant at CFA, but not from my position within GPS, um, because those two were considered different types of positions. It was really weird and complicated. And, uh, it was complicated as someone in the union that kind of played into a lot of people’s favor because the university also couldn’t tell between who was service and who was non-service. And so a lot of people didn’t have their wages withheld because they couldn’t tell who was service and non-service and it just, uh, it became quite messy. Uh, yeah.

Emily (31:22): That is so interesting. And did you also, was there also support coming from the faculty, either like overtly or subtly?

Sophie (31:31): Um, sometimes it depended a lot on the department. Um, so like in my department, none of the faculty are tenured either. So there was, uh, covert support, but not anything as vocal as some of the other departments who had like tenure behind them, who had unionization behind them. Um, and certainly a lot of what we were doing was working with supportive faculty to kind of understand how administration were communicating, what was happening to them, um, how we could communicate what we wanted more accurately to faculty too was really important because a lot of, uh, what was happening in the news was that our, our demands were being taken out of context. Um, and so we tried to keep an open line of communication with faculty too to, to help understand that like if we get better working conditions, you get better working conditions too, because we can better support you. Um, and hopefully that will encourage better treat-, like better pay for faculty members in future as well. Um –

Emily (32:48): Good point. As you said, rising tide lifts all boats, not just across the grad student population, but you can’t have faculty who are making only 10% more than, you know, the graduate students or whatever it might be. Um, okay, so you in the bargaining committee as the strike is going on, are there still conversations happening? Are there breakdowns and, and going back and forth? And what seemed to be, I guess, from your point of view, the university’s reaction to all of this and kind of how it came to a conclusion?

Sophie (33:18): Um, it, it kind of got to a point where we were both at a bit of a stalemate where it was like the university were like, “This is our best and final offer.” We were still, uh, unhappy with a lot of that, especially in terms of like hourly pay. I think we ended up with a minimum pay of $20 an hour where we really wanted 25. I think what eventually ended the strike was that enough of our members saw a significant enough increase to their quality of life that the majority then voted to end the strike. So every time we came back with a new, uh, offer from the university, it was presented to our union members to vote on whether we wanted to accept the offer or not. Um, and it just, I think after nine months being on strike, everyone kind of just wanted to, to get on with life again. Um, and I think there was a lot of really great stuff in the contract. There’s certainly room for growth as they’re currently negotiating the new contract. This was a three-year contract. So they should be negotiating in the next year for the next contract cycle. I haven’t been involved with the union very much since we kind of got that contract through. I was like, “Okay, I have to write my dissertation <laugh> now.” Um, and so I kind of took a step back from union life. I told everybody I’m Weingarten right trained, uh, so I was still very involved within my department as like a union member and if you need anyone to come and help you in any disputes, you know, I’m, I’m around and happy to help out. I’ll be excited to see what the new contract looks like. Like there’s a lot of connections with other schools in the area. I know Boston College, uh, they got a pay raise because of what we were doing at BU. I have a friend who is doing their PhD over at Boston College, and he was like, “Hey, when you guys went on strike and we threatened to unionize, they bumped our pay too, so thanks.” Like it’s nice to know that kind of there’s that, uh, knock-on effect of what’s happening in the community around us.

Emily (35:33): Not just that community. Like it, it ripples out nationally too. I mean, it’s more salient when you can do a comparable, you know, cost of living comparison. Having seen so many graduate student unions formed over the last five, six year, eight years, it’s bolstered everybody’s case that comes after that. And the comparisons with peer institutions doesn’t just have to be local, right? It’s national as well.

Sophie (35:54): Yeah, absolutely. It was huge for us to get those wins, and I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve done in terms of making life better for students at BU. I think our argument the entire time we were in bargaining was that you should be able to afford to attend the institution that you’re working for based on only the job that you do for the institution that you attend. Um, and I think we’ve gotten a lot closer to that. Obviously, Boston is an expensive city, but it’s nice to know that we played a part in making it a little bit more affordable for people at BU.

How Dr. Lewis’s Personal Finances Were Impacted by Unionization

Emily (36:37): Let’s… We, we started the interview talking about your funding situation, how, how you were affording your program. So post, you know, contract goes into place, you’ve already shared you had switched positions, you were working 20 hours a week. Like how were your personal finances impacted or your loan amounts or whatever it is?

Sophie (36:55): Uh, so I was able to negotiate myself into a salaried position at GPS, um, as the contract went on. It… I mean, I, I have a very unique case where, like, a lot of my advisors and supervisors at the GPS office were also people who were on the bargaining team on the university side of the table. And so they kind of saw both sides and, and we learned to, you know, keep unionization at the table and keep my work at work. Um, but they were really gracious in, uh, helping to set up a more sustainable work environment for me at BU. And so, uh, at the end of the summer of 2024, which I think as the contract resolved, uh, I became a salaried worker. So I didn’t have benefits or anything else, but I was making an equivalent salary to a PhD student on the contract, um, which meant that I was, uh, no longer paying tuition because I was down to just paying for continuing education credits to, as I wrote my dissertation. I’d also gotten into, uh, subsidized housing through the university, which was like a competitive scholarship situation, but my rent went down to, like, $500 a month, <laugh> which was insane. <laugh> Um, and my pay doubled, basically. Um, so that change kind of meant I didn’t need to take out any more loans. I was able to save, which has made huge difference, uh, to my financial wellbeing. Um, and I got to keep a job that I really enjoyed doing, um, without needing to, like, find something else to do at BU. So I’m lucky I was able to advocate for myself and have supportive supervisors who were willing to push that through, so.

Emily (39:09): I like presenting that, um, sort of story of hope for other graduate students who come in with a funding package that they’re not… <laugh> It’s like, “Well, I guess I could do this for the duration of the program, but I’m not thrilled about it.” Um, that, you know, once you make those connections at the university and you demonstrate your value, that you can move into different positions and it it can have a better outlook over time. Yeah. Um, so I’m, I’m really heartened to hear that. Sophie, this has been such a lovely interview, and thank you so much for, you know, sharing your experience with this. Um, is there anything you wanna add more about the unionization process?

Sophie (39:43): Talk to your colleagues. That’s, like, the best piece of advice I could have to people, and especially as unionization picks up around the country. Like, talk to your colleagues, understand what’s happening in your department, and know how your pay compares to your colleagues, uh, because knowing that difference makes life a lot easier when you are able to point to someone else and say, “Well, they’re making this. Why am I not making this for the same work?”

Emily (40:12): Totally agree. Salary transparency is one of my, um, big, uh, areas of, of work and promotion within my business. Um, to that end, my website, PhDStipends, is where you can go to anonymously share your stipend information, but it is more powerful if you can do it with the person down the hall or in the next office, um, because like you said, then you can take that as your case to your higher ups.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (40:37): Well, Sophie, as we come to the end of our interview here, I’ll ask you the question that I ask of all my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for an early career doctoral, um, recipient? And it can be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it can be something completely new.

Sophie (40:53): I would recommend that everyone know when to expect your pay and who to contact if and when that pay does not come. Uh, one of the things that gets really messy with unionization is just, like, knowing who’s gonna get paid what and when they’re supposed to get paid, and just knowing when to expect it to hit your bank account means that you can fix problems a lot more quickly if and when they come up. And just knowing who to talk to about that stuff is really helpful in a very messy university system.

Emily (41:25): Yeah, it’s actually good advice more broadly for everyone of just, like, know who to go to if you had a certain type of emergency come up, like, “My pay didn’t arrive on time or was the wrong amount or, um, that tuition waiver didn’t post and my bill is due.” You know, just when it’s an urgent situation, already having done the research of knowing who to reach out to, super, super helpful um, if and when that moment arrives. Okay, Sophie, thank you so much again for giving this interview. It was wonderful to see you again.

Sophie (41:55): It was so lovely to see you too, and thanks for having me.

Outro

Emily (41:57): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? We have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to view transcripts or videos of each episode? We link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Financial Chaos Exacerbates a Low Graduate Student Stipend

April 6, 2026 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Dillon Pruett, an assistant professor in the School of Communication Science and Disorders at Florida State University. This is the first part of a two-part interview in which we discuss Dillon’s financial journey through his PhD and postdoc at Vanderbilt University. Dillon tried to keep his eyes on his own financial paper, but the pay disparity between himself and other graduate students and postdocs was repeatedly brought to his attention. Still, he managed to make it through without accumulating debt and even building modest assets, despite financial setbacks. Dillon’s candor during this conversation is laudable, and his experiences are likely to be both relatable and a cautionary tale for prospective and early graduate students.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Financial Chaos Exacerbates a Low Graduate Student Stipend

Teaser

Dillon (00:00): So literally to this day, every single payday I log in the morning of to see that it hits because I am just scarred from this, from not getting paid. And my wife thinks I’m crazy because she’s like, why are you so obsessed with this payday thing? I’m like, you don’t understand how crazy that was to to deal with.

Introduction

Emily (00:30): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:59): This is Season 23, Episode 7, and today my guest is Dr. Dillon Pruett, an assistant professor in the School of Communication Science and Disorders at Florida State University. This is the first part of a two-part interview in which we discuss Dillon’s financial journey through his PhD and postdoc at Vanderbilt University. Dillon tried to keep his eyes on his own financial paper, but the pay disparity between himself and other graduate students and postdocs was repeatedly brought to his attention. Still, he managed to make it through without accumulating debt and even building modest assets, despite financial setbacks. Dillon’s candor during this conversation is laudable, and his experiences are likely to be both relatable and a cautionary tale for prospective and early graduate students.

Emily (01:49): The tax year 2025 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. I do license these workshops to universities, but in the case that yours declines your request for sponsorship, you can purchase the appropriate version as an individual. Go to PFforPhDs.com/taxreturnworkshop/ to read more details and purchase the workshop. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s23e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Dillon Pruett.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:03): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Dillon Pruett, who is an assistant professor at Florida State University. And today we are getting a financial journey, starting at undergrad, going through grad school, through postdoc into this first faculty position. And Dillon’s gonna tell us about his experiences and um, maybe some things that didn’t match with his expectations in each one of those stages. So, Dillon, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Will you please introduce yourself further for the audience and give a little bit of your academic background?

Dillon (03:34): Sure. I am Dillon Pruett and I’m an assistant professor in the School of Communication Science and Disorders at Flori- at Florida State. Um, I study stuttering and I also stu stutter. Um, my main area of research is the genetics of, of stuttering. Um, so yeah, I’m happy to kinda just walk through my experiences in undergrad, graduate school, postdoc through my tenure track job now.

How College Costs Shaped Dr. Pruett’s Undergrad Choices

Emily (04:06): Great. And we’re gonna leave this pretty open-ended kind of at each one of these stages I wanted to talk about what was your income like, what was your, what were your assets and liabilities like at each stage? Um, how, how was your lifestyle? What was your money mindset? Um, did you have any goals or did you have any financial habits at each stage? So really we’re gonna leave it kind of open ’cause I would imagine there’s gonna be an evolution across these different stages. But take us back to undergrad and tell us about your finances at that stage.

Dillon (04:33): Yeah. Um, I attended the University of Washington in Seattle. Um, and finances really were a dri a driving factor in that choice. Um, both of my parents grew up in, uh, blue collar house holds. Um, they both attended a regional state school, uh, at a time when you could work a part-time job and mostly pay your tuition, um, with not a lot of loans. Um, and so growing up my parents, you know, uh, repeatedly said that they would do what ef- effort they could to support me, um, in going to my dream school. And, um, that was really awesome that that was their orientation. Uh, but they didn’t really have a lot of understanding of the costs of college. Um, and so I was accepted to UCLA and Cal Berkeley, uh, soon after the financial crisis of 2008, uh, when a lot of those large state schools were increasing their out-of-state enrollment, uh, but not offering a lot of merit or need-based, uh, scholarships for out of state students. Um, and so my parents were, uh, pretty appro, appropriately shocked by the cost and essentially forbade me from taking out, uh, these massive loans to go to school. Um, and that was really disappointing at the time. Uh, but the University of Washington was, uh, affordable and my parents were really pushed for that. Uh, and so looking back, I can really see the logic of the decision. Um, but at at that age in time I was, I was kind of bummed.

Emily (06:14): And were you living in Washington? Is that where you’re from?

Dillon (06:17): I was, yeah. So, um, I’m from Puyallup, which is maybe, uh, 45 miles south. Um, so it felt like I wasn’t really truly getting away from home. Um, a lot of students that I went to high school with were going there as well. Um, so honestly I wasn’t in like the best, you know, mindset going into undergrad just because of the disappointments that kinda led up to that stage. Um, but again, like in hindsight, I really have come to appreciate, um, how things have unfolded and the fact that I didn’t take out massive loans at at at that time.

Emily (06:57): I have to say, I had a very similar experience growing up. My parents both went to like, you know, public universities, um, and they told me, go wherever <laugh> we’ll help you. And they weren’t prepared for that, you know, for actually what the sticker price was for my generation. Right. Um, and I’m doing something different with my children. I live in California, and so I’m really talking up the uc system, like, whoa, it would be amazing to go to one of these schools. So like, I’m setting their expectations in that direction.

Dr. Pruett’s Career and Research Interests During Undergrad

Dillon (07:28): Yeah. Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s interesting just the difference that a generation made and the costs. And you know, like I said, my parents had a great experience. They didn’t take out these massive loans. They really, um, did what, what what they could to, um, put themselves through school. Um, I don’t know. There was a whole lot that I could do personally to replicate that, um, in this day and age. Um, but so I started college around the time that the movie, the King’s Speech came out, which if you’re not familiar, um, the movie is a historical drama that details, uh, great Britain’s King George, the six and his struggle with stuttering during the time of World, world War II. And, uh, that movie really marked the first time that I confronted Stu Stu stuttering and came to the terms, uh, there was something I was gonna have to deal with for the rest of my life and not something that I could just ignore.

Dillon (08:25): Uh, and I had also started, um, working in a research lab at the university that was looking at genetics. Um, and so I was kind of interested in like, the idea of applying gen gen, gen gen genetics to s to stuttering. One of the known facts was a risk factor for stuttering is if you have family me members who also stu stutter. So that kind of hints at the idea that there might be specific genetic factors in, in involved. Um, so I reached out to a professor at the university who specialized in stuttering and said, Hey, you know, this, uh, is kinda a new area for the field, um, but there’s not a lot of people that are specializing in, in in it. And so that kind of sparked my interest that this could be a way for me to pursue a career and contribute to the field and try to answer, you know, some of these ques questions that I had growing up as a kid.

Dillon (09:28): Um, and so that kind of set my path from about my, uh, sophomore year on and, um, I would meet with my college advisors to make sure that I was taking coursework in both hearing and speech sciences and in biology to kind of get a comprehensive grounding in what I was hoping to pursue. And for the most part, my advisors were very complimentary and, you know, thought it was great that I had, um, such a specific interest and a drive to do it. And, um, they always said, oh, well, there’s really no, no wrong way to pursue this. And I was kinda like, uh, you know, maybe there’s no right way to do it, but there’s probably some, some wrong ways to go about it. Um, but moving forward to the end of my undergrad, I was making a decision whether I wanted to get a master’s in speech language pathology, which is a more clinical degree, versus going, uh, right into a PhD, which of course is more research oriented.

Dillon (10:37): And, um, after kinda weighing the options and talking to, to some people, I opt, I opted to go into the PhD route. Um, and then I had this debate about whether it was gonna be something that I was focused specifically on, uh, stuttering kind of more in a niche communication sciences and disorders field, or if I was gonna be, I’m a little bit more broad and do something genetic specific. And, um, again, after talking to some people in, in the field, um, I felt that like if I could be in a position and I could sort of do both at the same time, that would be really, really, really great. So, um, I applied to three different pro programs for my PhD. Uh, Vanderbilt was my top choice, and they did a really awesome job of making me feel like I could pursue this research even though it wasn’t necessarily my mentor’s area of expertise. Um, and their program was part of a, like biomedical sciences umbrella where there were a lot of resources that were shared that were available to students that really made me feel like this was a doable path to pursue. Um, and so that was kind of my path that led me into my Ph, PhD.

Finances During Undergrad and Grad School

Emily (11:59): Okay. I wanna talk about this transition point into the PhD, but I wanna catch us up on what was going on financially during undergrad. We talked about the decision to go to an in-state public university. That makes sense. Did you end up taking on student loan debt, for example? Or like what was the mix of funding that you ended up with for your undergraduate degree?

Dillon (12:16): Yeah, I had a lot of private scholarships, um, totaling probably nearly $20,000. That went quite a long way in, um, paying for my tuition. Um, my parents were able to help with the rest. Um, I also worked throughout undergrad, so I had a couple different jobs. Uh, one was in the research lab where I was paid, um, hourly for, uh, a variety of of jobs. Um, I also worked in a medical clin clinic. Um, I also worked as a tutor. Um, so I was always kind of looking for ways to make money, but that was really just to provide for spending money. So I wasn’t, I wasn’t saving, I wasn’t investing. Um, it was really like, Hey, can I go out on a Friday night and have fun with my friends? Awesome. Um, and so yeah, I, I didn’t have a lot of discretionary money, but uh, it didn’t feel I was in a, a peer group where that was pretty common. You know, we’re all, we’re all college kids. We all don’t have a whole lot. So, um, it wasn’t necessarily, um, an issue at that point.

Emily (13:35): So it sounds like you were cash flowing, right? You weren’t taking out debt, you weren’t building up savings or other types of assets, but between the scholarships and your parents’ support and your jobs, you were just making it semester to semester, is that right?

Dillon (13:48): Yeah, yeah, that’s what I would would say.

Emily (13:51): Yeah. That makes total sense. Tons of college students live that way. And then in that transition to graduate school, were you thinking about the finances? Were you thinking about the stipend that you were offered? Obviously you just, you know, said why you picked Vanderbilt because of, you know, the research considerations, but were, were there any financial considerations at that stage?

Dillon (14:09): Yes. Um, the program at Vanderbilt offered a stipend that was the highest. And so that combined with the program really made it seem like that was far and away the best choice. Um, the stipend was for roughly $23,000 a year. Um, and that was from university funds. Um, and there was nothing written that said that it was restricted for any number of years. There was some language that said that as long as you’re making progress and doing well in the program, you will be supportive. And we have a track record of supporting our students through gradu- through through graduation. So that, um, was really great to, to see and to hear, because that’s not always the case, even in funded PhD programs, sometimes only for four years, sometimes only for five years. Um, and so that, that felt like, oh, all right, like this is gonna be something that I can depend on.

Dillon (15:20): Um, but I will say that, um, it became apparent pretty quickly that there was some discrepancies in the stipends that were offered. Um, so as I mentioned before, the hearing and speech sciences program at Vanderbilt is part of the larger biomedical sciences umbrella. And so at the beginning of the PhD, um, they have essentially like these onboarding workshops where they’re introducing you to how to be a PhD student. And one of the presentations was on personal finance. And they essentially took, um, a month, a month, a month, a monthly stip stipend and broke it down into all of the amount that you could be expected to pay for housing, food, insurance, all of that. And they kind of like zeroed it out and they’re like, all right, like, see, it looks like you can live within your means if you’re following this. Well, the stipend amount that they had on this giant screen in front of the auditorium was like five grand more than what our program was being paid.

Dillon (16:33): And so it was sort of like, oh, okay, yeah, great. I guess if I’m in these other programs, I can make it do, but we’re just supposed to go into debt if we’re getting less money. Um, and so that I understand the different programs had different compensation, there’s a variety of reasons why, but that was, it felt a little bit like it was getting thrown in in our face in that moment that we were, we, we were less than. Um, so wasn’t great. Um, but that being said, I was still in a very privileged situation where I did have more support than I would’ve had at other places. So I’m grateful for it. Um, but there were also just all kinds of other sort of financial issues that popped up in the first few years.

Emily (17:24): That’s a good lesson for me as a financial educator to take away. I do normally ask or look up what the stipends are before I give example numbers or speak somewhere. But, um, yeah, that’s interesting. I’ve, I’ve never done that approach of like, here’s your budget. Um, I’m more like, ask the audience like, what are you spending in these areas? Or like, what do you think is reasonable or what have you, but I can totally see how that would not have been helpful or encouraging for you at that stage. Um, but I wanna know for one more second about, um, this 23K that you were starting with your first year stipend. Remind us what year that was.

Dillon (18:01): So that was 2015.

Emily (18:02): Okay. Um, so you’re starting at 23K and you said it came from university funds. Um, does that mean that you had an assistantship of some type? Does that mean you were on like fellowship? Were there work requirements tied to this? Or like what was the nature of the funding?

Dillon (18:16): Yeah, so I think it was technically called a research traineeship. And I don’t know if that’s a common term that’s shared across different programs or that’s sort of unique. Um, it didn’t seem to come with many strings attached as far as certain number of hours. I had to meet I think 20 hours a week, um, of work within my research lab. But that was sort of like something you talked about with your PI, and it was really just kind of set as the bare minimum number of hours that as a PhD student you should be putting in. Um, and it was flexible in a way that’s like, if you’re studying for finals, you’re not gonna be putting in those same amount of hours. Or if you have, um, and especially busy week with research participants, you might just have to do that. You know, you’re not gonna nec necessarily say, oh, I’m at my 20, I can’t come in.

