stipend

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.

Increasing Income and Giving Back as an International Grad Student

September 22, 2025 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Snehanjana Chatterjee, a 3rd-year international graduate student at Texas Tech. Snehanjana recounts her financial journey over the past few years, from how she funded her start-up expenses upon moving to the US to how she’s gained scholarships and awards to increase her income. Snehanjana volunteers to help international students acclimate to the US, and she shares some of their concerns and questions. Finally, Snehanjana asks Emily about banking and investing as an international student not planning to stay in the US.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Increasing Income and Giving Back as an International Grad Student

Teaser

Snehanjana (00:00): For one fiscal year after it was done, um, they paid me a thousand dollars as like a scholarship at the end of it.

Introduction

Emily (00:20): 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 (00:48): This is Season 22, Episode 3, and today my guest is Snehanjana Chatterjee, a 3rd-year international graduate student at Texas Tech. Snehanjana recounts her financial journey over the past few years, from how she funded her start-up expenses upon moving to the US to how she’s gained scholarships and awards to increase her income. Snehanjana volunteers to help international students acclimate to the US, and she shares some of their concerns and questions. Finally, Snehanjana and I discuss banking and investing for international students not planning to stay in the US.

Emily (01:22): Would you like to ask me a question like Snehanjana does in this interview or work through a tricky financial challenge? I have recently opened my calendar for one-on-one financial coaching sessions, priced on a sliding scale. I can help you with budgeting for an irregular income or irregular expenses, selecting and pursuing a financial goal using my 8-step framework, getting started with investing, evaluating a new stipend or job offer, and much more. Please find additional information and sign up for a free introductory call at PFforPhDs.com/coaching/. I can’t wait to speak with you! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s22e3/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Snehanjana Chatterjee.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:23): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Snehanjana Chatterjee, a third year graduate student at Texas Tech, and we’re here to talk about her financial journey as an international student. So, Snehanjana, I’m so glad to have you on the podcast. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?

Snehanjana (02:40): Thank you for having me on the podcast. Uh, I’m Snehanjana Chatterjee. I am from Kolkata India and this is my third year in my PhD journey at Texas Tech University. I am studying, uh, plant mycorrhizal interactions and how they’re helping in using, uh, uh, resources from the soil and the economics behind it. Um, I’m in the Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech.

Emily (03:09): Wonderful. Tell us about how you’re funded as a PhD student.

Snehanjana (03:12): So I am funded through a teaching assistantship mainly. Um, so I have to teach, uh, every spring and uh, fall semester. Um, and you can reach out to the PI that you want to do a TAship under beforehand and you have to indicate that you want a TAship for that. Uh, previous, um, uh, semester and for summer, my PI provides, uh, funding, which is, uh, kind of more than what I get during spring and, uh, fall semesters. And I’m funded for those three months. And in those three months I do my research mostly.

Start-Up Costs and Challenges of New Grad Students

Emily (03:56): Let’s take it back to when you first arrived in the US and started graduate school. How did you, there’s a bit of money that’s needed up front, right? For the move and just everything that has to happen before you get paid for the first time. So for you, where were you drawing that money from?

Snehanjana (04:13): So, uh, one thing that I had to keep in mind that I didn’t get paid until October 1st. My TAship started from September 1st, but we didn’t until the 1st of October. So I had to come, uh, with a bit of money from India, uh, to make sure that I can sustain myself. Uh, I also had to pay the tuition, um, during that semester. So, uh, we have something called emergency payment plan, which divides the semester, uh, tuition into, into three parts. Um, so you can pay it upfront on September, in September or you can pay it like in different, uh, three install installments. So that was kind of tough and I did not know how to handle that and I thought they’re not paying us enough, um, which is a struggle we are still going through actually.

Emily (05:13): Can you tell me a little bit more about that? So you had the TA position and you had a paycheck coming, starting on October 1st, but they weren’t paying for your tuition that semester at all, or just the payment was like later

Snehanjana (05:26): They weren’t paying for a, uh, semester tuition. The thing is, so for fall it’s like from 2000 to 2,300, uh, dollars, and for spring it’s much more because it includes our health insurance. Uh, so for that, if you divide it into three installments, you have to pay like, I don’t know, 800 or 600 per month by 24th of that month. Um, so I did not have enough money, uh, to sustain myself at the beginning. Um, so I had to use whatever I brought from India, and that’s a big chunk of, uh, money that, uh, I had to ask from my parents.

Emily (06:13): Yeah, I I’m sure other people who are going through a similar transition have these same kinds of like concerns. Do you mind sharing with us like how much money you asked to, I don’t know if it was a gift or a loan, but how much money you asked from them for those, you know, the initial tuition payments and the move and the setting for the apartment and all that stuff, like it kind of to help other people estimate their budget?

Snehanjana (06:35): Yeah, I, uh, brought at least like $3,000, um, with me. And, uh, I had to open a bank account here. I did not know how to do that. I had to take help from previous students who were already here and after opening the bank account, I transferred all my money from my card to the account. Uh, so I think 2000 to 2,500 is completely fine if you, uh, bring that kind of money.

Current Grad Student Take-Home Stipend

Emily (07:05): Okay. So you kind of mentioned just now that getting paid enough is a struggle. Can you tell us maybe either what your stipend currently is, let’s say what you’re actually able to take home after you pay all your education related expenses or maybe what it’s been over the past few years?

Snehanjana (07:24): Yeah, so when I started, it was 1800 per month after taxes, but the department increased it gradually, uh, each semester and now it’s 2,300 per month after taxes. Um, but after paying my tuition and my rent, I barely have, uh, 1300, maybe a thousand to 1300. And with the grocery prices going up, it’s, it’s getting a bit difficult to live with that wage.

Emily (07:59): I can definitely understand <laugh> that it’s not going very far. Yet, that is actually a pretty big increase over just a couple of years. What was the reasoning behind why they increased the stipend? Was it due to students asking for it? Was it due to other factors? Do you know?

Snehanjana (08:16): Yeah, so we have a graduate representative committee and the this committee, uh, works with the graduate student and with the faculty and they listened to our grievances. Uh, like maybe they send a Google form and ask us what kind of concerns do you have? And they talked to the department chair and other faculty members at faculty meetings. And from that they decide if, uh, they need to increase our, uh, wages and if they have the certain budget for it. And I think they talked to the graduate school about this as well.

Different Strategies for Increasing Your Stipend

Emily (08:57): Okay. And I understand that you have also, aside from what the department chooses to pay you, like you personally have increased your stipend through various actions over the years. Can you tell us what those have been? What’s been effective?

Snehanjana (09:09): I personally, uh, reached out to certain, um, organizations. So I was Secretary of Association of Biologists at TTU and uh, for, uh, one fiscal year after it was done, um, they paid me a thousand dollars as like a scholarship at the end of it. And I am currently secretary at, uh, American Society for Microbiologists at Tech. And for that, uh, you also get a scholarship at the end of the fiscal year for about $500. Um, apart from that, I was also associated with the international, uh, council, uh, center, and I was a global guide there, so I was helping new and upcoming students to settle down. And for that I was paid $500 per semester. These things were added to my tuition, so they were not giving checks away, they were just adding it to my tuition bill.

Emily (10:14): Those almost sound like, well, they kind of sound like volunteer positions. Um, right. And then you sort of get like a, um, a sum of money as like a thank you for it. Any other ways that you’ve like increased your income or decreased your expenses over the past few years?

Snehanjana (10:30): I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, but, uh, there was a time, um, I used to have one meal a day, which is not good. Um, so, uh, that is, that was one concern for me. But now I have like improved that, uh, and I have like three meals a day now. Uh, but circumstances, uh, kind of pushed me to do that. Um, and I was, uh, not being able to ask for help from my family because my mom and dad both are retired and that would put a lot of pressure on them, so I just did not tell them anything. Um, but I did apply for a scholarship, it’s not kind of a scholarship, it’s called, um, I forgot the name, but it’s for Texas, uh, students, uh, people living, sorry, students living in Texas. Um, so you tell them how much funding you need to pay your tuition, um, and it can be like from 500 to 1500 and uh, they give you the amount of money, they add it to your tuition account. But yeah, it has to be, if you’re going through like a very bad situation, like you have, uh, war back at your country, um, or you are going through really bad, um, I don’t know, financial situation, something like that.

Financial Hardship Scholarship

Emily (12:04): Hmm. It definitely sounds like you were there if you were eating only one meal per day and at some point. Yeah. I’m really sorry to hear that. Um, where did you find out about that scholarship?

Snehanjana (12:15): So the international office advertised about that and uh, I reached out to them and, uh, it doesn’t require a lot. You just have to write a, like a financial statement. Um, what kind of hardships are you, are you going through and, um, upload your, uh, tuition statements like how much you have paid over the, uh, semesters and they look at it and if you can provide more proof that uh, you don’t have enough, um, money in our account, they will definitely help you.

Emily (12:52): Hmm. Yeah, I’m really glad that they were able to connect you with that resource. Do you have a sense of like, were a lot of your peers applying for that scholarship?

Snehanjana (13:03): I don’t think so because it kind of is like a discreet thing that they do. Uh, it, it opens from like first to 10th of, uh, like February, March and April and then again in, uh, fall, maybe in, um, September, October, November. And they announce the awardee by the 24th of that month. And, uh, I have gotten that award three times. And, uh, it’s sometimes they give you the amount you want, sometimes they give you how much they could have given. Like if I want $700, it’s not, uh, like guaranteed that they will give me $700, maybe they will give me $400. So it depends on how much funding they have.

Emily (13:57): I’m, I’m really glad you’re sharing this though, like even though it sounds like kind of a, obviously you had to be in a difficult spot to be applying for and qualifying for the scholarship, but I’m really glad that you’re pointing this out because people may be, they may have access to this kind of resource at their institution and they’re just not aware of it yet. So it’s definitely worth asking. So your financial situation has been getting better over the years from the departmental side, from, you know, you taking some actions on your own behalf as well. So are you able to reach towards any financial goals at the moment?

Current Financial Goals

Snehanjana (14:33): For now, I don’t have a savings account. I would like to open one. I just have a checking account and, uh, to be honest, I don’t know how to invest money. So that is one, uh, goal that I would like to achieve maybe in 2025. Um, and whomever I reach out to, like any, uh, international students that have been alumni of Texas Tech, uh, they don’t really, uh, make me understand the process and it’s kind of confusing. So if you have any pointers that I can, I can learn from, maybe I can follow some of them.

Emily (15:18): I have a tip that I learned from, there was a podcast interview I did back in I think 2019 with Hui-chin Chen, um, who is a certified financial planner who specializes in cross-border tax issues. And this actually didn’t occur during that, that recorded episode, but something I learned from her during our later conversations. Um, so I don’t know if this is necessarily one of the difficulties you’ve been running into, but what I understand is that, um, not all brokerage firms where you would open, you know, an account to invest in, not all of them work with non-residents. So you may, and you can tell me if you have sometimes international students approach brokerage firms to open an account and somewhere in the paperwork it’s like, oh, no, no, you’re a non-resident, we can’t work with you. Has that happened to you?

Snehanjana (16:02): Uh, no, I have not approached them.

Emily (16:05): Okay. Um, but I know this is like something that is intimidating, like to non-residents, um, because they, they don’t wanna get told no and, you know, have to go through that process. So what I learned from Hui-chin Chen, um, is that there’s a brokerage firm called Interactive Brokers, which specifically sort of caters an advertises to non-residents. So if you or someone else is getting told no by a couple of your like top choices, then you could go to them and you’re gonna get a yes because that’s like part of their express business model. So that’s kind of one thing is like where to open an account, um, can I even open an account? Like those kinds of questions. What, what else has you like sort of stumped about the process?

Investing in the US Stock Market as an International Student

Snehanjana (16:50): So, so, um, in my bank app they always tell me to invest in like stocks and stuff, but I don’t understand that as well. And I don’t know if investing in stocks in the US will lead me to earn any money or not.