Dillon (19:13): Um, so I had other peers that had a lot more strings attached to their funding. And some of that was because it wasn’t university funding, it was, um, from particular grants that, um, like for instance, if they, they were getting paid and they needed to go into some kind of, um, public interest type field or else they would have to forfeit some of their, um, stip like stipend back in the future. I, I wasn’t privy to all of the different funding streams and all of the different, um, I don’t know, stipulations. Um, but I just know that that mine was pretty unrestricted and flexible.

Emily (20:05): And was that a 12 month stipend, the 23k, or was it meant to be like just the academic year or anything like that?

Dillon (20:12): Yeah, so that is another, uh, aspect that I didn’t appreciate at the time, but I certainly do now is that was 12 months and so it was just divided into 12 paychecks. And um, that’s, that’s how you paid rent. That’s how you paid for groceries. There was not supposed to be any interruptions. Um, but as I’ll explain, we did have several occurrences of times when things kind of went awry and we had some things to work through.

Emily (20:45): I wanna get there, but one more question. You’re sitting in that orientation and you’re looking at this example with 5K more in stipend than what you’re actually receiving. Did you make a plan? Like, was your plan, okay, I need 5K in student loans, or was your plan, okay, I need a side hustle for 5K? Or was your plan I need to live on less than what they’re saying up there? Like how did, how did it strike you as like, how were you gonna move forward?

Dillon (21:08): Yeah, I think immediately I went too, like I need a side hustle. And then second to that it was, okay, I’m gonna have to live on less than what they say I can. So that means spending less on groceries than they say that means less on, um, miscellaneous expenses and they say it means I might have to work harder to find a place that’s acceptable, that is less rent. Um, so all of those things.

Emily (21:36): I wanna ask about the rent for a second. ’cause one of the, I guess I’ll say issues I have with this kind of presentation in orientation, and I’ve done these kind of presents during presentations, during orientations, is that you’ve already made some decisions, <laugh>, you’ve already made your housing decision at least probably for a year lease. You’ve probably made your transportation decision if you own or whatever, you know, with your car. So like what’s immediately changeable is already like restricted, you know what I mean? So when you were looking at that like pie chart or whatever they showed you, was your rent already less than what they were accounting for? Like, how were you even doing at that? Like, you’re off the starting block already.

Dillon (22:12): So thankfully, yes, my rent already was less. Um, I was fortunate to find, find a house that was less expensive, but that came with some trade offs. So it was not a nice place. Um, I was in like a little Harry Potter room with a shared bathroom. Um, at various points in time. We had mice infestations, we had cricket in infestations. Um, but it, it was enough. And as a a young grad student, I wasn’t particularly bothered by it. It was in a very nice neighborhood. Um, it was close to campus. Our house was just kinda like the black sheep of the block. Um, but we, we made it work and at that point in time, I think I was probably paying about 550 a month in rent. And, um, I mean there’s, it’s really hard to find a place in Nashville for less than a thousand now. So, um, that was a, a, a huge help in that first year with feeling like, okay, um, you know, I’m not paying for one of the nicer places with a pool and other amenities. I’m, but it also wasn’t, um, a place that you would, you know, have your parents stay for very long or, uh, want to be in for extended periods of time.

Emily (23:41): Okay, I get the picture.

Commercial

Emily (23:45): Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

PhD Funding Issues at Vanderbilt University

Emily (24:33): Well go on and tell us about these, these issues that you’ve alluded to that kind of cropped over up over the next few years.

Dillon (24:43): Yeah, so, um, I wanna say it was probably 2016, um, where Vanderbilt University decided to legally separate from the medical center and ba basically create two distinct legal entities, even though there’s a lot of overlap between them, um, and being in the biomedical sciences program, um, there’s really not like a fine line that divides them. It, it’s, it’s, it’s messy. You have professors that are appointed through the medical program, but then the graduate students are through the university. And then so it was, it was, it was just messy. Um, but the end result that really impacted students was that, uh, stipends were not dispensed when they should have been. So we’re all waiting, uh, you know, the first of the month for this paycheck to hit and it didn’t. And so, you know, that means that people can’t pay rent, they can’t pay for groceries.

Dillon (25:51): And that was a really big deal and there didn’t seem to be an appropriate outcry from the university to be like, oh my God, we need to solve this. There were students who were literally sitting in the office of the dean and they were not gonna move until they got paid. And so in that period of of time, um, you know, I was on my stipend each month, there’s no savings and so I had to take out, you know, loans for my parents just to pay, pay the rent. Um, and it was sorted out after a couple of weeks, but that’s still a really long time for students to wait when they’re expecting it and relying on it. Um, and in the process of me trying to like personally figure it out, um, I was talking to some people in ad in administration that were in the larger biomedical science sciences umbrella, and when they saw my stipend, they were like, oh, like you, you should be getting paid more than that because that’s below like our floor.

Dillon (26:53): And I was thinking like, mm, no, I don’t think so. I mean, sure, if you wanna pay me more, go ahead, but like that money comes from somewhere. And so, um, lo and behold, when I did get paid, I had a few hundred dollars that were added to what I was supposed to get. And so I was like, oh, okay, awesome. Um, and I used that extra money to pay down some of my credit cards and thought, well, great, some, something about this, you know, bifurcation has leveled things out. Well, I got a notice like a week or two later saying that I was actually overpaid and that I owed that money back to the university and I needed to write them a check to pay them back. And so I was like, are you kidding me? Not only is my stipend late, but you told me I was gonna get paid more.

Dillon (27:50): I didn’t believe you, then you paid me more and then I spent it, and then you’re telling me that was a mistake. So it was absolute chaos and I’m just grateful that I had a family that I could rely on for help in this time, but that is in no way the way that grad school should work. That you should have to have your students be taking out money from family in order to get their living expenses met. Um, and so literally to this day, every single payday I log in the morning of to see that it hits because I am just scarred from this, from not getting paid. And my wife thinks I’m crazy because she’s like, why are you so obsessed with this payday thing? I’m like, you don’t understand how crazy that was to, to deal with. And so it was probably, you know, four to five weeks before it was all sorted out. But, um, I don’t know. I feel like in, maybe in, if that had happened maybe five or 10 years later, I think like Twitter would’ve just like lit on fire with the, with the problems.

Emily (29:00): That is, um, one of the more egregious stories I’ve ever heard on the podcast that is saying something, uh, because universities are often disorganized. Um, but it, it seems to go a little bit even beyond the disorganization, like yeah, planning for that legal split, but not planning for the continuity with your, now I don’t know if I wanna say that, were you actually an employee? ‘Cause it’s even more egregious if you were actually an employee. Were you on W2 income or was it like non W2?

Dillon (29:32): That was another transition. Is that prior to that split? Um, I did not have any taxes withheld. I did not have a W2 and we were kind of told, yeah, this is like, we can’t give you advice on it, but it’s a legal gray area. Um, my mom’s an accountant and she had some people look into it and we’re like, okay, yeah, I think we’re fine ’cause it’s an educational disbursement, blah, blah, blah. Not gonna get into all of that. But following the switch, it did start, I, I did start receiving a W-2 with tax withholdings and that I think was actually helpful because it made it not this like gray area obscure, do I, do I not kind of thing. And it would’ve looked really weird if I didn’t file like a real return for years and years. Um, so, but that meant that like my kind of take home pay once you take away taxes decreased from what I was used to.

Emily (30:37): Okay, we’ll leave that there. Longtime listeners know how I feel about this. Um, but yeah, I, I guess I can understand the disorganization a little bit more because there was not actually a legal obligation to pay y’all on time if you were not on W2 yet. Not that that should have happened at all, but it’s just something I’ve heard of at other places of like, you have more protections if you’re like a legal employee, like W2 type employee. Obviously if there’s a union involved, there’s more protection. So like, just something to keep in mind, <laugh>, when you’re figuring out where your stipend is coming from that like sometimes problems do arise with fellowship income that wouldn’t ari- or what I call fellowship income, which wouldn’t arise if you were on like W2 income either way, terribly sorry that that happened to you <laugh>. And like, and like you were saying, because you were on such a low stipend in the first place, it, you didn’t have the ability to build up the financial security for yourself to prepare for, you know, adverse events, whatever they are. But for the adverse event to come from your funder, uh, it’s terrible. Okay, so the end result of this is that you’re on W2 income, your income has stayed the same, but you’ve started paying income tax, so your take home pay is less, is that right?

Dillon (31:48): Exactly, yes.

Emily (31:50): Ugh. After the chaos of those few, uh, those handful of weeks, I don’t blame you for having residual trauma over this. I would do the exact same thing. <laugh>.

Dillon (31:57): Yeah, well that was actually another, um, disparity between the different departments in the larger umbrella program because they actually received, uh, cost of living increases each year, and they also received, um, boosts when the incoming classes would get boosted up. So, um, a lot of my peers in the other department, you know, they were gradually making more and more money each year. Not that that actually, you know, as the cost of living went up, it’s not like they’re making a whole lot more, but it was enough to offset it just a bit. Um, whereas our department did not do that. And we had what whatever was in your contract that you signed when you started was what you would make all the way through.

Emily (32:45): Oh, so incoming classes were making more, but you stayed the same.

Dillon (32:50): Exactly. There were people heard that were entering after I started in my department that eventually were making more because the university made a conscious eff effort to boost PhD stipends. And so as all of this chatter is going on, I’m like, oh, we wanna get to 30K for all students. I was like, well that’s, that’s not impacting me. Like that’s, that’s great that the new students get that. Um, so another sort of instance where I felt like we were not, um, compensated in the ways that other students were. Um, and sort of just one more example of that, um, the sort of field of communication sciences and disorders, um, depending on what you study can be very interdisciplinary. So, um, there was a research lab that was focused on autism and you could enter that research lab either through sort of the more clinical hearing and speech sciences route, or you could enter through neuroscience and go that route.

Dillon (34:01): So you’re working the same research lab doing very similar work, but depending which route you took to enter the lab, you could get paid five or 10 grand different per year. And that is something that students learned and something that the PI learned. And so it was sort of like, oh, well, if you want to do this research, maybe you should enter through neuroscience and we’ll accept you through that way. Um, and I don’t know the details of it and how I think it was a point of contention within the department. I’m not privy to all of the details, but, um, I know that for students that was something that, that mattered. Um, and I don’t know what the, I don’t know what the current state of that is, but it was sort of like, well, I, I get it because individually it helps you to go through this route and you just get paid more. But if you’re trying to, you know, recruit for your own department and, um, you know, feel like that’s what’s, you know, kind of funding a lot of their research, um, you could see why, you know, the, the, the chair would feel that maybe you should do it a certain way.

Emily (35:13): You are presenting all of this in a fairly dispassionate manner. I mean, you have the, uh, the benefit of time having passed since these events, but like what was the effect on your emotions around your money? Were you feeling incredibly discouraged? Were you like doubling down? Like how did this, yeah, how did you feel about it as you discovered and as you went through these various events?

Dillon (35:37): Um, I really just tried as best I could to have the mentality of I was keeping my eyes on my own page because I knew that if I, I could get so wrapped up into this stuff, but I had so little ability to change it that I just didn’t even wanna focus on that. So I was sort of like, Hey, you know what I’m getting by. I’m doing what I want to do. I’m going to try to do what I can to make it through best I can. And um, if there were opportunities to offer feedback, I would certainly engage in that, but I wasn’t going out of my way, um, to, you know, negotiate on my own behalf or to really get too, too invested in these other areas. And you know, I think there’s, even though I feel like we maybe had some very visible examples of that in our department, um, it’s pretty common even within programs that don’t have these bigger issues, they have students that get a topper on their stip on their stipend, and they don’t want other pe- people to know that. Or maybe they do want other pe- people to know that. And, um, I, I don’t know. I just have always thought that money is, is a tough thing in especially the PhD space because there’s not a lot of it, and it’s all people that are trying to establish themselves. And I always thought it was better to just push that out and try to, you know, think about relating as, as, as peers and not having that be a barrier. Um, it’s obviously frustrated me enough where I’m now speaking that out on podcast 10 years later. Um, but uh, the way I tried to deal with it at the time was to ignore it as best as po- as best as possible.

Emily (37:28): I definitely understand that as like a self-protective instinct. Like, like you said, it’s actually pretty healthy. Like keep your eye on your own page. That’s great. It’s a great mindset in personal finance generally, it’s harder when you’re being paid so little that like survival, you know, comfortable life is, uh, on the line there with that distinction, but it just, for me, reemphasizes not, not at all that I’m criticizing you, I totally understand why you took that self-protective route, but it reemphasizes for me that anybody who has the ability to do any advocacy or any kind of privileged position, um, from which to do any advocacy, um, please do it if you’re able to, um, and advocate on behalf of your peers. Because this is something that’s tricky about individual negotiation is like, okay, like you should advocate for yourself. Yes. Um, but is it ultimately going to, you know, lift all boats with a rising tide?

Emily (38:21): Like we need to make sure that everybody, even people who aren’t able to advocate for themselves, can benefit when people do ask for more. Um, one of the huge benefits of the larger unionization movement going on among graduate students, and I just wanna also make a plug for pay transparency, um, through, for example, my website, PhDstipends.com. Um, if you’re able to have these conversations, if you’re able to advocate, please do not everyone is able to, in your case, you are such on the lower stipend end of that spectrum. I totally understand why you took, you know, why you had the reaction that you did of just like, I gotta get through this. I’m investing my career. I can’t, you know, be distracted by all these pay disparities that I’m seeing. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us about this graduate student stage of your financial journey?

Dillon (39:11): I guess that, you know, I, I did constantly feel like I was making these tough trade-offs that, you know, as I was getting into 26, 27, 28 years old, I had peers who had been working in their jobs for, you know, five, six years or making pretty good money. And I had to say no to things. And it was tough. You know, I had a friend who had a bachelor party in Vegas that I had to say no to because I just couldn’t afford to have that put entirely on a credit card. I didn’t have $3,000 to spend. Um, and that’s kind of a life event that, um, you know, I would’ve loved to have been there for. Um, and I kept telling myself, I’m in this investment stage, you know, this is just kind of the way that things are. Um, but as you get farther along in your PhD, um, it’s almost like it gets harder to keep that mindset because when you’re really gung-ho you’re just starting your 22, 23, 24, a lot of your peers are just starting out too.

Dillon (40:23): And so you’re just, you know, doing the cool thing to get your PhD, but towards the end when you’re older, um, you just feel that weight a little bit more of like, man, I, I got to get this done. I’m still not at the point where I want to be as a independent young adult. Um, and so, you know, it, it did weigh on me having to, you know, make these decision and not even like the big ones, right? Like even the decisions about going out to dinner with, with friends or something like that, you know, I couldn’t always afford going out to a $75 dinner because that meant that the end of the month I wouldn’t have money for groceries. Um, and then socially, you know, just dating wise, I know there’s a lot of, uh, people, people who might, you know, you know, really scoff at the idea of like a coffee date or a happy hour date is being cheap, or it doesn’t show your initiative or doesn’t show your seriousness.

Dillon (41:30): Um, and that just like hurt me so much because I was like, oh, well, like, I don’t know. That’s, that’s the most that I can do in a situation where I’m just trying to get to know you. And that is, even, even for, for those things is, is something that is gonna impact what I can do down the road for this this month. Um, so yeah, it, it, it’s, it’s those types of choices that, um, you get kind of like used to, but it still is something that that hurts. Um, and I feel like I did a pretty good job of balancing that, um, as best I could. Like I, I did go out in Nashville and would go to Broadway and, you know, we’d go to concerts, so it wasn’t like I was just, you know, in the lab studying or at home the, the whole time, but I had to be very kind of strategic about how I did it and when I did it. And, um, that was kind of what helped me get by.

Emily (42:35): I think what you’re saying is so relatable, and I really hope that your message gets to prospective graduate students and early on graduate students that like, like you said, like at the beginning, you’re living a little bit on your enthusiasm <laugh>, and then as the years draw by the sacrifices that you’re having to make small or large are just like piling up on top of each other and you’re like, okay, when is this stage going to be done and when am I going to be done with this lifestyle that I have at the moment? Um, I wanna get to that transition point between, um, graduate school and your postdoc. Tell me about your balance sheet as it was. Had you built up any savings over the course of graduate school? Had you built up any debt over the course of graduate school? Um, what was your kind of ending financial picture?

Buying a House in Nashville During Grad School

Dillon (43:27): I really did not build up much savings or debt, so I was really living pretty much paycheck to paycheck. Um, I started a Roth IRA, um, partway through grad school and was putting in like 50 or a hundred bucks a month in months where I could afford it. Um, and, you know, didn’t really amount to much. Um, I, I had a bit of credit card debt, but through the kind of COVID years, um, I really focused on, okay, well, I’m not going out, I’m not doing these things. Um, so I was able to pay that down to basically zero. Um, so that, that was, was huge. Um, sort of the, the side bar to this story, um, is that I knew when I started my PhD that Nashville real estate was, was going crazy. And so I was like, well, hey, if I’m gonna be here for at least five years, maybe more, um, this seems like something that I should take advantage of.

Dillon (44:40): And so I convinced my parents that this was doable without too much of a down payment and that this would be an investment both for myself and for them. Um, and so through an FHA loan, um, with my parents, I, uh, bought like a little condo, um, in this little old building, and the plan was that I was going to have a roommate with me all throughout my graduate school, and the roommate and I together would pay that mortgage. Um, and so that was in hindsight, you know, a really good move. Again, I had the support of my family that that enabled me to do that, that I couldn’t have done alone. Um, but wrapped up into that was some expenses that like a renter wouldn’t have to pay. So, uh, we had to replace the hot water heater, we had to replace the hvac, um, had to replace the microwave, um, had some issues with plumbing, all of that.

Dillon (45:45): Um, and so that is kind of where any kind of extra cash that I would’ve had, um, was put towards. Um, but I think that the end result was that, um, when I ended up selling that before I moved, you know, I was getting a good chunk of change back that if I hadn’t bought a place, um, would’ve just been lost to, to rent. And so, um, my wife and I have not purchased a house yet, but the profit from that is gonna be our down payment. And so we, we’ve kind of flipped, you know, the condo into a down payment, uh, for our next home. And so, um, that’s not really advice that I could recommend to anyone anywhere, um, but at, at, at the time, that is in hindsight, a pretty important move that I made. Um, so I’m, I’m grateful that it worked out because that’s not a guarantee.

Emily (46:49): Yeah. So it sounds like you, you were again, cash flowing, just kind of making it month to month, and yet you had these small investments that you even discounted at the start of our conversation, but, you know, you had the Roth IRA occasional contributions that you had, um, the ownership of a home, which cashflow wise, you know, maybe that’s helpful or maybe it’s not, but eventually over the long term, you can expect some kind of equity from that which you’ve received. So that’s really great. And like you said, um, I think graduate students and PhDs at any stage just have to look frankly at their situation. What’s the real estate market, the rental market, the buying market, what’s the income? What assets do you have? What resources do you have? Like you had your parents you knew that you could at least pitch them on, you know, making an investment in this with you. Um, and just look at all those factors and, you know, keep your mind open as to what might be possible in terms of home ownership or, or renting, whatever it is. Um, I, I don’t sort of dismiss home ownership out of hand for graduate students. It just, like you said, at certain times, certain places, certain people, it can, you know, be a possibility, but it’s a, the stars kind of have to align to make it happen.

Dillon (48:01): Sure. Yeah.

Emily (48:07): That is the end of part 1 of this interview! Tune in next time for part 2 in which we discuss Dillon’s faculty job search and financial transition to Florida State University.

Outro

Emily (48:22): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

How Financial Policies Impact Graduate Student Attrition

December 1, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Connor Ferguson, a postdoc at the University at Buffalo studying how professional development and student success initiatives influence the graduate training environment. While pursuing her PhD in higher education at West Virginia University, Connor worked full-time as a student affairs professional supporting health sciences graduate students, which has given her multiple perspectives on how to support graduate students. Connor and Emily discuss the best practices that universities and programs can implement to reduce graduate student attrition and strengthen the workforce development pipeline, including how to raise stipends and provide for basic needs.

Links mentioned in the Episode

How Financial Policies Impact Graduate Student Attrition

Teaser

Connor (00:00): You don’t want the students to be overwhelmed. You don’t want them to burn out. But at the same time, if they’re not able to make a wage to sustain a healthy living environment, they’re gonna be overwhelmed and they’re gonna burn out.

Introduction

Emily (00:21): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:50): This is Season 22, Episode 8, and today my guest is Dr. Connor Ferguson, a postdoc at the University at Buffalo studying how professional development and student success initiatives influence the graduate training environment. While pursuing her PhD in higher education at West Virginia University, Connor worked full-time as a student affairs professional supporting health sciences graduate students, which has given her multiple perspectives on how to improve the graduate student experience. Connor and I discuss the best practices that universities and programs can implement to reduce graduate student attrition and strengthen the workforce development pipeline, including how to raise stipends and provide for basic needs.

Emily (01:34): If you want to bring one of my live tax workshops to your university next tax season, get in touch with me ASAP! Between now and the end of the year, I’m populating my calendar, especially early February, with in person and remote speaking engagements. My workshops are typically hosted by graduate schools, postdoc offices, and graduate student associations, and sometimes individual departments. Whether you are in a position to make those arrangements or simply want to recommend me, you can get the ball rolling by emailing me at [email protected]. My tax workshops, both live and pre-recorded, are my most popular offering each year because taxes are such a widespread pain point for graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e8/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Connor Ferguson.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:45): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Connor Ferguson. She is a postdoc at the University of Buffalo, and we met last summer 2025 at the Graduate Career Consortium annual meeting, and during the poster session, we got deep into a discussion on grad student stipends and advocacy and Connor’s particular interest in attrition in graduate among graduate students. And Connor told me about this upcoming study that she’s working on. It was just so fascinating. I knew I had to have her on the podcast, so I’m very excited. Connor, welcome to the podcast. Um, and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Connor (03:22): Sure. Uh, thanks Emily. Thank you for having me. So I received both my master’s and doctorate in higher education from West Virginia University. I also have a graduate certificate in university teaching. My doctoral work specifically examined the influence of faculty mentorship on graduate student self-efficacy development, but also while I was pursuing both of those graduate degrees, I worked full-time as a student affairs professional, specifically supporting health sciences graduate students at my institution. Uh, my professional role was to support the graduate education environment through mentoring, strategic recruitment, and the implementation of professional development programming. And during this experience, I formed individual connections with students and I really got to learn about what they loved about graduate education and the research, but also I really learned about what made it a struggle, um, and how I could try to help them. So during that practical experience, I identified areas in which practitioners could shape programming or initiatives to support the needs of the graduate student population. And that objective has been pretty consistent. It’s a consistent theme across all of my work efforts. And I’m currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Buffalo, where our lab focuses on culting-, cultivating and retaining the future STEM workforce through the implementation of some evidence-based practices that emphasize equality of access. And I’m specifically looking at how professional development and student success initiatives influence the graduate student training environment.
Emily (04:57): Those of you watching the video could see that I was just nodding, nodding, nodding, nodding along with everything that Connor just said. I love this like dual or at least like multiple perspectives, um, that you have, you know, personally and professionally on the graduate student population.

How Do Stipends and Benefits Impact Grad Student Attrition?

Emily (05:10): This is amazing. And so as you know, and as all the listeners know, this is a finance podcast. So let’s take what the framing that you just gave all your background, you know, what your lab is currently doing, and let’s talk more specifically about money. So how have you observed or how are you hypothesizing that stipends and benefits and other monetary, you know, things that affect the graduate student population, um, and their own personal finances, how are they contributing to this, um, overall problem of attrition? You know, and you also phrased this as workforce development, right? So broad broadly, workforce development maybe more specifically attrition at the graduate student level.

Connor (05:49): Sure. So, um, at a more general level, research has shown that students choose to withdraw from graduate programs for many reasons, including program fit, uh, personal reasons, departmental issues, but also financial challenges. Um, before I dive fully into the financial component, my professional experience and research is placed in the biomedical and health sciences graduate student realm, of which these programs tend to be on the upper end of those stipend and benefit ranges, um, compared to students in the humanity and social sciences. So just that overarching perspective, I am in the biomedical realm, but overall across disciplines, financial instability is a serious concern for graduate students. So when stipend and benefits don’t support a living wage, students can face a chronic financial stress that impacts both their academic performance and their overall wellbeing. And we see more and more students reporting that they are being paid at, at or near the poverty level. And with some of these graduate programs, they’re also expected to essentially work full-time in the labs that they’re in. So there are limited opportunities for students to pursue additional employment elsewhere. Some programs are also discouraging students from pursuing additional employment. They state that this is because graduate studies and research makes up a full-time commitment. And I can see that coming from a place of care, right? You don’t want the students to be overwhelmed, you don’t want them to burn out, but at the same time, if they’re not able to make a wage to sustain a healthy living environment, they’re gonna be overwhelmed and they’re gonna burn out.

Emily (07:25): Not to mention the international population, right, who are legally barred from having virtually any source of income outside of their stipend.

Connor (07:33): Yes, that’s an incredibly important point. Thank you for bringing that up. So for example, I had spoken with a student who worked full-time as a PhD student, right? But they also worked overnights as an EMT, and they were incredibly exhausted and incredibly tired, and that weaves its way into all aspects of their life. But they felt that they needed to do that in order to support themselves and their family. So when students are discouraged from pursuing supplemental employment but are in need of a supplemental income, they could feel trapped between the institutional expectations and financial survival. And that tension can contribute to burnout and attrition.

Emily (08:17): And I also just wanna say, I mean all, all your points are perfectly well taken, but like I also firmly believe that it’s not just about basic needs and survival, it’s also about having a satisfactory and fulfilling life. Especially if we’re talking about PhDs, like that’s a long time to be living at the poverty level, for example. So like for me, I just wanna encourage everyone listening like, it’s okay also to want more for your financial life than just baseline survival, although that is the discussion that we’re having in certain kinds of programs at certain places,

Connor (08:49): Right. Yeah. Uh, baseline living wage is the bare minimum <laugh>. Um, but unfortunately we do have to start at the bare minimum in some of these discussions, um, in order to get this going. And stipend ranges are really variable across programs, disciplines, institutions. Um, in my previous employment I collected stipend data for comparable institutions because our students were consistently, and if this was good that they were consistently bringing up that the stipend wasn’t enough. Um, oh my gosh, now make, now I’m thinking about why it’s usually student led efforts, but maybe we can loop back to that. Um, I know that there was a broader graduate student effort called PhDstipends.

Emily (09:31): That’s actually my website.

Connor (09:33): Okay, perfect. Well, it’s still ongoing. Um, and that was collected student reported data, so prospective students can check that out to see if the stipend and the, I think they’ll probably connect probably to the MIT living wage calculator.

Emily (09:49): We actually used to link the MIT living wage database, but more recently I could not secure permission from the owners of that database to do so. So it’s no longer there. Although I highly recommend it. I highly recommend visiting the living wage database. I find it to be a very useful resource.

Connor (10:04): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, also when you’re thinking about getting a new job and trying to understand what your salary here versus in a new location, what that all translate to the really helpful resources. I guess another point that I feel, um, I should discuss is that there’s more to the graduate student financial package than just the stipend. Um, a lot of times we forget about the value of the tuition waivers. So for doctoral research assistantships, for many PhD programs, they’ll receive a stipend tuition waiver and health insurance. And that tuition waiver is a substantial amount of money that the student’s not responsible for while they pursue their training. Ultimately though, the stipend, so the take home salary is often not supportive of a living wage. Um, but I myself was not in a stipend supported position, so I feel like I would be really grateful for a tuition waiver. So that’s why that little caveat perspectives in there.

Emily (10:58): Yeah, I definitely find that graduate students feel different ways about this. Um, some put a high value on that tuition waiver or scholarship, whatever the form is, um, because they really are considering, wow, I would be paying that, you know, to pursue that degree. Um, if this wasn’t offered and others are like, this is funny money and it is meaningless to me because whatever the number is, you would pay it for me. So I really just care about the stipend. So I definitely see, you know, those different, um, perspectives there. I wanna actually sort of double click on something that you said a few minutes ago, which is about, um, that the students at West Virginia were coming with their concerns around the stipend to the administration. And that was very helpful to you and your position to hear, you know, all of those concerns and then start doing that research of, okay, what are our, you know, peer programs offering? Are we competitive with them? So I just wanted to reemphasize that to the listeners of like, this is an effective strategy. Like if you have concerns about the stipend that’s being offered, bring it up and get your peers to bring it up at every, you know, reasonable opportunity. Um, especially actually at the prospective student stage. Um, it may not, I mean, hopefully it’ll, you know, enhance your offer that you try to negotiate. Maybe it won’t, but the people who you’re voicing this to are taking notes and they will eventually respond if they’re hearing over and over again that their stipend is just not competitive with other programs.

Connor (12:30): Yeah. And we did in fact, get some feedback once from an applicant who chose to go a different way. And it is really helpful to see that one of the reasons was that the financial package was not comparable to another opportunity because ultimately, uh, graduate programs are seeking to recruit those students. So they want to be competitive. And being vocal on all avenues is how we can create change. Um, if we’re quiet, then the administration either doesn’t know or they’re gonna choose not to know about these challenges.

Why Should Universities Care About Grad Student Attrition?

Emily (13:01): Absolutely. We’ve just spoken quite a bit about the effect of, you know, insufficient stipends or low stipends on graduate students’, um, wellbeing, their ability to progress in their programs and perform well and all of that. Let’s flip the perspective to the university side. Why <laugh>? You know, we, we talked about attrition, we talked about graduate students withdrawing from their programs. Why do universities, uh, care about that? It’s kind of a silly question, but what’s your framing on that?

Connor (13:31): So, universities should be concerned with graduate student attrition at multiple levels. Um, so it can be considered a failure to support the student. It could also be viewed as a disruption to the research enterprise. Um, and it could also demonstrate financial inefficiency within the institution itself. So kind of like three different perspectives. Um, and so my student affairs background leads me to center the individual. So I’ll start here with the, the student perspective. So looking at the student as individuals and supporting them through the attainment of their educational goals and the pursuit of their desired career pathways. And here I’ll emphasize that not all attrition is negative. Sometimes leaving a program is the right choice for the student’s goals, but my research focuses on attrition that occurs because of structural barriers, not personal fit. So when students leave under those conditions, it can reflect a failure of institutional support and could also signal some broader inequities in how we prepare and sustain our students. So from that student affairs perspective, attrition can represent, represent like an unfulfilled promise between the institution and the student.

Emily (14:49): I’m so glad you started with that framing ’cause that’s exactly where I would, um, sit as well. But because I spend so much time there, I’m curious about your other approaches as well to this issue.

Connor (15:00): Sure. So in order to get some stakeholder buy-in, um, it’s really helpful to kind of frame these issues from the broader research enterprise or from the business perspective. So in general, um, graduate students are significant contributors and leaders within the academic research enterprise, uh, both in terms of advancing science within their academic research team, but also as they progress into their future careers. And these students are active members of their research teams. And when research teams as a whole encounter a challenge or a setback, those setbacks can pose a considerable cost to the research institution and their team. So we look at graduate student nutrition as a specific type of challenge to that research progress. And you could also consider more of the ripple effects of graduate student attrition. Um, graduate students become active members and leaders of the broader scientific community or the scientific research community. And so attrition within graduate programs for reasons outside of the student’s personal motivations could impact the quality and viability of the overall research enterprise.

Emily (16:10): That approach to it is something that I’ve become more and more concerned about as the more work that I do in this area. And starting to see that bigger picture of you as you phrased it earlier, workforce developments. Go on. What’s that third way that, uh, that you frame the issue for, for universities?

Connor (16:26): That third way is framing it within the business realm of higher education, um, because much of the United States higher education system functions within a business structure now. So we frame attrition around this concept of waste. And we’re not using waste to devalue the student experience or to devalue the student, but to make that problem legible to those in- institutional decision makers who are viewing this as a business. Um, so in general, supportive doctoral programs requires a significant, uh, commitment of institutional, state and federal resources. So we have a lot of stakeholders, um, at play here, and the costs increase when cases of attrition occur. And so more specifically, training doctoral students requires a substantial investment of many layers. This includes the stipends support, but also through student and faculty recruitment in training students. And also if you consider time as a financial resource, which it should be considered a financial resource. So when a student leaves those resources are partially lost. And university stakeholders can view such attrition as a sign of institutional waste and inefficiency. And we are in a time of tightening budgets and a real pressure on accountability metrics. So attrition then becomes a point of concern specifically related to institutional inefficiency. So I suppose when I talk about attrition as waste, it’s really a call for universities to invest wisely into efforts that promote greater retention. So investing in financial stability, but also mentorship, programming and supportive climates. Those are effective strategies to yield positive training outcomes and reduce financial inefficiency.

Emily (18:17): And the way that, you know, you approach that really is sort of turning around saying to the institutions, there is a degree of waste happening here. As you said, it’s not because of the, the fit issues that aside, maybe people leave programs because their career goes no goals, no longer aligned. That’s that’s totally fine, that’s a separate issue. Um, but if you see that you’re not, uh, that money is being wasted, uh, because you’re not supporting the graduate student population sufficiently in x, y, z areas, well address those x, y, z areas, reduce the waste, like win win, win win for everybody. Right. Um, so I’m so glad that you took the time to explain like the, sort of those different perspectives, um, on the issue and, and put that term waste, you know, in, in some context for the listener. So I appreciate that. So when we met last summer, uh, you were telling me that you were putting in a grant and that you have, um, some ongoing and also some upcoming studies around this issue. So can you tell us more about, um, what you’re planning?

Other Attrition Related Research: Lab Switching and Master’s Degrees as Career Exploration

Connor (19:17): Sure. So the study that we spoke about, uh, last summer was specifically about the phenomenon of switching labs. Um, sometimes referred to as changing mentors depending on the discipline and whether it’s bench work or not. So in my study, I’m proposing that the biomedical sciences education community specifically just to frame the balance of my case view, switching labs as a type of attrition to be studied and prevented when appropriate, uh, to promote positive student outcomes and support the significant financial investments made when matriculating doctoral students into pro- um, programs. It’s a little different than fully withdrawing from the program, but we have less knowledge about switching labs. We know that it, it can increase the time to degree. So at a, you know, far back lens, we can see that an increased time to degree means more financial commitment. Um, but we don’t formally know about the phenomenon. And so we don’t know about the factors that influence the decision to choose to switch labs. And we also don’t know about the corresponding impact on the training experience for both the student and the faculty member, but also training outcomes and the overall institutional financial commitment. So I’m implementing a mixed methods approach to capture institutional metrics, but also the student and faculty narratives of lab switching.

Emily (20:46): Anecdotally on my end, I remember from graduate school that some lab switching preceded withdrawal, right? It sometimes the issues can be resolved by changing mentors and sometimes it’s just indicative of graduate school not being a good fit for that, um, individual. So just from my own like observations and experience, I can see that this is definitely merits, you know, further investigation. Would you like to share anything else about other sort of questions you have, um, or that you’re trying to ask that are cir- circling around, you know, the topic we’ve discussed?

Connor (21:20): Yeah, I have, I have one that I can share about. One study that we’ve wrapped up and we’re working on submitting a manuscript at this time is examining master’s programs specifically, um, with students that seek out master’s programs as precursors to professional or doctoral level degree programs and students viewing those as strengths to build their application resume. But they’re also perceiving those as significant financial investments into the opportunity to pursue an additional graduate degree. So we’re looking to understand maybe what can we do to, uh, supplement some training that these students are seeking at the master’s level within their undergraduate programming, such that they might not need to make such a significant financial investment. Um, a lot of the times a master’s degree is necessary, um, or important towards their career goals, but for those students that were in our particular study, it may not have been the most financially necessary decision. And ultimately we want our students to be financially stable. It’s better all around for their productivity, their wellbeing in this uncertain job market and uncertain economic climate. So we’re just looking to see what interventions can be done at the undergraduate level to maybe help students go straight to where they want to go instead of using master’s programs as career exploration tools.

Emily (22:52): Absolutely. This is a population that I’m also highly interested in, and whenever I get the opportunity to teach rising or prospective graduate students, I absolutely relish it because so much trouble financially that graduate students get into, you know, years into a PhD program. A lot of that could be headed off, um, earlier if they understood the culture of different programs better or if they did, you know, um, weigh finances maybe more heavily among the factors when they were choosing their graduate program or if they had attempted to negotiate or, or there’s a lot of different ways that that could play out. Um, but I think oftentimes prospective graduate students kind of related what you were saying as like using the masters as, um, a tool for, you know, further career, you know, further educational attainment, um, down the line. Sometimes undergraduate students, um, aren’t yet making the best decisions around. They don’t understand the context and the meaning of all these numbers that are being thrown around in front of them, um, yet in a way that they will start to appreciate multiple years down the line. So the more we can get information in front of them and context in front of them, the earlier the better in my opinion.

Commercial

Emily (24:09): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2025. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2025 tax season starting in January 2026, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

What Steps Can Universities Take to Reduce Attrition?

Emily (25:27): Okay. So going back kind of to the beginning of our conversation, um, and also, you know, the, the studies that you’ve been talking about, what ways do you, what steps do you think universities and programs could take to reduce attrition among their graduate student populations to reduce this waste, you know, aspect of their expenditures? Um, this doesn’t have to be super well supported by evidence yet, but, you know, drawing on your professional expertise and your observations, what are your thoughts? What are some best practices?

Connor (25:57): My thoughts might be like big dream ideas that would require a lot, a lot of work, but I do think that reducing graduate student attrition would require a multifaceted approach. So one that would support students before they enter graduate school. So prospective graduate students, uh, one that provides strong onboarding once they arrive into their graduate programs, and then one that focuses on interventions when challenges arise. So we had just kind of started talking about this, so I’ll start, I’ll really dive into preparing before graduate school. So some graduate student attrition happens because students realize mid grad program that the degree doesn’t align with their goals. And that could be seen as a gap in earlier career preparation, which is not necessarily the fault of the student, but it is definitely an area in which institutions can target interventions. So how can, right, we kind of spoke about this, how can institutions educate undergrads about the variety of careers available with a baccalaureate degree or about the pathways that would necessitate a graduate degree? So I personally pursued a master’s degree right out of undergrad because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. And I was like, I’ll just take out loans. And I, it’s not, I would say it wasn’t the most financially responsible decision I’ve ever made. Uh, specifically because I used the master’s program as a career exploration tool. Um, I stand by the program, I’m happy where I am now. It led me to my PhD program, it led me to my research, it worked out. But I am drowning in student loan debt. And I do feel that this is a problem that other students face as well. And that personal experience shapes how I view career exploration at the undergraduate level. So what can we be doing at the undergrad level to appropriately educate students on the values and purpose of graduate degrees as they relate to their broader goals?

Emily (27:58): I’m sure you’re absolutely aware, but you know, this issue is not an individual issue only, it’s not a university level issue only. It’s now like in the spotlight for the federal government with the changes that have just been implemented to the federal student loan program.

Connor (28:12): And students are anxious about that. Students are uncertain if they’ll be able to pursue their graduate programs or continue their graduate programs. It’s just we don’t need more question mark, question marks in an otherwise stressful time for students..

Emily (28:28): And the financial implications are gonna become stronger, right? For, you know, people who have to access the private loan market instead of being able to use federal loans, et cetera, et cetera, interest rates, repayment options, like there’s just gonna be even more weight on this decision. So it’s very timely <laugh> that you’re looking at this. Yeah.

Connor (28:48): So that was focusing at the undergraduate level, right? Because if we can reduce the number of students who realize mid grad program that this wasn’t the pathway for them, we could also be saving both the students and institution the time and the resources. But most of my like passion projects, my efforts and research tend to examine the onboarding programming of graduate students like orientation, um, because I’m particularly interested in strengthening mentor mentee relationships and the graduate student training experience. So structured onboarding efforts can help normalize graduate student expectations and also prepare students for the transition to this new environment. And these programs are more and should be more than just presenting logistics, uh, and instead provide opportunities to help students be successful in graduate studies and beyond. And so these are perfect places to begin exposing students to resources that will help them, like topics around financial literacy or, you know, advertising podcasts like these during orientation. It would require consistent reminders throughout their training that these resources and support systems exist. Because I know students experience an information overload when they start their program, but being aware of these resources early can be so beneficial because then you’ll know where to look when a challenge arises. Um, it’d be nice if you were prepared in advance, but I think many of us seek out resources when we need, when we’re in a time of need.

Emily (30:21): Um, and I’ll just put a plug in there that, I mean, ideally during orientation, yes, graduate students would be introduced to their, uh, financial wellness offices, which I don’t know, they aren’t always called that they might be housed in financial aid or other areas around the university, oftentimes in, um, student affairs or student services. But somewhere on your campus, there are people who can help you with your financial matters that arise. Not just taking out student loans like you might think that’s all financial aid is therefore, but these offices do many, many other things. Um, and so in case you didn’t hear it anywhere else, access your financial wellness office at your university, they will probably be delighted to see a graduate student because they normally see a lot of undergrads. Um, but the more, like we were talking about earlier, you know, the more you bring up financial issues to administrators, well the more you and your peers visit the financial wellness office, the more they will start to pay attention to your population and your specific questions.