Emily (17:08): Hmm, yeah, kind of depends on your financial goal, right? Because with stock investing, um, it can be very volatile in the short term. Like we’re recording this interview in, uh, early March and the stock market has had some down days, um, in the past like month or two, like big downs. So we, when you say, you know, is it going to earn me money, you really have to talk about the timeline because over the short term, weeks, months, even small number of years, you know, you could put money in and have less money, you know, the next time you check, that’s absolutely possible. Yet over the longer term, 10, 20, 30, 40 years, um, you know, historical trends show us that the US stock market does very well over those kinds of periods of time. Um, as long as you stay invested <laugh>, right? As long as you’re not, you know, pulling money out, uh, when it drops and buying in when it’s high and, and those sorts of actions.

Emily (18:06): So, um, one of the things I talk about in that interview with Hui-chin Chen, which I would absolutely recommend, um, to anyone who’s a non-resident in the US, um, is about whether it’s, you know, prudent to invest in the US as an international grad student or postdoc, et cetera, when you’re not sure, are you gonna stay in the US long term or maybe move to another country afterwards? And her attitude was like pretty pro investing in the US but I would say you still have to, um, have that long term timeline in mind. Like if you’re going to be invested over the first few years, like you have to have a plan to probably stay invested over the long term to sort of, not guarantee, but have a much, much higher likelihood of a positive return on investment in that time.

Snehanjana (18:55): One other question is, I maybe don’t want to stay for long term in the US uh, so I have like two years left for my PhD. So for short term, maybe for the next two years, what do you recommend for international students? How, how should they proceed?

Emily (19:12): I think in my conversation with Hui-chin, if I remember correctly, the question was more about like, well, I’m not sure if I’m gonna stay in the US long term. And so she was kind of like, well, just get started investing. Now you don’t necessarily know what’s gonna happen, but maybe you’ll end up staying long term, or even if you don’t, you can like move the money. But if you’re saying more to me like, no, no, I’m sure I’m leaving in a couple of years, um, then I don’t know, I think cash is king in that case, like just, you know, park it in a high yield savings account. I mean, you said you don’t have a savings account here yet, but like, yeah, just park it in a savings account, get what you can without taking risk with it and start investing, you know, at the next place you move to whether it’s back, back to India or somewhere else, um, as soon as you can when you arrive there, because yeah, it’s certainly possible you could invest now and in two years if you’re trying to pull the money out, have less money than you did when you started, that’s definitely possible.

Snehanjana (20:07): Yeah. Okay.

Commercial

Emily (20:11): 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.

Common Concerns of New International Grad Students

Emily (21:30): So you mentioned earlier that you were volunteering, I think you said as a global guide. What, what, what, um, office was that through?

Snehanjana (21:38): It was International Cultural Center.

Emily (21:40): Okay. So volunteering with the International Cultural Center. And part of your role was to like help new graduate students adjust right to life in the US. Um, and what kinds of questions or what kinds of concerns have you heard from those like new graduate students coming in that you know, you’ve learned from or you like to share, you know, what you’ve learned like with them or like what were those kind of common questions?

Snehanjana (22:05): The most common question is, uh, getting an apartment and before signing a lease, uh, they need to have like a person who guarantees that, uh, they’ll pay their, uh, rent every time. And if they’re not being able to have a guarantor for the lease, they need to pay extra money for that. So that is one of the concern that I heard. So, um, sometimes, uh, so when I came in I asked one of my lab mates, uh, to be a guarantor and she agreed, but that is not the case with everyone. Uh, most of the people who come here as undergrads maybe do not have friends yet. So, uh, finding a guarantor can be a bit of a problematic situation. And then they have to pay like $500 more, uh, for the rent, um, for first month at least.

Emily (23:02): Hmm. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of that in like a housing market before. So that, that’s a yeah, that’s a huge issue. So people are like arriving to your city and they don’t yet have a place to live, right? So they’re staying at, you know, hotels, Airbnbs, that kind of thing and finding a place to live signing a lease. But if they don’t have a guarantor, then they have, is it, um, is it money that they won’t get back or is it like an extra deposit that they do get back?

Snehanjana (23:31): They do not get back that. Um,

Emily (23:33): Wow, okay.

Snehanjana (23:34): Yeah, so that is a big chunk of money that is just taken away from them. And some of these, uh, places, they do not let the people move in until 18th of the month. So if the students come in for orientation day, like an eighth or ninth August, they either have to stay with, uh, someone else or at a hotel. Uh, fortunately, um, what the International Cultural Center is trying to do is trying to put them, um, at hotels that they do not have to pay for sometimes. Um, sometimes they find, uh, Texan residents who are willing to help these, uh, kids out and maybe they can stay with those residents for like 10 days and then move in later on.

Emily (24:20): Wow, okay. So it’s like the whole market is kind of, they have these sort of wide policies around this extra money that they have to pay or the date they can move in, like, wow, I hadn’t heard of that before. I wonder, I wonder how widespread that, that, that is in other, other cities.

Snehanjana (24:36): Yeah, so I think, uh, that is quite widespread, uh, at least in Lubbock. Um, because uh, the community I used to live at first, um, the management was not that good and uh, I used to get a huge utility bill at the end of the month, like $80 per person, uh, when we are sharing three bedroom, uh, apartment. Um, but uh, that has decreased for me when I moved into a different, uh, uh, community. Um, they have a cap for the utility bill and that helps out a lot.

Emily (25:17): How much like were these international students prepped in advance of their arrival of like, this is how this works. You’re gonna come here, we’re gonna try to help you find a place to stay, you’re not gonna be able to move until after the 18th. You’re gonna like, are they told this stuff in advance or, or not?

Snehanjana (25:33): Yeah, so the Global Guide program, um, hosted several, uh, seminars, uh, webinars. Uh, so some of the kids joined both grad and undergrad and we had to like tell them repeatedly that these are the rules that you have to follow. You’ll have a culture shock when you come in and it’ll get frustrating, but you can reach out to us anytime you want. Um, and they have voiced their frustrations whenever they get to learn that they can’t move in before like 18th of the month, but they have to pay the entire rent for the month. Um, yeah. So they have to pay like $480 for staying 15 days or less than 15 days, uh, in that apartment. And that’s a lot of money for an international student.

Emily (26:26): Yes, I would be culture shocked by this as well, moving from another American city to, to Lubbock. Wow. Okay. Any, any other like common questions or concerns that you’ve noticed?