Connor (31:13): Absolutely. It raises awareness to other institutional leaders as well of the significance of those programs and departments. Um, looking at it like a customer service base, right? You see a rise in customers, let’s pour more resources into that support service. Um, and those professionals, like you said, would love to see a student. They’re there for a reason. So let’s use those resources

Emily (31:35): Using that same framing of like, okay, we, you know, we, we talked about, um, graduate student attrition as a waste issue for universities. You just talked about seeing students through certain offices, you know, maybe, um, could in one light, view students as customers to their office, to their small business within the university. Um, hey, go use those resources more because that will bring more resources to that office that serves you, um, and your peers. I actually make the same argument about basic needs. I wonder if you agree with this that like, go use that food pantry on campus if assuming you are eligible for it. Don’t think someone else needs this more than me. No, you are the one who needs it. <laugh>. Go there and use it and then they’ll get more resources and there’ll, there’ll be a bigger pie available for everybody who needs it.

Connor (32:21): No, absolutely. I, food pantries are so significant and I understand why students might not wanna go to a food pantry. I do think there’s a, an unfortunate negative stigma surrounding food pantries or like students can feel embarrassed is what I’ve heard. It’s there to help, it’s there for you. It’s there as a resource. I’ve seen some institutions do some more creative approaches to try to alleviate some of those feelings of embarrassment, right? Like, so you don’t necessarily need to sign your name or log in to use the food pantry. So it’s just removing some barriers to make those things easier, uh, to access.

Connor (32:58): And I actually think that ties into my interventions when a challenge occurs idea. So starting big picture here, attrition can follow an unresolved conflict. So there could be conflict, um, with a mentor within a research team. Um, attrition can also follow conflicts that lead to personal or financial challenges. So an institution can make a real difference by focusing on these interventions. So in- interventions that would support students in a financial crisis, right? Beyond increasing stipends could include robust leave of absence policies that are easily shared with students so they know that they’re there before a crisis occurs. Um, or expansive food security services. So food pantries that are accessible to students that are on various points of campus, uh, food pantries that are inclusive of a variety of dietary needs, um, and food pantries that are responsive to changes in the landscape that impacts food security benefits. So when we see a rise based on benefit changes, um, food pantries that rise to that occasion to be accessible to the students that are no longer receiving other support services that they were previously receiving.

Emily (34:14): Yeah, I don’t think we need to talk around it. So we’re <laugh> recording this episode on November 13th, 2025. So, uh, the, the federal shutdown has, has just ended and SNAP benefits, um, allegedly have been or will be restored, but it’s obviously the timelines are different on like a state by state basis. So the SNAP benefits should be coming back, uh, or, or have been back depending on where you are. Um, but absolutely in total agreement. So like I’ve of course have been thinking a lot about SNAP, um, supplemental nutrition assistance program of food stamps, um, of course during this shutdown, especially as it loomed, you know, towards the beginning of November. Um, and I was also thinking about how some universities, like I believe at least in some University of California campuses, I don’t know if it’s like all of them, they have people on campus who help students enroll in SNAP benefits. Like they know that enough of their population qualifies, that they have dedicated people at least periodically, um, who help students enroll. So that is another one of those, like it’s, it’s not necessarily responding in a crisis, but it’s, it’s preventing a crisis from occurring by there being more visibility around, hey, there’s, you know, federal, state, local benefits that graduate students may qualify for. Let’s help you, let’s help you get past that barrier of paperwork. And maybe that barrier of, um, shame or like self-selecting out by just kind of normalizing it. I mean, okay, I don’t love that graduate students in some places are paid so little that they do qualify for SNAP on a regular basis. Like let’s, that is a problem. Um, given that that is the situation, it is helpful to get them past the paperwork hurdle, um, of, of that, you know, particular being able to enroll in that benefit. So anyway, is there anything more that you’d like to say about like accessing federal, state, local benefits as a graduate student or how universities can tie in with these other resources that are available?

Connor (36:06): Yeah, I mean I think a huge factor is just educating, like you mentioned the students one, that they’re eligible for these services and two, that it’s not bad to use these services. Like they’re there for you, they’re there to support you, and we have limited social services that are available to us compared to other countries. And so we should really be using the ones that we do have because as we’ve seen, we can lose those very quickly. But as institutions, let’s educate our students because they might not be aware of these resources and services available so they can pursue those if needed.

Emily (36:39): One other resource I wanted to bring up that you didn’t explicitly mention, but was in kind of the theme that you just brought up of like, you know, sort of helping in a time of crisis. I mean, I totally agree about the leave of absence policies. It also doesn’t have to be crisis. We can talk about parental leave medical. Like, you know, all, all under that category. Um, but a lot of universities have started offering emergency loans or emergency grants. I mean, the grants is the most helpful <laugh> thing there, but sometimes it’s in the form of a loan. Um, this is outside of, you know, the federal student loan system or whatever. This is something that the universities themselves provide. Um, it’s a growing trend that I’ve seen across, you know, the financial wellness, um, operations at universities. And so that’s another resource that again, is a best practice universities should be providing and making it obvious to students when they qualify or what kinds of things qualify for, you know, being able to take out those grants or loans. Um, so that, yeah. And, and students also being more aware of this, like on your side. Yeah. If you’re experiencing something and it’s going to affect your ability to perform in your graduate program, just reach out and see what your university can do for you. It might be something like a grant or a loan.

Connor (37:44): Yeah, I think the key factor there is that students sometimes need to reach out to learn about these resources. So I suppose in a preemptive intervention is to just kind of really make sure those resources we tell them to students right out the gate. So we don’t lose any students who encounter a challenge and then just get sucked into this, this bubble of trying to navigate the challenge that they don’t ask their student affairs professionals. But I agree it was something that my previous employer was starting up, um, like a, a grant fund for students in emergency need, uh, before I left the position. And I think it’s, it’s a wonderful resource when our students are aware of it.

Emily (38:23): Anything else you’d like to add on this topic of, you know, um, once a student is, is a continuing student in the university, um, best practices for helping them navigate through financial challenges?

Connor (38:35): I think there is tremendous strength in being open in the dialogue surrounding financial challenges. Uh, we see this with successful, you know, student efforts that lead to stipend increases. Just building that sense of community amongst your peers, um, offers the chance to learn from others about what they’re doing, but also provides opportunities for collective action. So I think really focusing on open dialogue is just, it’s, it’s a gift and we should be leveraging it.

Emily (39:05): Hmm. Yes, I’ve absolutely heard that from other interviewees who have been involved with unions or involved with unionization movements or not even an official union situation. Just as you said, collective action, Hey, talking with your peers and bringing up financial concerns to your department chair and like maybe there is something that that person can do or that they can forward onto, you know, the person of the chain from them. Um, it doesn’t have to have a formal name like a union to be helpful. Um, like you said, it starts with building community. So yeah, thank you for adding that. Well, Connor, it’s been so wonderful to talk with you. I’ve learned a lot from this conversation, so thank you so much for being willing to come on the podcast after just meeting me one time briefly at a conference. I really appreciate it.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (39:46): Um, I’d like to ask you the question that I end all my interviews with, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Connor (39:58): My best financial advice for early career PhDs I think will stem from what we just spoke about, about open dialogue, uh, but specifically being proactive and transparent around conversations about salaries and benefits, which I’m sure people hear a lot, but it’s for a reason. So I think a lot of confusion and anxiety around career decisions. I’m, I’ve experienced this myself, I’m experiencing it now as I looked to transition to other jobs about, it comes from this secretive nature about money that we’ve been taught in the past. And we often don’t know what a fair salary looks like for our field and what benefits we should expect, but also what benefits we could ask for in addition to a package. So it’s just incredibly important in an uncertain job market where so many are also managing student loan debt and that lack of information really creates a sense of vulnerability.

Connor (40:54): We also tell students to follow their passion, and I, I love that, but passion alone won’t pay rent and it won’t pay off the student loans. So hopefully emphasizing financial transparency will allow students to make career choices that will be fulfilling, but also sustainable. And we are seeing some employers being more transparent upfront with pay ranges, but we’re also seeing that many still aren’t. So graduate and early career professionals, um, are kind of left to scavenge for this information when employers could easily bridge this gap by providing that information upfront. So my advice is to don’t, don’t be afraid to ask, um, ask about salary ranges early in the interview process. Uh, talk with peers about what they’re earning, be open about what you are earning. That way we can normalize these conversations and we can collectively push back against this culture of salary secrecy that is really creating a disadvantage for folks that are starting out.

Emily (41:58): Absolutely. Who does this culture of secrecy benefit? Who is perpetuating it? Um, exactly examine that. I actually, I’ll point listeners to a recent interview I did with Dr. Gabrielle, uh, Filip-Crawford of recovering academics where we talked around the same theme of, um, openness around financial, you know, salaries, benefits, all those kinds of things as well as, you know, you just used the word sustainability and in the light of like our broader conversation around workforce development, like we as a world country state, et cetera, we need people who are highly trained in these specialized areas to perform work functions that are beneficial to society. And so it just makes sense for all of us to be concerned about people persisting in those career paths and ultimately getting to the place where they can have a great job where they’re, you know, contributing, using their training and so forth and, you know, benefiting our society as a whole.

Emily (42:55): And so these earlier investments like we’ve been talking about throughout this, um, interview, um, only ultimately help towards, you know, sustaining that pipeline and getting people to that end result that we all benefit from. So I love this framing around how do we invest just a little bit more to get these people to the finish line of their PhD and into, you know, the career that they desired and they went to training for. So I love it. Thank you so much Connor for agreeing to come on the podcast and it was great to talk with you.

Connor (43:23): Yeah, thank you for having me.

Outro

Emily (43:35): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

The Importance of Financial Student Services to Graduate Students on Stipends

October 6, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Zach Taylor, a repeat podcast guest with extensive expertise in financial wellness in higher education. Zach explains why financial peer mentoring programs have become so popular at colleges and universities and why peers are not always the appropriate people to provide this service. Zach and Emily discuss why colleges and universities provide financial wellness support and how it’s beneficial to both students and institutions. Finally, Zach shares how grad/prof students, and particularly those who are non-traditional and/or experiencing financial insecurity, can access university and community resources.

Links mentioned in the Episode

The Importance of Financial Student Services to Graduate Students on Stipends

Teaser

ZW (00:00): They’re realizing that a basic needs covered student finishes on time, they’re engaged, they network, they pursue those pre-professional career opportunities so they get a job after graduation. It is in these students’ best interests, therefore should be in the institution’s best interest.

Introduction

Emily (00:28): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:56): This is Season 22, Episode 4, and today my guest is Dr. Zach Taylor, a repeat podcast guest with extensive expertise in financial wellness in higher education. Zach explains why financial peer mentoring programs have become so popular at colleges and universities and why peers are not always the appropriate people to provide this service. Zach and I discuss why colleges and universities provide financial wellness support and how it’s beneficial to both students and institutions. Finally, Zach shares how graduate and professional students, and particularly those who are non-traditional and/or experiencing financial insecurity, can access university and community resources.

Emily (01:40): You’re probably listening to this podcast because you’re interested in improving your own practice of personal finance, and you want to learn the best PhD-specific strategies. Well, you don’t have to listen through the entire episode archive to do so. Instead, go to PFforPhDs.com/advice/ and enter your name and email there. You’ll receive a document that contains short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast to my final question regarding my guests’ best financial advice. The document is updated with each new episode release. Plus, you’ll be subscribed to my mailing list to receive all the latest updates there. Again, that URL was PFforPhDs.com/advice/. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Zach Taylor.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:44): I am delighted to have on the podcast today a repeat guest, Dr. Zach Taylor. He was actually first on the podcast all the way back in season five, episodes 10 and 11, and it’s been such a pleasure to know Zach over the past more than five years, six plus years. I think now we’re both part of this, um, higher education financial wellness alliance community. So very concerned about, um, financial wellness in higher education. I’m there to kind of remind people, Hey, like you have graduate students on your campus too. Um, Zach does that as well because he has a PhD and in our prior episode we talked a lot about Zach’s background, childhood, um, his choice of where to attend graduate school, um, how to make that work financially, which was really challenging, high cost of living city, and lots of detail there about Zach’s background. So Zach, I would love for you to catch us up on what’s been going on for you professionally, um, personally as well, if you want in the last, you know, five plus years since our previous interview.

ZW (03:43): Absolutely. Yeah. I mean since, uh, 2020 nothing has changed, right? So I’m the exact same person doing the exact same thing, of course not. Um, yeah, so I, you know, after the, shortly after the interview came out, I graduated and earned my PhD, finished up that work, began working for a guarantee agency in doing communications consulting for minority serving institutions in the south. And uh, shortly afterwards took a tenure track position at the University of Southern Mississippi as an assistant professor of educational research and did a lot of financial wellness and financial education stuff as part of that position. And very recently I took a role that I think is really well suited to my personal background in childhood. And some of the things you talked about with me last time I chatted with you is I just started as the inaugural Director of Research and Strategic initiatives for John Burton, advocates for Youth.

ZW (04:43): So we are a nonprofit in California focused on improving the lives of foster youth and homeless youth through policy advocacy research, some direct service, making sure that every single little pot of money and every single opportunity is afforded to foster youth and homeless youth. And as a lot of folks know, California is really the epicenter for a lot of very inclusive policies, as may have been very well publicized by a certain governor of California very recently. But also there’s lots of inequity here. There are many, many foster youth. California is one of the leading, uh, states in the country, unfortunately in number of foster youth, homeless youth. And so it’s really a pleasure to be part of this organization and feel like I’m really nerding out for good <laugh> and serving other people. Um, so really happy to be back and to get caught up. And lots has changed, I’m sure for your listenership as well. But really happy to be here and chat with you again.

Peer Financial Mentoring Programs

Emily (05:44): Yes, that sounds so delightful. Oh, amazing. So we decided to focus our interview today around peer financial mentoring, which is something. We’ve never covered on the podcast before, <laugh>. So I’m really excited about this because it’s only something that I learned about through my attendance annually of the higher education financial wellness summit. Um, I noticed that a lot of financial wellness and financial education programs in schools across the country had these peer mentoring programs, but my kind of impression about it was that it’s mostly used by undergrads, mostly for undergrads. And so I’m aware of it, but I don’t necessarily talk about it that much or pay attention to it. But I think that this conversation may change my ideas about that. So can you tell me like what these programs are and like why they’re so popular?

ZW (06:30): Yes, and so over the past 20 years, higher education funding models and what is funding and formula and where the money comes from has drastically changed. And you really are seeing a rise in student employment and student employment opportunities. A lot of folks who listen to this podcast may have been federal, federal work study students way back in the day, right? Emily, you’re included in that. So that was at least the initial kind of foray into very kinda wide student employment in higher ed. But it’s kind of got this coinciding parallel development where there’s a high impact practice and very engaging successful practice of immersing students in a campus community, employing them at their school, making sure that they’re developing professional connections with their peers and with professionals who admissions financial aid, recreational sports, all sorts of stuff. But the parallel development has been this slow winnowing and cutting away of state appropriations to higher education where institutions are a little less likely now to pay somebody full-time with a bachelor’s or master’s degree to do something on campus.

ZW (07:47): And that re-envisioning on that position really has been relegated and delegated to student employees. So you’re seeing a lot of times now, especially on very large four year campuses, students doing the work that used to be done by a full-time credential, bachelor’s degree holding employee. That has been a very big shift, and especially I can speak much more to financial aid offices. It never used to be the case where a student’s financial aid paperwork was being processed by a peer, especially a peer before they graduated because of the fi-, you know, the financial security and sensitivity that information. But colleges, universities, community colleges are not in the financial point and space to be able to start saying, students can and cannot do this work. We need students to kind of do a lot of the work administratively that we do. And so that has naturally just trickled into mentoring programs and specifically peer mentoring programs of all different shapes and sizes.

ZW (08:47): I remember when I was an undergraduate, I went to an institution that I knew only really had one mentoring program. It was a summer bridge program. It was for first generation and low income students that eventually fed into Trio, the federal Trio program for low income and kind of marginalized that promise students now go to a typical college or university. It’s much more prominent the four year schools and the community colleges. But there’s peer mentoring for academic major, for extracurricular activities, for uh, for, for sports, for um, uh, social clubs and affinity groups. There are so many different types of mentoring programs because colleges and universities and institutions saw benefit of connecting peers to peers, but it’s also outta that financial necessity. So as everything in some ways kind of happens first at the undergrad level, as the financial pressures are hitting graduate schools, professional schools, law schools, medical schools, they’ll, they’re also seeing, Hey, wait a minute, a lot of these folks have a lot to offer their peers. Let’s start creating peer-to-peer mentoring programs.

ZW (09:54): And so now there are dozens of these peer-to-peer, specifically financial mentoring programs embedded in medical schools and in law schools where somebody, it’s very common tale. You might have a double major whose, uh, anatomy, physiology and business and they eventually wanna become a doctor. They go to med school, they’ve got that little bit of business background. They learned about taxation, about personal accounting, personal finance, and they’re pretty well suited and know a little bit more about money management than peers do. Who becomes a peer mentor of people who can be late twenties, thirties, forties. We know the graduate school population is very age diverse, but if you have a subject matter expertise and knowledge, you can mentor a peer across age and across difference. You’re seeing a lot more of that at the graduate school level. So that is kind of the trajectory of where peer mentoring has come from. Used to be very kind of strictly kind of social and academic. And now it’s really apparent in the financial wellness community and it’s trickled up to graduate schools now.

Emily (11:01): That’s fascinating. I was not aware that that pattern was also within like those professional schools. And it, it does make a lot of sense to me, especially if we, and I, I think this is true at a lot of . At any rate, if we saw the genesis of that from the financial aid offices, because there’s a lot of student loan counseling and so forth, very important area that would apply very well within the professional schools as well. A little bit different among funding graduate students, but still there’s a great need for it, even if the subject that you might talk about is like slightly different. So thank you so much for telling us like that, like history about it. But is this a universal good? Does everybody get exactly what they’re looking for out of a peer mentoring program? Or are there some like downsides to administering the help in this way?

Downsides of Peer Financial Mentoring Programs

ZW (11:43): Yeah, so one, if you are a peer mentor, that inherently implies that you are not a professional in the space, right? You’re a very well-educated, maybe well-intentioned peer, but you do not know everything for everybody. And there has been many documented cases at the graduate and undergraduate level where a peer gives some sort of financial advice. And we see in these kind of areas of taboo topics of areas that peers shouldn’t talk with peers about things like specific investments, gambling, betting, you know, things like that where it’s, it’s you should really be talking to a licensed professional at a financial institution about this kind of stuff. I go real professional about this. So one is a little bit of danger is when you unleash the peers who knows what information they unleash, whether it’s pre-professional, professional or otherwise, sometimes the information can be misleading or wrong or sometimes very kind of financially dangerous. So there’s also that point.

ZW (12:43): There’s also, especially at the graduate school level you just mentioned, you know, with those students that may have very different financial circumstances and maybe, maybe you are a fully funded student and, and maybe you don’t have, uh, the, the loan debt to navigate, but some students who raise their hand and want peer mentoring have such dire, specific timely needs that might be so tied to basic needs to a medical bill that has to be paid. That a a rent check has to clear that it’s so important that their issue is solved in a timely manner, otherwise they’re really at risk of of stopping out, dropping out or worse. And at that point then, do you want to put that person in that crisis situation in that very traumatic moment in front of a peer who may not be prepared to deliver trauma informed care? Are they professional enough? Do they have the resources necessary to really delegate services to someone who is in a crisis moment, is in a traumatic moment? And so we’ve seen a little bit more of this, especially at the graduate school level of students who are not fully funded. And this is particularly the case in, in medical schools where some of the medical school debt, we, we know hundreds of thousands of dollars, right?

ZW (14:14): So someone’s approaching graduation and I was talking with a colleague about this at a major public flagship in the Midwest as a medical school student. They were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and they were coming with a very dire problem related to credit card debt. They started racking up the student loan debt. That number became scary for them. So they started racking up the credit card debt and they came to a peer financial mentoring session with a peer to talk about how to consolidate $80,000 of credit card debt across six or seven different cards. And they were looking at still graduating with, you know, a little over a quarter a million dollars of student loan debt. Now that gravity, the weight of that problem and the issue and all of the very long-term ramifications it has, that’s where is this the best way to serve graduate students is by connecting with a peer? Especially when you know the earning potential of someone coming out of some graduate programs, especially in the harder sciences and law, you know, you know how to manage your money, invest well, you can be out of debt in five to 10 to 15 years very easily and beyond the track to upper middle class or or or higher lifestyle.

ZW (15:32): It becomes a little bit more of a problem with graduate students who are in the social sciences and the humanities, right? So thinking like your English PhD, it might be a very, you know, stereotypical example. What do you do with a PhD in English kind of thing? A la Avenue Q, right? What do you do with a degree in English? And at the certain point, do you wanna have somebody who is potentially racking up tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt going to graduate school knowing that the earning potential of that student is much, much lower? Does a peer understand that career trajectory? It’s a very different series of tips and, and advice and counseling you give someone when the entry point into the labor market is, is gonna inherently be much, much lower, at least initially than somebody who’s majoring in a STEM field or a financial field or a law or a legal field. So you can see how you start sketching out a few of the scenarios that I’ve talked to folks about and you can really kind of begin to question great intention, great idea to connect peers with peers, especially at the graduate school level. ’cause you may be, you know, graduate schools might have more adult experience, they’d be a little bit more knowledgeable on the flip side, adults can have even more dire, even more emergency type financial situations. Do you wanna put a peer in that spot? I don’t know if it’s best practice, but schools are doing it.

Emily (16:57): Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve made some of the same like observations like, wow, this financial situation or issue that you’ve come to me with and I don’t really even do coaching. Um, this is just people who communicate with me. It’s like, this is so above my pay grade <laugh>. Like, you need, you need debt counseling or you need a bankruptcy consideration or you know, there’s, it really can escalate in the financial realm. And so I’m wondering now have you seen programs, do they have a way for peers to escalate cases? Like, hey, you really need to talk to the staff member who is my supervisor because this is now beyond the realm of my training or life experience.

ZW (17:39): Yeah, so this is a, this is much better developed from what I can tell at the undergraduate level. But here’s the undergraduate version and we can kind of transpose to graduate level is there’s got to be that trusted adult who is the trainer of these students to know, here’s the clear dividing line. If someone in your mentoring session crosses this line, here’s where you go with this issue. Many stories we’ve heard at the undergraduate level where we are triaging with a case worker or a social worker on the issue that you’re having, we are gonna connect you to a financial institution. We’re gonna connect you to someone in legal at our institution. ’cause we think this is actually potentially a crime that you may be discussing, committing related to your finances. So it could be very serious, very, very quickly.

Costs of Hiring Professional Financial Advisors for University Students

ZW (18:25): At the graduate level. Here is what I’m hearing is kind of a little bit of the problem is that typically a financial counselor, like a really professional credential person, fill in the blank about their hourly rate. I mean typically, and this is kind of what colleges and universities that I’ve work with have kind of found is if they wanted to hire and vend this out as a third party, if they wanted to have somebody kind of full-time to be a personal financial counselor for graduate students, something along 250 to $300 an hour times the number of graduate students you have times the number of hours they may work a week, it very quickly becomes very unaffordable. And then you think to yourself, okay, well how many segregated and unsegregated fees are part of this program? And there’s this whole kind of rhetoric around tacking on schools, tacking on fees for every single bit and it becomes less understandable for graduate students who are enrolling about what their financial aid may and may not cover. And what am I responsible for now and I’m not gonna get paid for the first two months of my assistantship. How do I cover these fees that are due in the first day of classes? Things like that. So schools are a little bit hesitant at the sticker shock of how much it does cost to hire professional financial advisors to work as part of kind of a, a graduate program.

ZW (19:48): And so that’s one issue that I, I think over time, especially with financial value transparency, which is a, a really current hot button issue in financial aid as well as gainful employment colleges and universities, especially at the graduate level where the student loan debt or some programs is. So high institutions need to report the indebtedness, the loan default rates, all sorts of things to the federal government for, you know, kind of basic accountability measures. As those accountability measures are even more scrutinized in the coming years, I think those graduate programs are eventually gonna come around to maybe this is a worthwhile expense, maybe if it, if it helps out with our default rate, if it helps our students be able to better manage their student loans so we don’t have this level of indebtedness upon graduation.

ZW (20:45): Is it selfish? Yes. Because the schools want their metrics to shine, they wanna maintain accreditation. I think down the road colleges will make the investment, but I think we’re just at the cusp right now of the, of the kind of mass accountability for graduate school programs. And one thing I wanted to add on is University of Chicago was a, is a very prominent example of this. Right now they are freezing admission into many graduate programs because of the cost and the indebtedness and the way that it’s really impacting some of those accountability measures. Now one solution is freezing the admission of those programs. The other solution might be though these pure financial mentoring groups and these professional financial counselors that could be embedded in graduate programs to do a little better job mitigating the impact of how expensive graduate school can be.

Emily (21:41): Yeah. As you were speaking, I started thinking, is it the responsibility of these universities to help <laugh> the students with their finances? I mean that’s something that goes to the core of what my business is, right? And what we do in our, you know, HEFWA community. But as you were just saying, the argument is there, it’s because the schools already have a vested interest in how these students’ finances turn out because of the federal loan programs. So a little bit less relevant for the PhDs, but I think it bleeds over into that area as well. Um, and I’m curious what you think about the changes that have now occurred with the one big beautiful bill act and the lifetime and annual limits on student loan, um, acquisition. At least that’ll be phased in over the next few years. Um, is that what you were speaking to in like this, you know, increased era of accountability?

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act & Graduate Student Loan Borrowing

ZW (22:27): Absolutely. There’s gonna be breaks that are pumped <laugh> on graduate student loan borrowing. There’s just going to be, and and that is why initially there’s kind of these two things happening at once. As the federal government looks at graduate programs and looks at the indebtedness of some graduates, how much they’re actually earning, how many times they’re defaulting on student loans or missing payments or requesting forbearance, whatever the case is, there’s this rise of the private student loan industry that is really going to come after graduate students. And it’s timely that you asked about this because I was talking with a financial institution that shall not be named two weeks ago and they were looking at the readability and comprehensiveness of their loan packages and offerings to graduate students because everyone is getting ready in the financial industry to swoop in and take over where the federal government has said basically, we’re gonna wipe our hands a little bit of this and kind of get out of this industry.

ZW (23:29): So one piece of advice I think that’s really, really, really critical for people pursuing graduate school is first and foremost you get that full ride and you really understand what that full ride pays for always the best deal, right? Don’t pay that stuff back, don’t take out loans that is the best, but if you’re really passionate, you wanna do it, you can’t get the full ride funding. You are going to have to learn to navigate a bit of the private loan sector and it’s gonna look very, very different than the federal student loan portfolio. And that’s one thing that, and ideally I know it’s gonna be on your radar and college and universities are gonna have to provide the education to prospective graduate students to say, your parents, your friends who might have gone to graduate school 10, 15 years ago, you’re playing different ballgame. Here are their financial options available to you. Here’s the best information we can give you right now as chaotic as some federal policy making may be right now, this is as it stands today and y’all make the best choice you can. And so I think there’s gonna be a whole nother layer of knowledge that prospective graduate students will need to understand the next couple years to make it affordable, get the best deal they can and not get taken advantage of by the private loan industry, which we know can be very predatory in nature.

Emily (24:57): Yeah, so many changes and so scary. But you know what? Student loans have been scary for people even through the federal system. And so that was, that was a broken system in need of reform as well. So we’re trying something new here and everybody’s just trying to shift and do the best that they can.

ZW (25:11): Yeah, I totally agree. And that’s actually a little bit of the, the silver lining if you can find one in the big beautiful bill is that the borrowing is going to be throttled and it’s going to inherently force people to make decisions that may not be best for their immediate educational aspirations, but are probably going to protect them financially a little bit more in the long run. Which is, it is great for, for graduate school folks because you know, so many graduate degrees are so specialized and a lot of times you, you really can’t land that dream job that is exactly what your specialty was, right? So you find yourself working in kind of disparate fields and leveraging the soft skills and other kind of competencies that you developed through graduate studies in any field, which makes people crazy employable as it is. But you’re always kind of repurposing yourself for different kinds of work in, in some ways that really does force for good or bad people to make very reasoned planned decisions on degrees and career field. People will think twice about taking out that big loan for a degree in a very niche field. And that is probably, probably good for people. It’s probably gonna be a positive for the indebtedness that folks graduated with and a better opportunity for broadly colleges and universities to do a better job of preparing students for careers and saying, you’re entering this field, you’ve made this decision, you are better aware of the career opportunities. And I think colleges and universities, especially graduate programs, will be better equipped to provide support, I think. I think it’s over. Could be, could be seen as a good thing.

Emily (27:11): Yeah, I’m just thinking that the other community that I’m part of is the graduate career consortium. So that is people who work in career and professional development for PhD students and master’s students. And I know that like there are professionals who work in that field and they also do peer mentoring as you mentioned earlier. There’s peer mentoring on resumes and interview prep and all that kind of stuff. So the model is there as well. And as you were saying, that’s becoming even more like it was already important. It’s even more important at every stage because sometimes the best financial intervention that a PhD can get is before they commit to any program, right? And making sure that the PhD is the right choice, the field is the right choice, the school is the right choice, the price point is the right choice. Um, and if not, you know, getting outta that or negotiating for a better offer or whatever needs to happen to, to put them on a more financially healthy path before the sunk costs, you know, come into play and all that sort of stuff.

ZW (28:02): Yes, absolutely.

Commercial

Emily (28:06): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, budgeting, investing, and goal-setting, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2025-2026 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutes enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Accessing Peer Mentoring and Other Financial Services at Your University

Emily (29:25): If graduate students and professional students today want to access peer mentoring in the financial realm, um, at their universities, how can they do so?

ZW (29:34): Arguably I would have incorporated this in my graduate school search when I was looking, this is one thing that if current me could advise past me, here’s what I would’ve changed. I did not necessarily look into many student support services as part of my degree program. I was really kind of looking at can I make it work cost of living wise? Can I get a scholarship? Can I easily transport myself to and from campus? I mean that was really making sure financially that I could do it. Finances are super important, but there’s all the other services that come as part of a degree program that students really should understand because in the quote unquote compensation package of a graduate school admission letter, you’re also all of a sudden getting access to all these support services you just talked about career, career counseling offices and, and career advice.

ZW (30:32): Every arguably reputable university out there, every graduate program has somebody in career services to help you navigate. They have, they have, they have that covered. What they don’t have as covered as well is this financial wellness piece. So what I would’ve done is I would’ve dug much more into student services and said, if I need- have a-, if I have a question about my taxes at your university in this program, who can I go to? Who can I go to if I have an issue affording something emergency aid, um, I need finances to travel for this conference. If I wanna make sure to have a, an unpaid internship opportunity as part of my degree program, who do I talk to for that? I did none of that. I did none of that. And that was a big mistake. <laugh>. So I would say to all your listeners, anyone pursuing graduate school is, you gotta think about that admissions letter as a compensation package.

ZW (31:30): And there are lots of other fringe benefits of that compensation and it’s all these kind of auxiliary career services and ask, you know, do I have access to a a preferred credit union that can give me a really good savings account rate or, or a free checking whatever the case is. Do I have access to a financial counselor so I can actually help plan my, my my, either my indebtedness or my my budget to make sure that I can make things work. Asking those questions about personal finance that may help you make your decision. And that if future me, you know, current me could go back and talk to past me, it would be asking all those programs, can you help me find somebody to help me with my money to help me with personal finance? That would have really swayed my decision I think.

Emily (32:17): I think in the regular employment world they would call it like an employee assistance program. Employee assistance program. Yes. So just like all the sort of package of like support services that are available in that case to full-time employees. But yes, you’re exactly right in higher ed, a version of that exists for undergraduate, graduate professional students. Everybody. And I also did not consider this at all when I was selecting a graduate institution, but something I’ve been really, um, I guess impressed by my observation through the HEFWA community is the rise of basic needs support. And so I would maybe hold that up as like the top one, like you mentioned emergency assistance, um, loans or grants, that kind of thing. Like are there places where I can turn if I am having trouble and I can’t make rent this month or like I can go to a food bank and I’m able to get something that’s gonna, you know, tide me over till my next paycheck comes. Like I don’t love that people have to access that stuff, obviously it’s just better that people are paid reasonably well enough. But even if people are paid decently, there’s always gonna be those scenarios that come up, you know, from time to time for a graduate student, even in otherwise well-managed, you know, and sufficient financial life. So just having something there to help them bridge the gap is really, really helpful.

ZW (33:27): A hundred percent. And I was just talking to someone about this the other day with a basic need center in California where it was, if you don’t have Maslow’s hierarchy covered, the learning is so impossible. Not impossible, but it made so much more difficult. And I remember learning in eighth grade health class about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and every now and again, you know, my day-to-day work and when I was a graduate student for sure, it’s like why am I not focused right now? Oh I’m hungry, I’m hungry, right? I need a glass of water. Like the basic, basic needs type stuff, right? So I, I think you’re totally hitting the nail on the head where you gotta really think about yourself, but all of your needs, having all of your needs covered going into a graduate program where at least the best you can and you know, more and more so colleges and universities have really embraced this kind of basic needs movement in some ways where, I never remember as an undergraduate or even a grad student at UT getting an email hearing about a coat closet, career center, basic needs center, uh, helping college students apply for uh, SNAP benefits and, and and tax assistance for income taxes.

ZW (34:42): Never. Now, I wouldn’t say ubiquitous, but a lot more graduate programs are rolling that into services because they’re realizing that a basic needs covered, student finishes on time, they’re engaged, they network, they pursue those pre-professional career opportunities so they get a job after graduation. It is in these students’ best, therefore it should be in the institution’s best interest. And now we’re finally maybe putting student first, whereas it’s for the best interest of the student, then it’s the best interest of the institution and not the other way around. Where does it benefit the institution? Great, then the student gets the fringe benefit. We’re finally, I think maybe flipping that around. That’s a good thing.

Emily (35:27): Hmm. And yeah, I’m glad we sort of landed on basic needs and you know, you mentioned e- even like hunger. So I live in California as well and at the moment anyway, we have this universal breakfast and lunch program in, in public schools. So every single student does not matter what the resources of your family are financially or ability to fill out paperwork or whatever. Everybody has access to free, free breakfast and free lunch through their school. So that’s incredible. And I know that you mentioned earlier that you work with um, certain populations that are more vulnerable through your job now. And so let’s say that we have someone in the audience who’s a graduate student who came out of the foster system or was formerly homeless or, or maybe even currently is experiencing housing insecurity. Um, or maybe we have a student parent, another type of non-traditional student. Um, how can those people access, you know, these kinds of resources we’ve been talking about in particular their institutions?

ZW (36:20): Yeah, so there is typically a community liaison, social work type person at colleges and universities that their part of their portfolio of work is making sure that every single government benefit, every single community uh, amenity is connected to the university in some point. Going back to your comment about is it an institution’s role to provide this financial information? Like it’s going back to the idea of in loco parentis, how much should the institution be the parent for the student? Well there is a limit of that. The institution can only do so much, but at every institution there is someone or a team of people whose job is to be connected to public benefits, to community resources. But there is the hurdle with students of all ages, but it’s especially graduate students when you really maybe might feel that more of that uh, uh, imposter phenomenon creeping in is do I wanna raise my hand for help? Do I wanna be seen as someone who needs a government benefit or who needs a, some sort of commuter pass for low income people? Like do I wanna be associated with that group? I grew up saying I’ll take everything I can, I cannot provide it myself. I’m at my wit’s end, gimme all of it ’cause I am at wit’s end. However, a lot of people don’t feel that way. A lot of people are just on the fringes and feel like, you know what, buck up, you know, very bootstraps mentality. But it’s about raising your hand and being willing to say to yourself, I wanna be successful. I believe in myself. That might mean sucking up a little bit of pride and seeking out a benefit associated with X population and you just go for it and you find that person on campus. The other part that was really beneficial about my time at UT is that I only explicitly used public transit.

ZW (38:17): And public transit tends to run by the library, by the DMV, by banks, by by social services offices broadly. That’s where bus routes tend to run. It’s you know, connecting people to the governmental infrastructure in this country. Typically I would really encourage graduate students if you have committed to someplace and you know more or less the city that you’re gonna be in, get there as early as you can. Ride public transit and get to know where the social services are because you may think that your university, your institution is your community. You have access to resources so far beyond that community that you gotta know the city and know the location first almost. ’cause a lot of times the university may not have the infrastructure you need but right down the road or like county social services, they’ve got your back a hundred percent and of you know, unfortunately a lot of graduate students because they you know, come in being so low income, you qualify for all tons of stuff that you did not think you’d qualify for.

ZW (39:25): I was talking to a graduate student the other week did not know they did not have to be paying for their cell phone the past three years. There is a program for that for low income students just like you and graduate students are included. Just because you’re in graduate school does not mean you’re exempt from being able to access all these social services. So it’s a couple of hurdles of being willing to raise your hand and say you need help. Two, doing your own kind of navigation of knowing where services are and then three, having that mindset of just because I’m a super smart person who got into a grad program and I’m going to this prestigious school does not preclude me from these government benefits that I do qualify for.

Emily (40:07): Such a great point. And I, I learned actually, I think it was from someone else I met at HEFWA who was a podcast guest a couple of years ago, that most people in the United States who access the social safety net do so on a very temporary basis. It really is for most people acting as um, okay, your situation has changed and you need some help right now, but in the future you’re gonna be making a lot more money. This is very true for graduate students and contributing again, back to society and that social safety net. So like take it like take the help you need the help by definition you have qualified for these programs, take the help, it’s not gonna be forever and you need it right now and it’s really gonna benefit you right now.

ZW (40:44): Hundred percent. It is, it’s such a myth in the US about welfare. There’s such, so many myths that go around. It’s like statistically so many people are on it, like you said, for such a transient period. It’s really just a bandaid to something better. And there is though, you know, being admitted to grad school, you know, you feel like you’re in a competitive environment, you can’t show weakness. You know, you can’t be seen as needing anything. I’m self-sufficient, I’m strong. It’s a total mindset change to say actually I do need this benefit. And then recognizing too that the rest of your life you’re not gonna need it. It’s just to get you through to something better and don’t all that kind of like cultural zeitgeist and that, you know, mythology of welfare and people living off of welfare for their entire lives just not true.

Emily (41:37): Yeah, and I remember actually a previous podcast guest as well, um, at Portland State, she learned from her peers to apply for SNAP benefits. Like they were like as a group, like teaching one another how to apply. And the thing is that like you might perceive that some other people, and maybe this is even true for some people, they might look at you twice for having access this kind of benefit. But a lot of your other peers are gonna be like, how can I get that too? Like, can you tell me? ’cause I don’t wanna pay for my own cell phone. Like, that would be great.

ZW (42:03): I love that. I, and the thing is though, here, here we come in full, full circle, that is a form of peer mentoring. Is it not? It is people working together. Sometimes you feel a little more empowered if a friend will do it with you. So if you’re gonna, if you feel the need to raise your hand for a benefit that you may feel a little bit ashamed of, taken advantage of, have a find a friend, make a friend, raise those hands together, it’ll de-stigmatize a lot of what you feel like you might be doing. And then you get the benefit and you feel like all of a sudden, wow, I’m a little better prepared to be successful and putting myself in the best position. It’s all about just invest in your, in yourself as financial wellness as part of your professional development. It’s just being open to this, wanting to improve yourself and, and taking the resources and seeking them out that, that you deserve to have.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (42:55): Well I think you landed that plane beautifully, Zach, so we will end the interview there. I’m just gonna move on to our very last question that I ask of all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that relates to, you know, something we’ve talked about today or it could be something entirely different

ZW (43:13): To build on something we talked about today is when you’ve done your research about the affordability of the area and you really have honed in on where you’re going to go, think about that offer of admission as a package and you put it brilliantly. It’s kind of like this, this employer wellness package, right? I mean there’s other benefits that you get in addition to just the teaching and learning, right? You get access to student services, you’re, you’re put into a community where there are probably likely other county level, city level governmental resources that you can access. So when you’re admitted, you’re not only admitted to the institution, but you’re admitted to all these other services, you’re automatically qualified for so many other things. Do your homework, seek ’em out and don’t be ashamed to raise your hand and say, I need a little bit of help.

Emily (44:11): Love it. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast, Zach, and giving us this wonderful insight.

ZW (44:15): Thank you. All the best, Emily, you’re doing important stuff. Keep doing it.

Emily (44:18): Thank you so much

Outro

Emily (44:29): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Stipend Data and Strikes on the Path to a Grad Student Union

March 24, 2025 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily interviews Garrett Dunne, a 5th-year PhD candidate in the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Realizing that they were being dramatically underpaid, Garrett and his peers used the data from PhD Stipends to advocate for a significant stipend increase in their department. Subsequently, they joined up with grad students in other schools within the University of Alaska system to unionize and bargain for better pay and health insurance. Garrett’s account of their relatively quick process includes several concrete tips for graduate students at other universities who are advocating to increase their stipends and improve their benefits, including who is in the best position to lead the charge.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Stipend Data and Strikes on the Path to a Grad Student Union

Teaser

Garrett (00:00): Disturbing and depressing is probably the best way I can put it. And so it, it does take students that are in that position of safety and strength to then advocate for the people who are a lot more vulnerable.

Introduction

Emily (00:19): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:47): This is Season 20, Episode 6, and today my guest is Garrett Dunne, a 5th-year PhD candidate in the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Realizing that they were being dramatically underpaid, Garrett and his peers used the data from PhD Stipends to advocate for a significant stipend increase in their department. Subsequently, they joined up with grad students in other schools within the University of Alaska system to unionize and bargain for better pay and health insurance. Garrett’s account of their relatively quick process includes several concrete tips for graduate students at other universities who are advocating to increase their stipends and improve their benefits, including who is in the best position to lead the charge.