Snehanjana (26:37): So some of them, uh, don’t know how to do groceries. So most of them, uh, either take the buses and the buses here stop running at 7:00 PM so it’s from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM Um, you don’t have to pay for the buses, uh, but carrying the groceries from Walmart to like your house is a big task. So what they do is go and go with a bunch of people together, either to Costco or to Walmart, and uh, they have all the groceries together and they carry those groceries all the way from Walmart, uh, to their house. Um, that is one huge thing that they do. And, uh, there are not many people who have cars and uh, that’s one of the big struggles that they go through. So they have a designated date or a date that they go for groceries, but some of the global guides are helping them. If they have cars, they take uh, like three or four of them together to the grocery store and they buy whatever they need and they give a ride back as well.

Emily (27:49): Yeah, those infrastructure issues are such a big thing. I remember when I lived without a car, I also was like, how am I doing this grocery thing? How, how was this happening? Um, and it was always kind of like a catch as catch can kind of like situation. Wow. Well, do you have, as we’re like wrapping up here, any um, questions for me beyond what you were just asking about investing? I mean, I’m happy to talk more about investing if you want, but any kind of other financial wellness related things that I might be able to help you with right now?

Savings Accounts and Credit Cards as an International Grad Student

Snehanjana (28:18): Not really. I just, I just really need to open a savings account as soon as possible, but it’s not, uh, you have to go to the bank to do that and with my schedule it’s kind of busy. Um, and you have to take an appointment with the bank, so I need to do that ASAP actually.

Emily (28:37): Hmm. Yeah. Um, who are you banking with?

Snehanjana (28:41): Uh, Bank of America.

Emily (28:42): Hmm. That’s your first problem. <laugh>, um, bank of America, I, I am a former Bank of America customer myself. Um, and the customer service is very difficult as you just said. Wait, why do you have to go into an account? Why into a branch? Why do you have to make an appointment? This is an easy process. Um, so I would actually say maybe don’t open a savings account with Bank of America. I doubt they’re gonna give you a very good interest rate anyway. Um, I would say look to the online only banks, um, that might be available. So for example, I bank with Ally. Um, another good one is Capital 1 360. Um, but even if you look at like a website like Bank Rate or NerdWallet, those kinds of sites, those aggregators, um, you can kind of search for like okay, what’s the best, you know, high yield savings account available, um, now and since you have an established bank account with Bank of America, like you’ve gone through the process of showing your ID and all that stuff that you have to do, um, once you have that it’s easier to get like a second account somewhere else ’cause the first bank has done like the work for it. Um, so yeah, I would say check out like an online only bank. Um, and I’m not sure if you would even have to open checking. You could probably just open the savings account if you’d like to and you know, start transferring money over there and getting a halfway decent interest rate on it.

Snehanjana (30:02): Actually I do have a question. So I have like four credit cards and I have friends that have like, I don’t know, 10 to 12 credit cards and they use these credit cards to book a flight and they get points for it and then they use those points back in India. And I was trying to understand the game, but it seems so complicated.

Emily (30:28): Yeah.

Snehanjana (30:29): Do you recommend having like 10 to 12 credit cards for like a each person to get these points?

Emily (30:37): I don’t think you necessarily have to go that far, but, um, for international flights, I actually recently started learning from the brand 10x travel. There’s a bunch of brands like this, like where they sort of teach you these, um, travel hacking, you know, flight, getting free flights, like kind of strategies. But the general thing that you do, and I have, I’ve done this much more on the domestic side than for international flights. So I’m a little bit speaking about something I’ve like learning, but I haven’t actually practiced yet. Um, it’s more about you figure out like what airline or airlines you commonly use. Like do you already have a preferred airline for your trips?

Snehanjana (31:21): Yeah, it’s mostly either Emirates or Qatar.

Emily (31:24): Okay. So for Emirates and Qatar, then you would figure out what bank or banks like Chase, um, Amex that offer like credit cards. There’s a bunch of them. Um, what, which banks are offering points that transfer to either those airlines that you want to fly on or one of their partners? ’cause these airlines are all in like alliances together and you can kinda um, like book, you know, a flight that’s ultimately on Emirates but you’re booking it through one of their partners. So sometimes you can get deals that way, whatever. So you figure out where you can like basically accumulate points through your normal credit card, you know, everyday kind of spending and how those points can be transferred to ultimately get you on the airline that you want to fly on. So I don’t know offhand like who works with Qatar or Emirates, um, but you could look that up and figure it out.

Emily (32:17): So then like I’m really familiar with the Chase system for example. So let’s just say that like Chase did transfer to those, I don’t know if they do. Um, so you would basically accumulate points on one or more Chase cards and you would also probably sign up for some new, um, credit cards that have signup bonuses. You would do that slowly, like as your spending is able to support it. Um, ’cause maybe you only spend on a credit card, I don’t know, 500 or a thousand dollars a month. You would have to make sure that your spending can meet their like minimum spend. So maybe it’s $3,000 in three months or $6,000 in four months, like whatever it is, make sure you can do it based on your projections of your spending. But signing up for those new cards and getting signup bonuses and also putting ongoing spending on these cards is kind of how you accumulate those points. And then you turn the points into redeeming them as like free flights. So it can get complicated, um, if you want it to be, but I think there’s also probably a way to figure it out to do it since you already know like your preferred airlines to do it like fairly simply. Um, yeah, so that’s kind of what I’m learning slash starting to like redeem on my end.

Snehanjana (33:28): Yeah, yeah, because I was asking one of my friend and he was kind of directing me and then he got, uh, busy with his research. So <laugh> I couldn’t anymore, so Yeah.