Emily (01:32): The tax year 2024 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. I do license these workshops to universities, but in the case that yours declines your request for sponsorship, you can purchase the appropriate version as an individual. Go to PFforPhDs.com/taxreturnworkshop/ to read more details and purchase the workshop. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e6/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Garrett Dunne.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:44): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Garrett Dunne, who is a fifth year PhD candidate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. And we are going to discuss increasing grad student stipends through a couple of different mechanisms. And I, I won’t say more than that now, but hopefully you’ll take away a couple of actionables that may be applicable at your own university as well. So, Garrett, would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Garrett (03:08): Hi, everybody. Uh, I am Garrett Dunne. Uh, I’m a fifth year, as you said, PhD candidate, university of Alaska Fairbanks. I study, uh, two species of a shark in Alaska. Um, I’m trying to improve the federal stock assessment for those two species. Uh, I did my undergraduate work at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, and then I did my master’s degree at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. But did my field work in, uh, based outta Biloxi, Mississippi in the, uh, Gulf of Mexico. The naming has changed, but I’m gonna go with Mul- Gulf of Mexico. Um, and then I have been working on and off in Alaska for about the last decade, uh, primarily on fishes. I started with Salmonids and then transitioned into sharks, which is my true passion. But, uh, salmons where the money is made.

Emily (03:53): Wow, okay. You’ve lived all over the place. I was gonna ask if you’re an Alaska native or anything, but it sounds like you’ve been living there on and off for 10 years.

Garrett (04:00): Yeah, originally I’m from New England. I split my time between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, but I really have kind of lived all over the country. Um, and I settled in Alaska full-time about four years ago now,

The Impacts of Low Pay and Poor Healthcare in Grad School

Emily (04:12): Speaking of four years ago, that is when we first started our email correspondence. <laugh>, uh, the listeners, sometimes it takes this long to our podcast episode to get into production. So, so four years ago you emailed me about the project that I have going on PhD stipends, PhDstipends.com, which is a database of self-reported stipend information all across the US and actually outside the US as well. So let us know, like what was going on with you back in 2021ish, like what was the pay you were receiving the benefits and like what led you to reaching out about this dataset?

Garrett (04:47): Unsurprisingly, it was because the pay and, uh, university healthcare was underwhelming. So, uh, in 2021, uh, there was a bunch of different levels within my college. University of Alaska Fairbanks breaks up the way that they, uh, pay students one by college and then usually within the college. It’s multiple different levels, but for sake of ease here, if you averaged out what master’s students were making at different levels and PhD students were making at different levels, uh, in 2021, the average salary was, uh, about 21,500 annually for a graduate student at UAF. Um, and the, to further complicate things that really depended on, uh, what type of funding you were through, um, the UAF and kind of UA system is funded through a very large patchwork of different ways to be funded. I, myself have been funded as a TA, RA and fellow, uh, throughout my five years. Um, and at different times and in different orders. I started as an RA, moved to fellowship, moved to TA, and now I’m an RA again. Um, so it’s a bit complicated and the numbers change a little bit depending on what style of funding you have. Um, sadly, uh, after my first year of being an RA, I moved to a fellowship, um, and in some ways that was easier, uh, but it did not leave enough room for summer funding, so I was unpaid in the summers. So while my take home should have been 21,500, my effective take home, because of the lack of pay in the summers was about 17,000, um, which is quite low. And the cost of living in Alaska is very high. Um, the federal government adjusts, I think their numbers from I think 1.25 or 1.5 times the poverty line, uh, for Alaska and to, in 2021, the poverty line was $16,000 a year, um, in Alaska. So, uh, as a graduate student in the sciences, I was being paid a thousand dollars above the poverty line, and I was forced to take, uh, additional work on in the summers. Um, I didn’t mind taking on that work. It was something that I got to, uh, I I’ve always enjoyed and actually did before going back to graduate school. Uh, but it has significantly delayed my progress on my dissertation. Um, and so yeah, we kind of came to, uh, the realization as a college that we just were not being paid enough. Um, and too many people were living at near poverty levels, and we wanted to, uh, push the graduate school to do better. And most of this work was led by the student organization within my college, so the, the, uh, fisheries student organization where people realized that the healthcare was poor and that, uh, we were being underpaid. And because of this patchwork nature, people were going from making $21,000 a year to me then making 17 a year, and then I wasn’t even sure if I was gonna get paid the following, uh, year. So, uh, quite complex as far as things go.

Emily (07:44): Also, shocking shockingly low numbers for 2021, as you said, in a, a relatively high cost of living area. Um, wow. I mean, I know you just sort of offered part of the effect on your own personal finances, which is that you had to take outside work in the summer, which has then, you know, therefore you’re not working towards your dissertation and that’s gonna push things out. Um, would you be willing to share with us anything else that you experienced on that low stipend at that time or maybe that you observed your peers experiencing?

Garrett (08:16): Yeah, for me personally, it was just I had no ability to save. Um, and so I was living very much paycheck to paycheck. I was in the privileged position of coming into, uh, my PhD with no major debt. Um, so I didn’t have major debt from undergrad or large car loans or a, a home loan, anything like that. And, um, I was living paycheck to paycheck. Uh, and so for others that I had spoke to people coming in with undergraduate debt or master’s debt or medical debt, which is a huge problem in the United States, um, they were actively losing money. Um, and so they were dipping into their own savings to be able to have the privilege of going to the graduate school. And it was becoming a real problem. And once we started digging into it, one of the reasons that we were paid so low was that we realized that the college had not given a pay raise to graduate students since 2008. So we were in 2021, and we had not gotten a pay raise since 2008. And so in 2008, the pay was actually fairly competitive and did keep up at least somewhat with the cost of living in the area. But I used the data set that you provided to then look at how we were being paid nationally and even in compared to low cost of living areas. Um, at 21 5, we were being underpaid. And then you had students like me who were making just above the poverty line, uh, and we were obviously being deeply, deeply underpaid. And so we took this data set. I did most of the data analysis and just kind of made box plots and just looked at the fact that we were being paid underpaid nationally. Um, and within specifically art disciplines, I used your dataset, got rid of everything that didn’t have to do with kind of biological science, and we were still being underpaid, um, nationally. And again, we, we <laugh> we live in a relatively high cost of living area. Yeah, it is not one of the major coastal cities, but Alaska’s expensive and especially the stuff that graduate students need, food is very expensive. Housing used to be inexpensive. Um, that has changed actually just really in the last five years, especially in, uh, the major campus areas, which would be Anchorage Fairbanks in Juneau. Um, I don’t live in any of those partially because of the high cost of living. Um, but with food and shelter being expensive, uh, it really, really dips into our ability to, uh, survive up here, um, and not have to dip into savings or take out loans, which, uh, many other students did.

Emily (10:40): Yeah, so the, the data from PhD stipends, okay, first of all, I was in graduate school in 2008 <laugh>, and those numbers are still not that rosy. Um, especially I was even in a moderate cost of living area and I was being paid more than that. Um, yes. Okay, so <laugh>, your lived experience is were barely above the poverty line. People are having to, you know, do outside work and these kinds of things to, to get along here. That’s your lived experience. Then also, you look at this data set and you’re like, wow, wow, wow. Okay, everybody else across the board is getting paid more than us. What, what was the, and you did this data analysis and then what was the next step that you took, like with approaching the administration, for example?

Using Data to Negotiate a Long Overdue Pay Increase

Garrett (11:20): The last part of that analysis was looking and saying, okay, so we are being underpaid. And then, uh, actually adjusting, using the federal numbers to adjust what we were being paid to the current marketplace. So taking in co- uh, inflation and the fact that the federal government says that our poverty le- poverty level is higher. And so our average was 21500, adjusting for all of that. It was about 30,000 is what we should have been paid in 2021 compared to what it was in 2008, which I think is definitely more competitive. Still not that competitive, but more competitive. Um, and so our next steps after having those numbers, having this write up in all of this data analysis was mostly getting, uh, at first graduate students riled up. I mean, all of this came outta the fact that we kept having these student meetings and all these graduate students were saying, I can’t pay for the healthcare. I’m having to ch- choose. I’m having to ration meals I’m having to live in. Um, uh, one of the unique experiences, the University of Alaska Fairbanks is dry cabin living. And it is not something that a lot of people think about. Fairbanks gets incredibly cold. Uh, last winter we hit negative 50 Fahrenheit, so aggressively cold. So heating buildings is not always feasible. And so a lot of the cabins do not have running water. And so a lot of graduate students have had to resort to living in dry cabins that are heated in a variety of ways with no running water.

Emily (12:44): That’s a new one for me. Wow. Yes.

Garrett (12:46): Yeah. And so that had used to be the way that you could save money and attend the university is an experience. Um, and not everyone dislikes it, but it is a difficult one. Um, and those dry cabins have actually gotten quite expensive. And so, you know, even when I joined the university in 2020, uh, those were usually 400, $500 a month and you could get a small cabin for yourself. Uh, those prices have skyrocketed close to a thousand dollars a month for the privilege to live without running water. Um, and so during covid, the university shut down shower access, we have lots of students living in dry cabins, so that got everyone quite angry. And then we all got together, decided that the pay was too low, the healthcare sucked, got us all angry, and then we approached our faculty. Um, and not all faculty were supportive, but my advisor was quite supportive. And a couple of new faculty especially were supportive of this because, similar to your experience, which was they looked around, they went, oh wow, we’re not paying these students enough. And they had seen other university systems and seen the conditions for other graduate students and were very supportive of bringing that forward. And so we got a large portion of the graduate students, a number of the faculty, and then we approached the dean. Um, and that is how we pushed forward with it and said, you are criminally underpaying us. Some people are living at or below the poverty line. Something needs to be done. Um, and we did effectively, uh, petition for a, a pay pay increase. Um, it wasn’t everything we wanted, but it was at least a, a sizable increase.

Emily (14:17): How long did that take from, from the point of, um, I guess first approaching the dean to the pay increase? What was that timeline?

Garrett (14:27): The timeline for approval was surprisingly short. I think that was about a month, two months of negotiation. Um, we did have to wait to the next fiscal year for it to be implemented, however, so that took a a bit longer. Um, I think the problem was we had told the dean a problem for him was that we had told him that we were gonna start going to the papers. Um, the fact that we had students living in poverty and squalor, um, was a real problem and it was gonna look really bad for the dean and the university. Um, we were also significantly underpaid compared to the other science disciplines within the university program. Um, the other colleges, uh, in, in other sciences especially, uh, geoscience, aerospace, those kind of programs are quite well funded. And as I said, we hadn’t gotten a pay raise since 2008, so it was, uh, a bit of an issue.

Emily (15:19): So you used PhD stipends, but you also were gathering data from your peers at your university?

Garrett (15:24): Yeah, absolutely. And just saying that we were even being underpaid within the university system, so PhD stipends was absolutely one of the best ways we could say, look, not only are you underpaying us compared to these other colleges, but like you are underpaying us nationally and it’s expensive to be here. Um, so yeah, it was, it was kind of a double whammy.

Emily (15:43): One of the, I guess, points of criticism about PhD stipends that I’ve heard from other advocates is at least that what they heard when they presented the data was, this is self-reported. This has not been verified by anybody. Did you get any pushback like that or was it just so obvious in your case that we overlook that?

Garrett (16:04): Uh, I had to do a lot of cleaning of the dataset to make sure that we were getting out outlier values. ’cause there are definitely some things that have been mistyped and, you know, we had to take out some of the small values and some of the extreme values where you’ve got somebody who’s counting their stipend as like they’re being paid by a tech company to go back to school and they’re reporting that they’re getting 80,000 or $90,000 a year to go back to graduate school. We had to pull all of that out, but we really didn’t get much pushback on it because it was just so obvious that we were being underpaid. Even if some people were misreporting and there were some outlier values still contained within it, um, yeah, we didn’t get much pushback and the fact that they hadn’t given us pay raise since 2008, pretty much just it was self-explanatory, uh, that we, we something needed to be done.

Emily (16:47): Absolutely.

Commercial

Emily (16:50): Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

The Unionization Movement at University of Alaska

Emily (17:41): And so the next step was you achieved this big win for your department, um, but then you rolled this into a larger movement. Can you tell us about that larger unionization movement?

Garrett (17:53): Yeah, yeah. And, um, I don’t want to undersell this. So we were kind of having this conversation within our own college and push for the pay raise, and we actually got them to, uh, agree to a biennial, uh, pay increase as well, pegged to inflation, which was really nice for us, so we didn’t have to fight for it as often. And as a part of this, we started kind of hearing murmurs in the background that actually the, uh, some of the liberal arts colleges had already started talking about unionization. So I don’t wanna say that we were the, we were the start of this, but we did join in with a lot of gusto. And so we heard that there were other organization groups. And so, um, one of the main reasons that that started in the liberal arts college is to my understanding, they were being paid at or below poverty line at their maximum amount amount of pay. So most of these students were making between like 14 and $17,000 a year, and that was maximum if their summers weren’t paid for. Um, they were making $12,000 a year, um, well below the poverty line for Alaska. And so they had a lot more reason to be even angrier. So they kind of got things started and then we joined in in that process. Um, and so that the murmurings of that happened, I think around the time I got started, uh, in 2020. And then by 2020, late 2021, early 2022 is when things kind of got moving. Um, and I’m, I’m happy to talk more about kind of that process if that’s something you wanna dive into.

Emily (19:29): Yeah. Maybe give us like, ’cause it’s, I mean, we don’t need to motivate this. We obviously see the problem with the pay for the graduate students. Um, I’m more curious about, you know, at the time of either, um, you know, voting to form a union or starting to approach the administration about the contract. Like just go over how that process went for you all. We’ve heard it a couple of times on the podcast before, but every story is a bit unique, so I’d love to hear yours.

Garrett (19:55): Yeah, yeah, the healthcare seems to be one of the biggest drivers for us. The, the pay was always bad, um, for, for most of the graduate students, and that was always an easy one. But we are under United Healthcare Student Resources, um, and United has a reputation, um, deservedly so for being quite poor and frequent to deny pretty much any type of coverage. It’s actually, how I got involved in all of this was I spent about two years fighting with them. And so we kind of took these people who were upset about pay and very much upset about healthcare, and we were getting a lot of pushback from United and the, um, student, uh, healthcare manager at the university. And so we decided to say that we were not getting anywhere as a group. And so we started talking internally and seeing what it would take to form a union. And so it was starting to take like, you know, the, the student organization out of the, the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, which is the college I’m in, and finally meeting with the, um, you know, a lot of the liberal arts colleges, many colleges have this problem or universities have this problem where the different colleges are quite separate. Alaska is specifically difficult, um, because we are so spread out. It is a giant state. The UA system, since it is integrated, we actually had to, uh, unionize across all of the colleges. We could not just unionize UAF or UAA. And so it was trying to get all the graduate students from all the different colleges to gather in enough of a critical mass to then move forward. So that was step one was just trying to get these meetings and get enough, uh, frankly upset students <laugh> together to say, okay, so this is something that we actually do want to do.

Garrett (21:35): The next step from there was then saying, okay, we need to start picking people who have time and ability to then, um, become officers and really lead the charge. Uh, I was one of the officers during that push, um, but I was definitely not one of the leaders. I I was just kind of there to help do paperwork, reach out to people, move forward and, and get in contact with people. And the, once we kind of had officers, the, the me- major next step was getting the word out and finding union representation. And that was, honestly, that’s one of the biggest key steps that in retrospect I see is just you can’t do it alone. You need lawyers and you need someone who’s actually been through the unionization process before because all of us officers were very engaged, very motivated, but we needed somebody to actually guide us through. Um, and so we approached two unions, one of which we never had much interest from, and then UAW so United Auto Workers, which I did not think would be heavily involved with graduate students in the United States, which they are, um, was really excited about working with us. And, um, kind of we got in touch with them, found somebody who was gonna be, you know, our, our union rep for this process and their set of lawyers, and that’s really where we got the ball rolling.

Emily (22:48): Wow. Okay. So the ball’s rolling on the unionization process. Um, I think the next step is like a, a card drive, like a signature drive kind of thing, and then, and then it’s starting to talk with the admin, right?

Garrett (23:01): Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And so card drive was next, and that was again, trying to make sure we had that critical mass of pissed off students before we kind of even got that ball rolling. Um, and that was really difficult, especially up here because I’m more in the Anchorage area and so I had cards shipped down to me UAF primarily. They have the bulk of the graduate students for the UA system. And so we were the primary university for driving this. We were shipping most of the cards everywhere, but it was really trying to make sure that we had representation of these officers in all these different places so we could go to offices, hand out cards, talk to people, um, because graduate students are bombed with emails, the best thing you can do is call people in this day and age, text people, um, emails sometimes work, but we didn’t always have the best response there. And it was really the officers in the background making sure we went through every graduate student collecting everyone we could and just reaching out over and over again to get those cards signed. Um, it was an incredibly successful drive. Um, the graduate students in the UA system are quite upset with kind of the general state of things, um, and that’s not always the university’s fault. There’s more information there we can always chat about. Um, there were some very large cuts in 2019 to the university system that have made it very hard to make things better for everyone, including faculty and staff. Um, but we got the cards together and then, uh, yeah, I mean we had representation and then we could approach the university, and then we went directly into bargaining, um, and we bargained for a contract if I’m not misremembering, within five months, which is unheard of. Um, getting from card drive to a, um, a, a formal union in, in a contract within a year is impressive. So we went quickly into bargaining and then had a contract within a year. Um, and we have signed and it is formed.

Factors that Accelerated the Unionization Process

Emily (24:48): Yeah, I’m also surprised by that, um, speed, especially given what you just said about there being university-wide, like funding cuts just prior. So like, what, what do you think, what were the factors that made that happen? And especially fast for you all?

Garrett (25:04): I mean, we were protesting a ton. Um, we were protesting on the University of Alaska, Anchorage campus, UAS and UAF, uh, UAF especially because we have the largest population of graduate students. We were regularly picketing the deans of the colleges and the deans of the college and ju- and the university. I mean, we were just being very loud and obnoxious. Um, and we were talking to several papers up here, um, really just getting the word out that we were very, very unhappy and that was the best thing that we could’ve done. Um, partially because the university is so resource strapped as well. Um, we got more than what we initially asked for as far as inclusion within the graduate school. Um, so we, it’s, uh, it’s a difficult thing to deal with, but you know, the TAs and RAs are very easy to say yeah, they’re employees of the graduate school, the fellows, as I talked about, it’s a much more washy area, but we actually managed to get all the fellows included as well, um, as well as some staff.

Garrett (26:03): There were a lot of weird kind of one-off students that are partially employed by the university also in graduate school, and we got a lot of those included as well. Um, the, the university did not play their hand particularly well, and the state was, uh, very sympathetic to a lot of our arguments. So, so it went quite well, uh, for us there. Um, yeah, and, and the speed was just because the university was tired of dealing with us. Um, we really wore them out. Uh, we did not get everything that we wanted within the contract. Uh, one of the big things that we had to jettison for the year was the, uh, healthcare. And so that’s what I care about most. But we had already signed a contract with United for that year, and so if we wanted a contract that at least locked in a floor for all graduate students for pay and a lot of other, you know, representation, grievance policies, things that really are, uh, a huge part of what a union provides and streamlining all of that, we had to wait for this year, which we are now going into bargaining for.

Emily (27:02): Hmm. So everybody, all parties knew that that was still gonna be renegotiated as soon as possible.

Garrett (27:07): Yeah, we wanted to, and absolutely it’s why I got involved and I was disappointed to see that that was the case. But the, uh, university just didn’t have time. They had already signed the contract with the United, so yeah, all parties knew that we were gonna be coming back to the bargaining table within the next year or two to, uh, work on that. Um, one of the fun things that we discovered through this whole process of discovery and requesting information from the university was for years we had been told that, you know, actually no, we, we look at this every year. We find the best healthcare for you guys and we’re really on it. And through discovery, we found out that literally they just check the mark. They, they ask for requests from three possible institutions, they pick the cheapest one and go with it. And turns out they’re pretty much just rubber stamping united every year because they United shifts most of the cost to the graduate students so they can provide the lowest cost to the university, uh, on the healthcare. For the record, we are also required to buy this healthcare. There is no way to opt out. Um, and it’s, uh, become quite expensive. It’s about $1,500 a semester now, and it was about a thousand dollars a semester, um, previously, and that’s before copays and, and all of that. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s poor coverage.

Post-Unionization Stipend Amounts

Emily (28:17): Okay. So forthcoming progress on the healthcare front, but in terms of the stipend, can you tell us like what’s the new minimum or like maybe what you’re making now versus what you were making before?