Emily (33:41): Yeah. Well you might go back to him when it seems like he has more free time if he can teach you like the system or whatever. Um, or you can go through, you know, like I just, I just mentioned 10X travel. I think there’s like the points guy, like there’s other places you can learn from. Actually the points guy Brian Kelly, he just released a book on travel hacking that I just got from the library. I haven’t started it yet. Um, so you could read something like that and figure out like how to play this game. But to answer your direct question of like, do you need 10 to 12 credit cards? No, probably not that many. Um, but should you be signing up for a new credit card, you know, once a year, twice a year, however much your spending can support? Yeah, that would certainly help get you there faster if you do these signup bonuses. But you have to be careful about it because your spending as a graduate student is automatically kind of on the lower side and a lot of these cards have annual fees. You have to make sure that the, you know, the benefits you’re getting are justifying the fee and all that kind of stuff. Um, it was pretty intimidating to me when I was in graduate school to think about pursuing credit card rewards and stuff, so I kind of stayed away from it until afterwards. But I think if you’re very careful about it, um, it can be beneficial. And actually, I don’t know when this episode is going to air, but I have um, another one that I recorded with um, Brendan Henrique and I’m not sure again what the publication date relative is going to be, but I think they both, this episode and that episode are gonna come out sometime in spring 2025. So you could, you could listen to that or the listener can look for that episode, um, in the recent past or the near future, um, to kind of learn more about the system that, that he’s using.

Snehanjana (35:13): Okay. Yeah, sure.

Emily (35:15): Yeah. Any other questions I can try to help with?

Snehanjana (35:18): No, but, uh, one common, uh, I won’t say scam, but kind of scam ish thing that I faced when I came to Lubbock was everyone was telling me to, uh, sign up for the Discover card because they were like, oh, I’ll get a hundred dollars cash back and you’ll also get a hundred dollars cash back sign up for that. And that Discover card has never helped me. It keeps on telling me that you’ll get cash back, but then some problem or the other arises from that card and will get any kind of cash back. Uh, I am thinking about, uh, not using it anymore.

Emily (36:00): Yeah, I wouldn’t, I would not have expected that. So Discover is not the most popular type of credit card, but it’s definitely one that sort of caters to like students or you know, like people new to the US like you were. Um, so I wouldn’t necessarily have called it a scam, although I’m not sure about like the, you know, what the benefits are that they were sort of holding out and that like didn’t really happen like either I I, you would know more than I would, I would be surprised if they were like outright lying, but like maybe they just made it way more complicated than anybody reasonably like would expect it to be. Um, so yeah, but if a card’s not working for you, totally move on because a Discover card is a great first card, but like, you don’t have to once you get, once you’re onto card number two, don’t worry about card number one. Like you could, I don’t know, I don’t necessarily wanna say like close it because it is helpful to have your oldest card like remaining open, but you certainly don’t have to use it in any significant way. Right.

Snehanjana (36:56): Yeah.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (36:57): Yeah. But thank you for sharing that ’cause yeah, discover definitely does sort of advertise and cater to like people new to the credit world in the US Right. Um, okay. Well it’s been absolutely lovely to chat with you over the last few minutes and thank you so much for sharing like your own story and like what you’ve, you know, been able to help other international students with. That’s really insightful. Um, I want to end with what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we have touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.

Snehanjana (37:27): My best financial advice that I learned from my father mainly is to save as much as possible, but don’t just save for like, oh, I’ll use it in the future. Have fun with some of it. Uh, not too much fun though. I’m very, I I can, I can tell you that I’m stingy, but not too stingy. I do like, uh, things I do, I am materialistic, so I buy stuff for myself and my for my friends, but I make sure that I’m on my budget, I’m on my limit to use this. I have that kind of sense because I was told by my parents like, you need to save for this. And currently I’m saving up for a house. That’s my goal. Um, I don’t know when I can buy a house, but that’s one of the goals that I have. Um, yeah. I’ll, I’ll put that money towards like buying a house, definitely.

Emily (38:26): Awesome. Well I love that advice too. It definitely is about having like balance, um, in your life and I actually really like saving specifically for fun things. Like, yes, I’m saving for the long-term future or yes, I’m saving for like emergencies boring stuff like that. But like yeah, I’m also saving for travel and I’m saving for entertainment and like having some, yeah, it just makes the whole process a lot more enjoyable when you can tie it to like, yeah, this is something I’m really going to, um, have fun with in the near future. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast and it’s been great to have you.

Snehanjana (38:56): Thank you so much for having me.

Outro

Emily (39:09): 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.

Negotiation and Long-Term Thinking Effected Financial Success for This International PhD

November 18, 2024 by Jill Hoffman

In this episode, Emily interviews Wen, who recently earned a PhD in plant pathology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wen came to the US for her master’s degree immediately after finishing undergrad and started learning about the US financial system, even though she had an avoidant money mindset. After overdrafting her checking account, she realized she needed to take control of her finances, start thinking long-term, and work toward financial goals such as investing inside a Roth IRA. Alongside peers, Wen negotiated the research assistantship stipends in her department, they were ultimately given a 13% raise. She has started applying those negotiation skills in other arenas. Finally, Wen explains how she pursued a career in tech transfer, starting with professional development and an internship during grad school.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Teaser

Wen (00:01): Um, yeah, I, I think I want to circle back, um, the negotiation again. Um, I want to, uh, emphasize, um, negotiation. It’s not only like what the stipend could be like, I think every grad student could ask more from their PI, um, you know, sponsor me to this conference. This is a good workshop I want to do, and this is a career event I want to attend, and can you sponsor me? Can you cover that for me? Um, and there’s everything there. There’s a lot of things online. Talk about negotiation and everything. So I, I do want to share that. Um, when I purchased my second car, um, I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube, how to talk to the dealership, and, uh, just, um, trying to negotiate the best option for myself. Um, it was a quite funny, like real life big purchase that I went to the dealership, uh, and the dealer just thought I’m a innocent, uh, foreigner. <laugh> doesn’t, didn’t know what’s going on. And, um, so I think I, um, really take advantage of negotiation and know that what’s the best for me and, um, argue that, uh, those, those terms. And, um, yeah, I, I learned a lot of from practicing, uh, negotiation. And, um, advocate for myself.

Introduction

Emily (02:02): 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 (02:32): This is Season 19, Episode 7, and today my guest is Wen, a recent PhD graduate in plant pathology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wen came to the US for her master’s degree immediately after finishing undergrad and started learning about the US financial system, even though she had an avoidant money mindset. After overdrafting her checking account, she realized she needed to take control of her finances, start thinking long-term, and work toward financial goals such as investing inside a Roth IRA. Alongside peers, Wen negotiated the research assistantship stipends in her department, and they were ultimately given a 13% raise. She has subsequently applied those negotiation skills in other arenas. Finally, Wen explains how she pursued a career in tech transfer, starting with professional development and an internship during grad school.