Garrett (28:29): Yeah, yeah. My, my experience is probably not the best one to go for, um, because I’ve now switched back to an RA ship and so I’ve gone back up to being paid, um, uh, quite a bit better and through the summers. So I’m no longer living at that kind of 17,000 and having to take on summer work. Uh, my new pay rate is closer to, uh, 25,000 a year, um, which is more reasonable. It’s not amazing, but it’s definitely more reasonable, um, if you average out all of the different pay steps that they still have within our college because while we put a floor through the union for the whole university system, um, our pay actually wasn’t affected all of that much. We just now get a regular annual increase peg to inflation, um, rather than, um, we, we didn’t see a pay raise ’cause we were already above that floor. Um, uh, the average now is about 27,000 a year. Um, and some graduate students are now making over 30,000, which, if you remember from when we were chatting earlier is in 2021, arguably kind of where we should have been, um, if we had actually, uh, kept giving pay raises with inflation that said inflation’s been rampant over the last four years or so, uh, post covid or, you know, whatever we wanna call this era of time. Uh, and so I would argue that we’re now should probably be paid in kind of the mid 30 thousands, um, if we were really trying to be, uh, competitive. But it is significantly better than it was, uh, although the healthcare is not where we would like it to be.

Emily (30:05): Okay. So on your personal side, the work that you did to, with your peers to, you know, advocate for increasing the stipends within your department, um, that was sufficient to bring everybody above the minimum that then was set by the union. So really it’s like both efforts were important, like that unionization part of it is not gonna allow you guys to drop below any floors. It’s going to make sure that everything is reevaluated on an annual or biannual basis. Um, but you had already done a, a great amount of legwork for your closer group of peers, but now we get to extend this to a much wider group within the university.

Garrett (30:42): Yeah, absolutely. And that was the case is the College of Fisheries and a lot of the science colleges didn’t see much of a pay raise. Um, we did get those locked in, you know, annual or biannual increases, uh, but it was really trying to keep especially our, our liberal arts colleagues from living in poverty. And so that was one of the privileges of being able to be a part of this was I was able to work before I went back to graduate school, I had savings and I was less concerned with, uh, retaliation from the university. And it was something that I felt good that I was able to provide was help, uh, help push through to help our lower paid colleagues who really just didn’t have a lot of, uh, leeway and, and ability to then argue, uh, without worrying about retaliation from the university. Um, and there were several times where retaliation seemed to be very much on the table. Um, the power dynamics of going through, uh, a unionization push was not what I expected it to be. Um, and it was, uh, difficult for sure.

Power Dynamics During the Unionization Process

Emily (31:41): Can you share any more about that observation?

Garrett (31:43): The power dynamics of, of some of these people who are leading colleges and paying paid hundreds of thousands of dollars against students who are living at or below the poverty line, taking out loans to survive and are deeply concerned that if they get sick or are living with chronic illness, they’re gonna fall into deep medical debt. Um, is, uh, it’s disturbing and depressing is probably the, the, the worst, yeah. The best way I can put it. Um, and so it takes often students that are in positions that are a little bit more stable and have support. Like I said, my uh, advisor was very supportive of both our push for, uh, a pay raise within the college and the unionization push, um, that I felt safe. And so it, it does take students that are in that position of safety and strength to then advocate for the people who are a lot more vulnerable, um, because they, they simply, the power dynamics don’t allow for them to be as loud.

Emily (32:42): Yeah. Thank you for pointing that out. I hope that for any listeners who are interested in this, who there’s not yet union representation for their campuses, that they’ll take a, you know, an eye to themselves and see am I in this more privileged position? Am I in a safer position to be able to advocate on behalf of my peers or am I, am I not? And I need to, uh, advocate within my peer group for somebody else to take on these, uh, bigger roles. But I’m really glad to hear that you felt like you were able to do that and, and carry through it with all this, um, wonderful progress. Um, would you say, so earlier, you know, you mentioned that like the main thing for you having the lower stipend was that you weren’t able to save anything. Are you able to save now?

Garrett (33:26): I am, yeah. Which is quite nice. Um, and primarily I’m saving up for unexpected car repairs and it is not a significant amount of savings, but it is, uh, much more stable and I don’t have to worry about going to the grocery store anymore, which is very nice. Um, and not having to shop all of the worst possible least expensive brands, <laugh> is also, uh, a bit of a relief. Um, and so I mean, one of the ways I was able to survive at that very low pay rate was, and I think this ties into uh, a question we’ll probably talk about more, is by creating a very, very detailed budget. I mean, I have a monthly spreadsheet that has all incomes, all outflows and then an annual up or down. And that’s how I kept track of the fact that I was actually generally losing money at that lower stipend level was that you could see, you know, month to month I was losing a couple hundred dollars. Um, I was in the lucky place to have some savings, so I was able to dip into that rather than taking out loans or asking money from friends and family. Um, but that is not the position for many graduate students that I spoke to pre uh, unionization push. So

Emily (34:32): Yeah. And do we really wanna select for graduate students who have worked prior to graduate school who have family support, et cetera, et cetera, or do we want graduate school to be a place that anybody can financially survive?

Garrett (34:45): Absolutely. Yeah.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (34:46): Great. Well, Garrett, this has been such a wonderful story. I’m so glad that you came on to share it with us. Um, I would love to hear, uh, from you the answer to the question I ask of all my guests at the end of interviews, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it can be something that we’ve touched on already or it could be something completely new.

Garrett (35:04): Yeah, I, I think I’m gonna echo a lot of the themes we’ve had during this interview. Um, is first is to pay attention to the entire compensation package. It’s not just to the stipend, but also especially for us, in my experience, the, uh, healthcare that’s provided, how expensive that’s gonna be, what your expected out of pocket is gonna be. Um, does university provide it? Do you get, pay it through your grants? Um, and then you need to really understand the cost of living in the area that you’ll be, uh, doing your work from. If you’re lucky enough like me to be able to do things remotely, you can reduce some of your costs, but a lot of universities I know don’t allow for that. Um, and so you need to see what your pay is gonna be, what your healthcare is gonna be, and any other kind of sneaky costs and, uh, costs of living are gonna be. Um, for me, uh, it was a benefit to wait to return to grad school, um, make sure that I had some savings and was able to, uh, have resources available in case of an unexpected car repair or a surprise cost, a surprise injury. Uh, and so I would encourage some graduate students to consider whether going directly to graduate school is the best option for them, depending on financial situation. Um, my fi- my, uh, budget spreadsheet or using an application for keeping track of your finances, I think is huge. Um, it, it really, really helped me when I was living at kind of the most, uh, spare ends of when I was being paid. And um, and then one of the biggest issues for me, and we haven’t really touched on this, but also looking at how long that funding that you have, uh, for your graduate program lasts. Um, I came into graduate school with only one year of funding and so every year I’ve had to reapply and it’s been a huge stressor for me and, and a big financial strain not knowing whether I’m gonna be in graduate school next year. I do not know if I’m gonna get paid. I don’t know if I’m gonna have my classes taken care of. I’ve been really lucky. I’ve managed to get all the way through and every year I’ve managed to find some form of funding, but it’s been really tight and very close in a couple ways. And so I think that is one of the things that’s most important is making sure that there’s enough money for at least your first many years and that it’s stable. Um, we live in a climate now where funding stability is much more in question and it’s definitely worth asking that, um, before you decide to go to any program.

Emily (37:22): Absolutely. Um, for like prospective graduate students, you know, looking at the offer letters and starting to do, uh, visits or interviews or what have you, um, what’s the best way do you think for them to find out some tricky things like that? You know, what is this insurance policy actually gonna cost me out of pocket? Um, that kind of information within this compressed time period of like the admission season.

Garrett (37:45): Yeah, absolutely. And that is the real hard part is you’re juggling multiple universities, multiple offers and trying to figure out how to navigate it all. Uh, graduate student groups are probably one of the best ways I’ve found. ’cause often that’s where a lot of the grievances are held and that’s where I got together with my colleagues and kind of figured out how to start pushing forward towards action. So any of the graduate student groups in the colleges that you might be going to great people to reach out to, um, other graduate students within your lab, um, often I would argue the ones that are farther along tend to understand the systems a little bit more and be a little bit more honest about the difficulties that they’ve had within the system. Um, and that those are probably my two biggest resources. They tend to be the most honest about both the benefits and drawbacks of those institutions.

Emily (38:32): Yeah. They’ve had time to see maybe some edge cases play out, like, uh, oh yeah, this is normally how things go, but like 10% of the time it goes this other way, you know. Um, well, Garrett, again, thank you so much for agreeing to come on, um, to the podcast and talk about this whole process. It’s been a long, you know, time in, in making this story, but I’m really, really glad to hear this, uh, not a final outcome, but this point in the process and how, how things have been for you and your peers. So thank you so much for your work and for sharing it with my audience.

Garrett (39:03): Yeah, it was a pleasure and thank you so much for having me. Um, I’m just hoping we can make, uh, the graduate student experience better for everyone.

Outtro

Emily (39:21): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

This PhD Promotes DEI with a Focus on Finances

July 1, 2024 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Carolina Mendoza Cavazos, who holds a PhD in microbiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently works in industry. Carolina has long been interested in and open about personal finances, and she focused her DEI efforts while in graduate school around finances, including starting a money club and creating clear communications regarding pay and benefits. Carolina shares her insights into the kinds of financial issues graduate students face and how universities should back up their recruitment of diverse candidates with sufficient financial support and communication. Finally, Carolina and Emily discuss the financial goals and lifestyle upgrades Carolina has enjoyed since starting her job in industry.

Links mentioned in the Episode

PhD Promotes Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with a Focus on Finances

Teaser

Carolina (00:00): Basically like who, who can afford to go to graduate school and how the people that have made it to graduate school, how can we support them during? There’s a lot of focus on the DEI efforts within recruiting. I also think that if there is not a support system for the students that are coming in and staying, I think that is a disservice to the minorities that you recruited. While it’s really great to get a fellowship, if the school can get to brag about the funding that you have, the schools should also support you through the issues that may arise due to that funding.

Introduction

Emily (00:55): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:24): This is Season 18, Episode 3, and today my guest is Dr. Carolina Mendoza Cavazos, who holds a PhD in microbiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently works in industry. Carolina has long been interested in and open about personal finances, and she focused her DEI efforts while in graduate school around finances, including starting a money club and creating clear communications regarding pay and benefits. Carolina shares her insights into the kinds of financial issues graduate students face and how universities should back up their recruitment of diverse candidates with sufficient financial support and communication. Finally, Carolina and I discuss the financial goals and lifestyle upgrades she has enjoyed since starting her job in industry.

Emily (02:10): When I teach budgeting, I emphasize that it actually consists of two components, budgeting aka telling your money what to do and tracking aka checking that your money did what you told it to do. While I love and use automated tracking software, in my opinion nothing beats manual tracking, which naturally keeps you accountable to yourself for your spending. In fact, last year I made a custom expense tracking spreadsheet for my own use. If you would like to try out manual expense tracking, feel free to take my spreadsheet and use it as is or build it out however you like. I built in a couple of budgeting principles that I like to follow and teach to PhDs. There’s a companion video available explaining those principles. If you’d like to grab the spreadsheet, it’s totally free, simply sign up through PFforPhDs.com/tracker/. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s18e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Carolina Mendoza Cavazos of Finances with Carolina.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (03:29): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today Dr. Carolina Mendoza Cavazos. She is a scientist working in the private sector. She finished her PhD about two years ago, and like me, Carolina is also really, really into personal finance and also she has a special focus on DEI, efforts related to personal finance. And Carolina has a website called FinancesWithCarolina.com, and I first came across her, it must have been several years ago on Twitter, and I’ve been keeping my eye on her for a while. We finally had reason to connect recently and set up this podcast interview, which I’m really excited about. So Carolina, would you please go ahead and introduce yourself further for the audience?

Carolina (04:04): Sure thing, Emily. Hi everyone, my name is Carolina and I obtained my PhD at the University of Wisconsin Madison. I’m currently a scientist in the r and d department at Promega, and um, I’m very excited to be here today.

Finances During Childhood, College, and Beyond

Emily (04:21): Yeah, let’s go back, um, even further because I want to hear about, uh, your background, especially with respect to finances starting kind of in your childhood. You can give us a brief overview of how things were, um, financially growing up and then through college and graduate school and I’m, I’m interested both in kind of materially what was going on and also how that affected your mindset through that period.

Carolina (04:41): My family and I moved to United States in 2011 and I finished my senior year of high school, then applied to college and I obtained my undergrad at California State University Fullerton. My dad is an accountant, so he talked about money quite often. I would say that being an immigrant, we did have certain like mindset that came with that and frugality was a really important one. I would say that from the both sides of my family, either one or two generations broke the cycle of poverty and I grew up in a family with two college educated parents and we were able to migrate here to the United States, um, due to a job opportunity for my mom. So that was kinda um, how we got here. I would say I was always interested in finances in general in college. The first time I got a paycheck was through a program called MARC Maximizing Access to Career Research and is a pipeline for like graduate school program. So that’s kind of where my budgeting journey started. I lived at home, uh, during college and receiving that paycheck was the first time that I was, you know, making all my budgeting spreadsheets and stuff like that.

Emily (05:58): Yeah. So let’s kind of turn to graduate school now. It actually seems like you were set up pretty well to understand maybe the finance of graduate school having been in that program, the MARC program during undergrad. Um, so tell us about like that transition and maybe the kinds of offers you got and whether you considered, you know, finances. It sounds like you probably would in your selection of which university to attend.

Carolina (06:17): I don’t think I looked at the stipend as carefully as I would today. I gravitated towards the Midwest because the Midwest had awesome microbiology and I knew I was gonna end up somewhere in the Midwest. Um, my last two top school choices, like were between UW Madison where I ended up attending and um, Wash U. So those were my two offers. And in general, stipend wise, they were pretty similar. However, UW Madison had a program similar to MARC called SciMed, shout out to SciMed, it’s called Science and Science and Medicine Scholars. And basically it was a community that I could plug into that I did not see at any other universities and I felt that that was, uh, a good fit for me. So that’s kind of why I decided to go to UW Madison.

Emily (07:16): So tell us a little bit more about how finances were going for you during graduate school. You said that you had, you know, uh, a frugal and a debt averse kind of background with your family. Um, you’re in the Midwest. Yeah. Was the stipend livable? Were you able to save? How are things going for you personally?

Carolina (07:33): Yeah, in terms of finances, I did move here to Madison with a partner at the time, now my husband and we, that’s kind of when we started not fully merging our finances, but we’re definitely operating as a household at the moment and basically we were like kind of equally splitting everything. So that was definitely helpful and I would say that the stipend was livable, however, having a partner was definitely helpful. And one interesting thing is that I was funded the whole time during graduate school, so the five years I had different grants, fellowships, things like that. So I was fortunate that I didn’t have to pay segregated fees or like the student fees for that. Um, I ended up working as an hourly for assignment and that was, um, a workaround in order to get retirement benefits like a 403B or something like that.

Carolina (08:35): I definitely think that my husband and I had like different mindsets about finances and it was interesting to kind of get into that. But I would say in graduate school I found your podcast through Hello PhD and I think the, the thing that really caught my attention was the use of, um, buckets for like high yield savings accounts. So I think that that was like one of the first things that I did in order to get the same service but like in a cheaper way. Like for example, like car insurance, I faced a lot of issues with funding transitions that ended up being, in my opinion, DEI issues in terms that I don’t know, I, I saw a lot of the times like the same pe- people in the program doing the same jobs and being funded differently would still face different issues. And in terms for advanced opportunity fellowships like for, um, minorities like me and things like that, I would say like that was like a double whammy of you might have a surprise tax bill and things like that. And like how, how do you deal with that? Do you, do you have your emergency fund set up? Do you rely on a network? Is there network that you can rely? Do you incur debt? And things like that. Issues that I encounter with my funding, I always wonder and through the grapevine have heard that other people that were funded had this issues. So I think that that was my first step to get into using personal finance and deed efforts during graduate school.

Financial Challenges During Grad School

Emily (10:15): Hmm. Yeah, I definitely wanna hear about more about that in a minute. Um, can you expand at all on the, the issues you were just talking about with like the funding? So like quarterly estimated tax bills. We talk about that a lot in the podcast, hopefully the listeners familiar with that. Um, anything else? Like, just tell me what, what the issues were that you either experienced or that you observed.

Carolina (10:35): Yes, so one of the issues right off the bat was taxes obviously. And um, I definitely had a tax bill that I wasn’t expecting and I wasn’t aware of the fellowship, um, quarterly estimated taxes on my first year or something like that, the Kiddie tax. Why not? One of the things that I would say is that access to benefits was a little different. So for example, there was no, someone in my lab and me, the other peop- the other person could contribute to an FSA account or they would be able to and eligible to open a 403B. Um, what else? Gaps in insurance or, um, what are they called? Potential gaps in insurance. For example, some of my friends that were in the NSF were getting COBRA letters when they were having their funding transitions because you might have lost insurance and they were not aware of this and it was just because some paperwork was delayed and things like that.

Carolina (11:46): Personally, I did a, an internship during my fourth year summer, somewhere between fourth and fifth, and I had to take a short leave of absence for that. I had to prepay my insurance and there was a lot of issues with that. Um, I, I think I was the first one to do this and the program that was receiving a stipend that, that was receiving a stipend and had to pause that in order to go into the private sector and get, um, private sector money. Usually if you were in your, I don’t know, a W2 route, I don’t know how they would have handled it, but there was miscommunication on that. Uh, one point I wasn’t sure if I was gonna have insurance over the summer and access to healthcare is definitely something that everybody should have. And, um, I had some health issues during graduate school, so that was a very scary time for me.

Carolina (12:45): And through the grapevine again when that happened, I started documenting if other people have faced this within the, the fellowships during, within the T32s and stuff like that. So when I was working as an hourly for assignment, some of my job was to write down what should you do if you are going to into a internship, what are the, um, I also implemented, I was part of the DEI committee in my program and I also proposed and implemented a funding transition form to pinpoint where is your money coming from in this semester? Where is your money gonna come from next time? Do these people know each other? Should we introduce everybody? Do they know that you’re coming or that you’re leaving the, the fellowship training grant, et cetera. And I found a lot of people that were having trouble with this things and it wasn’t just me. So I think that there is, there, there is a very powerful thing in community and I was trying to find the people that were having these issues and try to play safety nets for when people did face them because they’re bound to happen sometimes. They knew what to do, who to contact and things like that.

Emily (14:10): So helpful. I mean, it’s amazing that you, you know, worked along with your peers to put that resource together, um, through SciMed. It sounds like it was kind of part of your job, but to the extent, yes, you were doing it and it wasn’t part of your job, uh, amazing community service, but probably should have been taken up by the university. Um, obviously they’re the ones providing these benefits or facilitating the benefits, so like, yeah, they should be taking charge and making sure the transitions are seamless. I think about some this sometimes with respect to the tax questions of, you know, calculating, filing quarterly estimated tax or dealing with stuff during tax season. Um, like I know it’s really normal in the US for your employer to be very hands off about taxes. Like yeah, we’ll do withholding, that’s it, that’s the extent of what we’ll handle. But like universities aren’t even doing that much in most cases for fellowship recipients. And I do think they should be a little bit more proactive and, and thank you so much to the ones that work with me and are proactive about this, but be proactive about at least communicating right when the students, um, about what’s gonna happen. And it sounds like not, not only in the tax realm, but it extends with all these other benefits like you were just talking about. So I’m really glad you kind of gave us that overview. Um, so it sounds like you were working with, you know, SciMed and also talking with your peers. Can you tell me a little bit more about kind of what you learned or observed about how your peers were handling this stuff financially? Not just with, with respect to the benefits issues that we just spoke about, but maybe more generally what they needed to know or what they needed to apply, um, in their personal finances during graduate school?

The Birth of the Money Club

Carolina (15:36): Yeah, I, I think a lot of my peers were either, I don’t know, like I would say like there was like two categories. People that were in the category of like, you know what, I don’t wanna think about it. I am, I’m gonna take a pause on this while I’m in graduate school and once I figure out what my career path is gonna be, I’m gonna pick it up. And there was a small subset, small but mighty that was interested on talking about this and was sort of like, I think the taxes are the foot in the door for everybody that they’re just want to learn a little bit more of how to handle those. But once they’re in and then you just start chatting and like, where do you put your tax money before the thing is due? How are you, um, self withholding and things like that. I think that was kind of like the natural birth of the, the, the money club that we developed. And I really can’t remember if that was part of the SciMed job or eventually we kind intertwined it or something like that. The SciMed job was basically really help your community, how can you do this? Obviously there was like events and food ordering or flyer making and stuff like that, but I, at one point I was trying to explore student services as a career, so I think that that was my in, um, with that position. And then it turned into a way for me to look at this DEI issues and try to create resources for the people that were within the fellowship where in the fellowship were gonna come into the fellowship and things like that.

Emily (17:22): I totally agree with you that the taxes are the way to most, uh, you know, getting most people’s attention into personal finances. Yeah. Uh, where did it go after that? You know, you already mentioned using targeted savings or sinking funds as a helpful sort of addendum to your budgeting. Did you all talk about that or what other topics did ended up being of interest to this group?

Carolina (17:42): One of the topics definitely people were interested in investing. I think that that was one of the other ones that we’re kind of popular and, um, I don’t know, mystified a little bit and people wanted to ask around. I think, I think the money club really started getting around going like in 2021 after the summer of 2020, um, when George Floyd was murdered the entire a a group in the program started writing a letter to our admins and our professors and things like that in which we were quote unquote demanding changes in our program and whatever. So I was involved in that effort and I do remember putting some personal finance stuff in there and, um, I think when the whole program read it and they knew that there was like some of the things that I was requesting, like for example, um, I had recommended you to, to our program. I don’t know if they ended up hiring you or not. Basically like in the program then I, I became known as the person that talked about money and then people that wanted to talk about money found me. And, um, the other topics that I would say not so much as investing, but I kinda wrapped it around with investing was retirement and some of the benefits that the university was offering for students that did have access to those. The majority of my program was not like brought partners or anything like that. I, I don’t remember, but sometimes there was students that had in their budget a, a way to invest and they just wanted to start.

Emily (19:22): Absolutely. For me, I always say taxes and investing are my two favorite topics to discuss. And it’s lucky because those are the two top, um, most popular topics that get requested, which is really fun for me. Um, it’s so interesting too being in an environment where some people have access to that 403B, um, and even the other, well you mentioned FSA not an HSA, um, through the university, but perhaps other benefits that’d be relevant, you know, for investing. Um, and obviously if you’re on fellowship or, and if you’re not an employee, you’re not gonna have access to that, but it sounds like a subset of people would, and you and you also had access to <crosstalk>.

Carolina (19:55): So I found a loophole

Emily (19:57): Yeah. To be, um, a proper W2 employee at least for a few hours enough to give you that benefit.

Carolina (20:03): And I made it automatic that all a hundred percent of my hours with SciMed would go to the 403B.

Emily (20:10): Well, that’s kind of cool that they let you do that. I know sometimes employers that have like a restriction like no more than 50% of your paycheck or 25 or something, but obviously since it was just part-time for you, if that makes sense. Um, yeah. Anything else you wanna tell us about the money club?

Carolina (20:25): I think people just need safe spaces to talk about money, and I think it’s one of the cases that if you create it, people will come. I, I personally feel that a lot of people wanted to start working on their finances and they just didn’t have the language, the space, sometimes the resources or like the, the uh, uh, closed mindset of, well, I’m not making enough money so I, how can I work on this? And I think that’s my main, one of the things that I try to help people with is that your personal finance, like, and starting to work in your personal finance, it doesn’t have to be this ginormous thing that you have to put thousands of dollars into it. I think it’s small actions that just kind of add up and, um, my whole spiel is that I, I would like to create systems that you later edit when you get a different job and there’s a lot of things that you can do in order to work in your personal finance that don’t cost money or they can be a $2 thing and, and it’s more of like flexing that muscle as a lot of people say in the community. I think it’s true.

Emily (21:51): I totally agree. Um, and I, going back to kind of what you said earlier about, you know, the, you sort of encounter two kinds of people, like some people who wanted to engage, but some people just wanna say, you know, I’m not making that much money, it’s not the right time to be working my finances. I will pick this up later. And they are overlooking that benefit of, as you said, flexing the muscle of learning a few skills, of getting a little bit of extra knowledge, um, whether that can be applied during grad school or whether it’s just gonna be something that’s practiced a bit or set aside for later. Um, all of that does help you set up for financial success in your next post PhD career when you have that higher salary coming in. And of course it will be easier in some sense when you have, when you’re making more money, but if you’ve never practiced budgeting, if you’ve never really thought about what’s important to you in your spending, if you’ve never opened an IRA before, well that’s stuff you’re gonna have to learn, um, when the stakes are a little bit higher later on. So of course you know that I’m a proponent of working on that stuff during graduate school, you know, if at all possible, and as you said, it doesn’t have to, you don’t have to be able to save necessarily to have a savings rate to do positive things, um, in your personal finance, there’s lots of cost neutral things that you could do. Um, and hopefully you can get to a point where you’re able to save.

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DEI and Personal Finance

Emily (24:32): I wanna get back to this point about how you, um, use the topic of personal finance within your own DEI efforts. And it’s something you’ve mentioned a few different aspects of it until now, but I just wanted you to just make it really explicit, like how do you view this and how do you work in this area?

Carolina (24:47): So I think DEI efforts are sometimes in some spaces, and this is not particularly about my university or my program or anything like that, but they get a little bit performative and they can get into, uh, check a box. We have a DEI committee and that’s it. That’s it. So I was involved in the DEI committee since this founding at, um, my program after the letter that I mentioned that we wrote. So through that there was two representatives for the students in this committee and we’ll bring issues forward regarding whatever our, our peers had brought up. And a lot of those ones sometimes were personal finance related, for example, there was one time that our paycheck schedule changed from a monthly to a biweekly time and a lot of the students were like, how am I gonna make rent if the biweekly paycheck is happening and then that I’m receiving that in this amount of time. I don’t have a safety net to just make that payment at the beginning of the, of the month if this happens. Um, so trying to make explicit what type of resources are available in the university for, uh, emergency hardship and stuff like that. That was one thing I definitely always advocated for more clarity on funding transitions as well as the fellowship letter. For example, I know that that one or my specific university came in March while your W2 came in January. So we had a case in which a student basically submitted their tax return after they got a W2 and they then they got the fellowship letter and they had to amend it. So basically being more transparent and proactive about the types of issues that funded students might face having I, I know one of my, um, one of the other representatives really advocated for having the, the number of the stipend for our incoming students instead of just kind being this nebulous number that you kind of hear there when you’re already in the interview.

Carolina (27:24): During the time that I was there, another person, not myself, but they got my full support, was really trying to start the conversation of a livable wage. So what is that? Like, how do we compare to other programs? And um, she did a tremendous effort, um, in order to look at the cost of living and how is that going and how, you know, it might not be our stipend might not be keeping up with this, what are we gonna do about that? So I would say that I definitely advocated for transparency in my, um, dei position from the program for the university. And I basically started spreading the information and just kinda reporting back to the committee and say like, this is what I did and I had my, my PI’s full support. I was very fortunate that she had my back. And um, there was instances in which I think if my PI was not supportive, like maybe they could have been like some issues and um, in terms of just like, hey, I think that what we’re doing is wrong, not wrong, but like not having the stipend number really there.

Emily (28:46): Yeah. Sort of obfuscating. Yeah.

Carolina (28:49): Yeah, I didn’t like that as much. My main issue was the medical coverage and I, I did as much as I could in order to create as much documentation and as much process safety nets for people to not receive that letter, um, of the COBRA Fellowship, um, not have to pay out of pocket for necessary prescriptions. If you have a lacking coverage, you cannot even make an a, a doctor’s appointment. It’s not like you can make it for later when you have coverage, they’re just not gonna talk to you. I had a back injury during graduate school and um, other chronic conditions that access to healthcare was, is necessary for everyone, but for me was particularly scary not to, and just the threat of not having it, it’s sometimes it was just that the, some deadline was occurring and like you’d really never had a lack of care. But just having that big thing in your brain that you might not have it, I think you, that takes you away from science and then you’re worrying about that instead of your experiment.

Emily (30:04): That’s exactly what I was thinking when you were going through, um, that response is that if we want to keep graduate students and postdocs, um, focused on their research, focused on progressing in their programs, successful in their academics, academia has to materially support them properly so they aren’t one distracted by the things like the benefit issues and all the, all the one things that we’ve talked about so far. Um, but then also by financial stress overall, um, having to be super, super frugal or having to make very extreme sacrifices in what your expenses are. Or on the flip side, you know, maybe spending a lot of time side hustling because your stipend is just not sufficient. And as a DEI issue, I mean if we want <laugh> more diversity in academia, um, and more people being successful across the board, we have to support them in a way that we’re assuming that they’re not gonna have to depend on family members or partners or other people who might or might not be able to contribute financially to them. Um, and frankly, a lot of people, you know, now have caregiving responsibilities. They have to contribute to the finances, other families too. And so again, you can’t even assume it’s just like a single person and all we have to do is provide for your basic living expenses and that should be enough for you because even these small bumps in the road, like you’ve been talking about these small emergencies or something medical comes up or I have to take an unexpected flight, these irregular expenses that you mentioned earlier, um, that can completely throw off your budget if you’re living with very little margin very close to the edge in the first place. So the way that I see it, we just have to fund graduate students, um, more than the baseline, right? Like not even the living wage. We gotta go beyond the living wage because you, to really be financially secure, you have to have a savings rate because these things will ease emergencies, these things will come up and it’s so much easier to recover from them and get back to being focused on your program and on your work, um, when you have the finances there and you don’t have to scramble and be stressed about it. So <laugh> that’s my part of the soapbox there. Um, yeah, anything more that you’d like to say about your, like the way that you do these DEI efforts?

Carolina (32:13): What, what I, I currently try to do and what I tried to do during graduate school was really providing the information that some people might not have. Basically like who, who can afford to go to graduate school and how the people that have made it to graduate school, how can we support them during, I believe that there are, there’s a lot of focus on the DEI efforts within recruiting and being like, yes, come to our university and having admissions numbers. And I think that that is very important. I also think that if there is not a support system for the students that are coming in and staying, I think that is a disservice to the minorities that you recruited. So while it’s really great to get a fellowship and it’s really good to be a funded student and that opens the doors for you to go into a lab that you might not have access before or gives you more research freedom and things like that, I think that if, if the school can get to brag about the funding that you have, the schools should also support you through the issues that may arise due to that funding.

Emily (33:48): Very good point. Thank you so much for adding that. Let’s turn our attention back to you in your post PhD life with your proper job, with your proper, uh, salary, which sounds amazing. So how are you pursuing financial goals these days and how are you doing with your, um, spending and just like, what’s going on in your finances now?

Post-PhD Finances

Carolina (34:08): Well, the private industry pays very well and as we know, our equation for our budgeting income is one of the biggest, um, in there. So I would say that for the first six months that I was at my full-time employment, I didn’t give myself a raise and I threw everything into retirement. So I think I started in the end of August, so I tried to get as close as the max as I could for the employee sponsored 401k and um, that, that was really great because, um, we were used to living in a given stipend and we didn’t really change much during those six months. Then after that I would say that my husband and I made a list of things that we wanted to upgrade in our house and one of them was a new bed <laugh>, one of them was a new fridge and, you know, things that we were like, it’s large expenses and is, I don’t know, it just felt like it was definitely a, a pivotal moment in an income that we could just buy this and not really like budget for it or something like that. And I, I think we bought the fridge for like a bonus or something <laugh> my sign up bonus or something like that. And I would say right now, because in graduate school I faced some medical issues, I would say that I really became a quote unquote vaulist that I was really trying to find what adds value to my life and the things that I really care about. And I think when people get sick or something like that, they really turn inward and, and start thinking of like, what is important in life. And I really started seeing like, okay, what in my budget reflects my values? What doesn’t and how can we reconcile those? So for example, family is very important to me and my husband, so I am happy that travel is a big category in my budget and we, we ran the numbers for the last year and I think like that was like our third category that we spend money on because our families are not here, so we have to travel to see them and we are pursuing fire. I think right now we don’t have responsibilities that are really sinking funds at the moment. So, um, I think I’m, we’re just kinda understanding what this new income can do and where can we put it into the long term retirement plans. And I’m also focusing on trying to live the life that I, I want. And I feel like during graduate school sometimes people really throw themselves into work and they’re like, they’re passionate about their stuff and they kind of like sometimes like don’t have like outside things. I definitely was guilty of that. So I’m trying to course correct and really focus on things that bring me joy in my every day today and spend on those ones I wouldn’t say previously, but definitely spend on, on the things that bring me joy and the things that I don’t care about, like my cell phone plan to definitely cut it as much as I can.

Emily (38:00): I just hope that, um, the listeners who are still in graduate school and are looking forward to the transition that you, um, have com- have, um, completed, can remember this example when they’re in your shoes because in, in my view, you have executed this like just perfectly <laugh>, um, which is kind of a combination of live like a grad student, like okay, don’t make any major changes right away. You, it sounds like you didn’t have to move or anything. So like there was some stability and it was, uh, easier in a sense to continue on with your previous level of spending, but in combination with that sort of as a default, okay, we’re not gonna, we’re gonna default to not changing anything, but then as you said, be so intentional about thinking through where you do want to spend more or where you wanna save more, um, to reach your financial goals and your lifestyle goals and everything and just add money to those buckets and to those places, um, and really get, as you said, like introspective about what’s important to you and apply that to your budget and reconcile them as best you can. Um, I just think it’s a wonderful, wonderful example, especially for someone who, who doesn’t right immediately after graduate school because the moving process brings in like more variables and more opportunities for like chaos in your budget when you have those kinds of transitions. That was the one that I went through personally. But yeah, I just think it’s so wonderful and awesome job. Of course, given the background that we heard, we knew that you were gonna do an awesome job with this, but it’s just amazing to like hear some more details about that.

Financial Mindsets, Skills, and Habits That Help With Post-PhD Life

Emily (39:22): Were there any skills or mindsets that you developed during graduate school with respect to your finances that you found useful in this post PhD, uh, life that you haven’t already brought up?

Carolina (39:34): I think making things automatic was something that I am still doing and I’m glad that I started before and I think like going back to the beginning about the savings accounts and we, we had a lot of transactions being automatic and right now I feel like we’re just kind of coasting. Like it, it’s something that we, we have developed already and I think that I’m never gonna pay my car insurance by month. I think that that is something that, um, I started doing in grad school because it was cheaper and now we, we just kind of continue with that. I think the frugal mindset of, of graduate students and like finding fun things to do for free, that is something that I have continued. Just yesterday I went to the library because they had a craft cafe and I made a craft and I had a blast and, and it cost $0. So I, I think a graduate student is good at finding those things around and taking the opportunity to, you know, have fun with a free activity when you, when your stipend is not as large, you sometimes like you really try to find the things that you care about and spend money on those. Like for example, I have a friend that he was willing to bike in and he bought a rather expensive bike, but it brought him a lot of joy and that was something that he did during graduate school and biking was his like stress reliever. So that was very worth it for him. And I think finding the things that are worth it for you, I think graduate school is a great time because you are sort of like tied on the money side and then sort of like continue those things and cut merci- mercifully, um, in the rest.

Finances with Carolina

Emily (41:37): Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, that’s Ramit Sethi <laugh>. I know that quote. Yeah. Um, well it was so great. It was so wonderful talking with you Carolina. Can you tell the listeners more about Finances with Carolina and what you do through your business?

Carolina (41:48): Sure. This business started out of the money club and I, I wanted to have a space in which I can help graduate students that are facing similar challenges to the ones that I faced or that my peers faced. And I would say that right now I do a lot of coaching calls in which students fill out a questionnaire that I have for them and that covers things, uh, as I mentioned, what brings you joy in your life and uh, I’m not gonna ask them to cut in their budget if that thing brings them joy <laugh> and, um, we go all over debt repayment and, um, trying to set up those high yield savings account, what are irregular expenses that they are gonna face. Retirement a lot of people are interested in that. And I would say personally from my community, I think finding someone that went through graduate school is just helpful that they can relate to you. I think that that is something that you and I bring to our communities that we, we know what it was like and we know what the problems might have been and, and heard about certain solutions or know someone that might have gone into that. So I would say the network that we, that I developed during graduate school, I have been using that for my clients as well. If someone is, and, and right now I would say coaching like just once on ones are my main focus and the way that I try to get funded is basically making the program, uh, cover those so the grad student doesn’t have to pay. Yeah, anything from budgeting to debt repayment. And I really like the one-on-one conversation. I I don’t think that’s scalable, but uh, I’m having a lot of fun with that. So, and I do like having an impact on someone’s life directly. So I think that’s why I am, I’m keeping it on the one-on-ones at the moment and I do have one digital product in which I have put like just kind of like stuff together in which, what the most common questions are and things like that. And I understand that not everybody likes the, the chatty, um, the chattiness that comes with like one-on-one coaching. So that’s, um, why I developed that one. In the future I hope to develop one that is not focused on graduate students and just in general because now I have been finding at work that some people that I did not find them in graduate school and they’re now starting their careers and they’re in their first full-time job with benefits and things like that, they’re a little bit lost. So that is another digital product that I wanna develop but is not ready yet. <laugh>.

Emily (44:38): Yeah, sounds like you’re repeating, repeating what you did during graduate school. You’re, you’re just a person that is open about money that people can feel comfortable talking to you and you find other people who are interested and you find other people who need your help at every single stage. So that’s just wonderful. And tell the listeners where they can find you.

Carolina (44:55): Yes, listeners can find me at financeswithcarolina.com and in there there’s uh, there’s a link to the digital product that I talked about. Um, there’s a link to the coaching services and things like that. So if you find me relatable and you wanna chat about money, schedule something <laugh>.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (45:16): Beautiful. Okay, let’s finish up with the last question that I ask of all my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve already touched on in the interview or it could be something completely new.

Carolina (45:29): My best financial advice. The, it’s, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. And I think that if you start flexing the muscle of working on your personal finances with small changes that are sustainable in realistic for you, you’re more likely to stick to those goals. I would also say that in order to keep that momentum going and that inspiration that you sometimes need on, on personal finance, I really would like to encourage the listeners to find content creators that speak with relative, like speak to you in experiences that you relate to in experiences that you might have aspirational in things. And, and overall really find the content that is gonna keep you motivated. And the content is the same, it’s just the delivery, it’s the, the, the experiences that the people that are delivering the content, the network of those people. So overall, find someone that does inspire you and keep you motivated and slow and steady.

Emily (46:46): All right. Name your top few content creators that you love to follow for, for yourself personally.

Carolina (46:52): Yes. Um, well of course your podcast. I think that was one of the ones that Hello PhD. You you did a cross interview with them and that’s how I find you and I was just mesmerized of all the things that I could do with my stipend <laugh>. Um, so that’s one definitely related to graduate school in terms of minorities, I I really like the podcast Brown ambition. There’s two ladies in there and they have everything about career questions, entrepreneurship, money stuff and how that relates to one another. They’re in different stages of their careers and lives and just very interesting to see where they’re coming from and where they’re going. Uh, popcorn Finance is another one that is very nice and um, it has a lot of investing. I love their investing series. I referred everyone to that one because they have a lot of content of like, what is an ETF, what is an index fund, what is a lot of what is and and when you start reading all these things,

Emily (48:01): I didn’t know about that series. I’m gonna check that out.

Carolina (48:03): It’s really good. Um, journey to Launch is another one, that I follow, she definitely has like really cool interviews and just a lot of inspirational stories. Afford anything by Paula Pant. Yeah, those, those ones are the ones that like I probably listen like yesterday or today.

Emily (48:27): Yeah, every single one of those podcasts is also on my feed except for Popcorn Finance. I’ve only listened on and off to Popcorn Finance, but the rest of ’em, I’m a regular listener. I love all of them, especially, um, Afford Anything is like taking the podcast medium to like the next level with like journalism, um, around finances, which is so amazing. Paula Pant doing an amazing job. Um, okay. Well Carolina, thank you so much for giving this interview. It’s been really insightful and it’s been lovely talking with you. Um, thank you so much for agreeing to come on.

Carolina (48:55): Of course.

Outtro

Emily (49:06): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

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Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

A $5,100 Annual Stipend as an International Student at BU

The Formation of the Boston University Graduate Workers Union

Commercial

Unionizing and Striking for Higher Stipends

How Dr. Lewis’s Personal Finances Were Impacted by Unionization

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Outro

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Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

How College Costs Shaped Dr. Pruett’s Undergrad Choices

Dr. Pruett’s Career and Research Interests During Undergrad

Finances During Undergrad and Grad School

Commercial

PhD Funding Issues at Vanderbilt University

Buying a House in Nashville During Grad School

Outro

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Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

How Do Stipends and Benefits Impact Grad Student Attrition?

Why Should Universities Care About Grad Student Attrition?

Other Attrition Related Research: Lab Switching and Master’s Degrees as Career Exploration

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What Steps Can Universities Take to Reduce Attrition?

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Outro

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Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Peer Financial Mentoring Programs

Downsides of Peer Financial Mentoring Programs

Costs of Hiring Professional Financial Advisors for University Students

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act & Graduate Student Loan Borrowing

Commercial

Accessing Peer Mentoring and Other Financial Services at Your University

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Outro

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Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

The Impacts of Low Pay and Poor Healthcare in Grad School

Using Data to Negotiate a Long Overdue Pay Increase

Commercial

The Unionization Movement at University of Alaska

Factors that Accelerated the Unionization Process

Post-Unionization Stipend Amounts

Power Dynamics During the Unionization Process

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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Teaser

Introduction

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Finances During Childhood, College, and Beyond

Financial Challenges During Grad School

The Birth of the Money Club

Commercial

DEI and Personal Finance

Post-PhD Finances

Financial Mindsets, Skills, and Habits That Help With Post-PhD Life

Finances with Carolina

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

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