Emily (03:24): I have a quick update for you on the tax return preparation workshops that I’m offering next spring. I’m super excited for my planned live in person workshops in California and Colorado and also my live virtual workshops for universities in Minnesota, Missouri, and New York. I’m sure there will be many more universities offering my asynchronous workshops as well. If you want to learn if your university is already on my list for a live or asynchronous workshop or want to help me get one offered at your university, please email me! You can reach me at emily at P F f o r P h D s dot com. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Wen.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (04:25): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today. Wen, who is a postdoc in tech transfer at a university in Texas, and she’s going to share with us about her sort of financial transition to the United States as an international graduate student and now postdoc. And also about, uh, her pivot to the field of tech transfer. So that’s really exciting. Uh, Wen will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

Wen (04:50): Yes. Uh, thank you Emily. Um, my name is Wen and I’m a recent PhD graduate, uh, from University of Wisconsin Madison, and my major is plant pathology. And, um, when I started my PhD, uh, four years ago, um, I, I wasn’t sure about much about financial situations and all my career plans, so I’m glad, um, things are work out, uh, currently and, uh, really, um, happy to share with people in the, uh, going through grad school. Um, so yeah, and I currently start, I just started working as a tech transfer early professional as a postdoc position at university, uh, in Texas and help researchers to protect their, uh, IP and licensing the IP to, uh, the, the industry. So it’s quite interesting and fun new, um, career for me.

Finances During Childhood and Young Adulthood in China

Emily (05:57): Yeah, that is great. Tech transfer was very intriguing to me when I was in graduate school as well, and definitely a career that I considered, uh, before starting my business. I want to actually take a step back and would you please tell us a little bit about how you grew up and your young adulthood, at least in terms of your finances, um, up until the point that you came to the US so we can understand a little bit of your background and your mindset?

Wen (06:20): Yeah, so I came to United States in 2018 when I finished my college back in China, Beijing. So before that, um, before I was 22, I spent my whole life in China. So I would see that the bigger picture of how I grew up is China was, uh, developing country and we have fast economic and financial growing throughout my, the, that two decades is I live there and how that affect my early, uh, adult year is we, not only me, but my parents, they went through a insufficient, uh, lifestyle to kind of going to be self-sufficient and to industrialize and to eventually abundant, uh, lifestyle. Um, I think that affect me in the way that okay, situations always change and I don’t feel like I need to plan for financial situation when I grow up, especially rely on my parents. And that’s quite Asian family culture, um, that parents help children to, uh, uh, fund that college and find job and, um, kind of help them to establish their, the family, new family in the future too. So I don’t have many financial literacy, uh, when I came into u uh, the, the us. And another personal, um, background about my family is my parents they are, uh, they own a family business, so they always talk money, um, in our private family life, and they would argue and things get stressful. And when I went to, uh, sleep a lot of times, and I think that just make me, doesn’t feel positive to talk about money or thinking about what can money do. Um, yeah, so I don’t consider much about learning financial stuff, uh, even in college, uh, when I make, uh, decisions on what to study. So I just follow my interest in biology, went to, uh, plant pathology and decide to pursue higher education. Um, because I wasn’t thinking about making money, it was kind of a hard topic for me to discuss or openly to look into what do I need to do? Yeah. Until I, uh, came to United States and explore things on my own here.

Emily (09:15): Yeah, that’s really fascinating. And I’m sorry if this is like overly like reductionistic, but it sounds like you developed a bit of an avoidant mindset around money because both of being provided for by your parents and in an increasing lifestyle over time, right? Things are getting better and better lifestyle wise, and also because of the stress that money, um, caused in your household and that you absorbed some of that. And so that sort of came together to be like, well, it’s, it’s all okay and I don’t wanna think about it. Does that make sense? Yes.

Wen (09:46): Yes.

Adapting to the US Financial System

Emily (09:47): Okay. So then there’s a big shift right when you get to the us. Can you tell us, uh, about that and, and how it happened and how you were feeling and how you adapted to this new system?

Wen (09:59): Yeah, so when I came to us, I started my master program in Ohio State. Um, and I was awarded the research assistantship, so the regular RA stipend to start. Um, and it was quite efficient for me to, uh, start living there because, uh, to cover rent and, uh, groceries. Um, I was just excited to just experience all things. Um, and I got my first credit card, uh, when I came to United States. It’s not a thing in China. Um, and I got my first a used car, um, in my second year. Um, but I think there is a, there was a turning point when after I pay my, um, car payment to buy the car, my bank account, I didn’t realize it went to negative. Um, and I got, uh, a fine of the overdraft fee, $39. I still remember that. So I went, um, really anxious. I’m like, how could this happen? And, uh, the bank can just take, uh, overdraft fee from me. And, um, I think I was able to argue with them saying, Hey, it was my first time I was, I was new to this system. So at that point I realized, okay, like, um, I need to take serious on my situation. I need to plan and budget very well to buy things, um, and know how much number in my account, how much do I have. And, um, so I’d say more and, uh, during Covid I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, which is a higher cost of living city, um, for grad student. Um, I just starting to saving even more, um, for the moving and, um, adjust to their high rent here.

Emily (12:15): Can you say a little bit more about how you got into that, more of like long-term or annual planning? Um, because I can imagine that’s a really, that’s a really difficult thing for someone who’s, you know, within a year or two of being financially independent from their parents. I know it took me several years to start sort of pushing that time horizon out for the planning, right? Like, did you use any like tools or, I don’t know, anything that would help someone else who’s going through that transition?

Wen (12:45): So at beginning I do ha- uh, in my first year in Madison, I want to focus on getting to know my own financial habits, uh, tracking my spending, and I just downloaded very simple, um, Excel sheet from the website to track down my spending. Um, and I realized I eat, uh, a a I spend more money take out and, uh, some online shopping and necessary fashion stuff, um, into some unnecessary items. Um,

Emily (13:28): Sounds pretty typical pandemic spending though, right? <laugh>

Wen (13:32): I know, and investing couples hobbies. Um, yeah, I think those the first step is getting to know myself and, um, get rid of their, the spending. I didn’t realize I, I was, I was doing. And then I figured out if I want to save extra, um, cutting spend, it’s one thing. And another thing is I found some resources on campus. Um, back then, we do have international student group that, uh, we will go to their, uh, local food pantry that’s on campus. Um, and there are very fresh produce. We’ll go weekly with, uh, a bunch of international students and we, it’s just like, uh, grocery shopping and I will, I got save quite a lot of money from that. And sometimes our dining hall, um, they will have extra dining food and they will pack very well and give to students. I think all this, um, on campus activity, uh, on campus nresources help me allow to save some, um, necessary spending as well. Um, and it’s a way for me to find my community that time.

Emily (15:03): Yeah. Thank you so much for, for sharing that. Um, is there anything else that you wanted to add about kind of adapting to the US um, financial system?

Wen (15:12): I think getting the social security number and um, just a first debit card was, uh, essential for us to get paid. Um, and establish that is very important, especially, um, I need the social security number to apply, uh, the credit card later and, um, be aware that having credit card is essential for, for future, like the credit scores, um, which I wasn’t educate, educated, uh, in that perspective back in China. We don’t use credit score. Um, and also I just think it’s extremely more important for international student have the emergency, um, savings because we don’t have, um, the, the, the support that domestic students have, um, and always have that saving would just help so much. Um, and at the same time take advantage of the health insurance, the benefits that, uh, come with our student staff. And I always use my dental and vision and um, uh, insurance, um, coverage every year. Um, so those are now counted by numbers, but they are financial. Um, they could be financial spendings in the future. Um, yeah.

Stipend Increase During Grad School

Emily (16:53): Yeah, that’s great that you have that insurance provided you by your program. I know not everybody has that, but it’s something that more and more programs are adding if they don’t already have it. So I believe you told me in advance of our interview that you increased your stipend during the course of graduate school. Can you tell me how that happened?

Wen (17:10): Yeah, I think, uh, it’s just a, a process of negotiation between our grad student, um, group, uh, with our department. And when I started my PhD four years ago, uh, we had that huge inflation that like about 8%, um, that year. So I realized our department only increased like about 2% into the student stipend that year. Um, and the something I think it’s critical is timing. Um, most of the universities, or at least our department will decide how much to pay the year ahead for student. So for example, this August we, the department will submit their budget for next, um, next year’s, next fall students, um, payment. So I just couldn’t, um, thinking about like this lack of, um, catching up <laugh> eventually just will make our stipend pay so behind, um, the current raise of rent. Um, so in my first year I realized this financial hardship, but I think we started talking about it. Um, and until second year, I actually joined the student body, uh, kind of our grad student council, and I initiated more discussion. We talked to other departments, grad students as well. Um, and eventually I designed a survey, um, right after actually, uh, nature published a paper on the graduate student stipend survey results. Hmm.

Emily (19:17): Was that the biology PhD stipends one?

Wen (19:21): Yeah, I think so. It has a bunch of, um, PhD programs, data that related to our program.

Emily (19:29): Yeah.

Wen (19:29): Uh, entomology, plant pathology, horticulture. So

Emily (19:32): We’ll link to the episode that I did with the, uh, one of the co-founders of that, uh, database. So we’ll link to that in the show notes.

Wen (19:39): Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, I think getting the information about what’s going on with other universities really help us to push this forward. So I, um, we made, I made a survey about what’s our current inflation rate and cost of living in Madison specifically, um, and stipend numbers we quote from their PhD stipend.com, uh, a bunch of data and make, make, uh, we make a very informed, um, survey plus it, uh, plus like collection of the students data points. And we made a report, so we were able to present a report at our department meeting before they make a decision. And, um, you know, it’s hard to, um, really let them to, um, because they have their budget, uh, difficulty as well. So we will patiently, um, talk about this with our department, um, faculties and administrations, and I think we got their feedback. They want to, uh, so we ask more data from other universities, similar program, um, you can say like a competitor of our programs administration, uh, admission. So I think after two times, like monthly meeting like that, we were able to, they devote, um, increased stipend, um, about 13%, um, which includes a percent inflation and 5%, um, extra for their cover, our student’s fees. It’s, it’s like their activity fee we pay for the university. So our department, uh, help us on that. Um, yeah, so we got, uh, got a pretty good raise on that. And the good thing is, um, it didn’t make our students happier and, uh, have stronger adminis admission data to attract prospective, uh, students applicants. Also our, um, nearby like close program, they were able, the student body were able to kinda refer to what we do, we did and, uh, start some conversation with their department. So yeah, I, I think it was something that, um, really amplify, um, what I think that time was important. Just voice out, um, what we need as grad student, um, and, um, extra, uh, hardship for international student that time.

Emily (22:44): Yes, I love that example so much and I’m, I’m so glad to hear this story as well as we’ve heard a couple other similar ones on the podcast about departmental level negotiation.

Commercial

Emily (22:56): 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 2024. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2024 tax season starting in January 2025, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students and postdocs 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.

Low Stipends and High Costs Impact International Students Most

Emily (24:13): So you just mentioned, especially if you’re international students, so like the way I view this, you can tell me if you agree, um, is that in that period of high inflation or I’d really any time when stipends are not keeping up with basic cost of living expenses, um, the international students are the ones who suffer the most because domestic students have sort of financial pressure release options, which are, you can get a side hustle. I mean, they, your department may not like it, but it’s legal. You can do it. Um, and or you can take out student loans. And these are just not available at least to the, you know, 90% are not available to international students. And so it’s so much more important for the international student community together with domestic students to do the type of negotiation that you just outlined, which is, let’s just raise the stipends. Can we just get these stipends up to a decent level? Do you, do you agree or like, what are your further thoughts on that?

Wen (25:06): Yeah, I, I totally, um, agree on that as well. We’re, as international students, we are restricted to apply for certain funding and look for a, a, a second shift and make extra money. Um, but I, I will say that, um, getting to know the resources out there is still, um, skill to, uh, develop, even though there are, are limited. Um, for example, that’s something related to my stories about professional development and career planning as well. Um, there are, you know, all kinds of event provide free lunch, pizza, <laugh> free dinner. So I, I try to, um, take advantage of that. Um, and it’s also a form of connecting to other students getting to know what’s going on. Um, yeah, I think be resourceful even we are restricted is, um, I think one day it, it just extra skills we develop make out of the, the, the situation. Um, yeah, so I was involved, uh, in a professional development, um, student organization called <inaudible> on campus. Um, so this is an organization help grad students, postdocs to practice, um, um, commercialization of technology. So it’s really something I really want to develop. And, um, in this, uh, organization, they hosted event to, um, work on project and they gave micro grant, which is a grant. Um, I will buy linking per, uh, subscription and take professional headshot and only use for professional development events. Um, so yeah, that covered a lot of my, um, let’s say unnecessary spending, um, that I wouldn’t spend, I wouldn’t have the capacity to spend out on my personal account, but it’s important for me in the future. Um, so I think take advantage of the resources, uh, like that will, um, be very helpful.

Financial Goals During Grad School and Beyond

Emily (27:53): Yes. Thank you so much for adding those examples. For sure. I totally agree. Um, okay, so your stipend is increasing <laugh>, it’s, it’s at least catching up to, you know, the, the damage done by inflation. Um, can you tell us about some of the financial goals that you pursued during graduate school or since graduate school?

Wen (28:10): Yeah. Um, I wouldn’t say I have a specific number to target, but I know that I want to save as much as I can and start, start investing. Um, so it’s more like explore- uh, -ation of what’s going on in the market and where the, uh, where the places and learn about all the ETF, um, and the fire movement and write books about, uh, investing. So set up, um, investing, um, with, with the, the stipend I can save, um, I, I try to, because my pay is biweekly, so I set up other automatic transfer to my saving and, um, brokerage account biweekly. Um, just couple, just not couple hundred. I think like it’s, it’s probably 10% on my paycheck each time it comes through. And I have a individual investment account and a Roth IRA in investment account. Um, and yeah, I, and mostly just looking to their, uh, VOO S-P-F, um, their ETFs, um, trying to not, uh, yeah, I don’t do like day trading and all that. Just put money in there in, uh, in there.

Emily (29:52): Sounds perfect to me. That’s the type of investing that I teach and that I, um, subscribe to. Um, what brokerage firm or firms do you mind me asking? Um, did you open your Roth IRA with or, and or your taxable brokerage account?

Wen (30:05): So, yeah, <laugh>, um, first I think, uh, firstly I use Robinhood for my individual investment account because I think it was, uh, a fun app, uh, for me to get started and to get motivated. And I, I really enjoy, simplify their investing, um, using that app. So later I got to know more about, um, the long-term investing opened. I opened uh the Fidelity, um, uh, Roth IRA and the individual accounts I transferred my, uh, the investment from Robinhood to, uh, fidelity. Um, and one thing I think about learning out this is just finding the community of people comfortable in sharing that and learning that, and listen to your podcast. Um, really at beginning of my PhD to realize, okay, I need to, uh, pay attention to my PhD stipend. I think Sam, someone shared at a grad school workshop thing, so I clicked and I subscribe, and later I did follow some podcast, her 100, uh, her first 100k writes books about like the most important thing about investing. Um, and I think I started action, just got to know people have a similar background like me. Um, there is a website called Women Overseas built by, um, Chinese, um, Chinese Women Study abroad, work abroad. And that’s really the community. I learned a lot of these things from, they will share from life to work career and, and investment. And I, yeah, I think I learned a lot from them, from their experience. A lot of the members, um, in that Open Formula firm room, they started working for years. So it was really good experience to to set up myself to that path too.

Emily (32:26): I love it. I love that, you know, my podcast became a springboard for you to investigate, you know, the subject further, and that you found a community that was like exactly, exactly what you needed. And, ugh, that just makes me so happy. I’m so pleased. There’s such a huge amount of resources, financial education related areas now, um, that kind of, everybody can find their community that reflects, you know, who they wanna see and who they wanna be. Like, and I, I get to be one of the voices in the PhD space, but then, you know, everybody has multiple aspects of their identity, so like we can expand beyond that. And oh, I just, I love that so much. Um, is there anything else you wanna add about the financial goals you’ve, uh, pursued during graduate school, aside from the investing ones?

Wen (33:08): Um, yeah, I, I think I want to circle back, um, the negotiation again. Um, I want to, uh, emphasize, um, negotiation. It’s not only like what the stipend could be like, I think every grad student could ask more from their pi, um, you know, sponsor me to this conference. This is a good workshop I want to do, and this is a career event I want to attend, and can you sponsor me? Can you cover that for me? Um, and there’s everything there, there’s a lot of things online, talk about negotiation, everything. So I, I do want to share that. Um, when I purchased my second car, um, I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube, how to talk to the dealership, and just, um, trying to negotiate the best option for myself. Um, it was a quite funny, like real life big purchase that I went to the dealership, uh, and the dealer just said, I’m a innocent, uh, foreigner. <laugh> doesn’t, didn’t know what’s going on. And, um, so I think I, um, really take advantage of negotiation and know that what’s the best for me and, um, argue that, um, those, those terms and, um, yeah, I, I learned a lot of from practicing, uh, negotiation and, um, advocate for myself.

Current Postdoc Position in Tech Transfer

Emily (35:00): Love it. And that’s a skill you’re gonna be using literally throughout the rest of your life. So it’s fantastic too, um, master that early. And especially I know that the cultures around negotiation are very different. So especially to understand how to do that in an American context, it’ll be received <laugh> by other people in, in this, uh, in this culture. Um, that’s awesome. Okay. Let’s talk about then your current postdoc position and how you got to it and why you chose to, you know, make this pivot to tech transfer. And you already mentioned earlier that, you know, there was this specific professional development group that you were involved with. So maybe you could start back there with like, the preparation and then, you know, like your choice in like, getting your new position.

Wen (35:38): Yeah. So I would say like, compared to financial goal I had at, um, beginning of my PhD, I’m more really like clear about my career goal. Um, and I took PhD as one of a professional, um, period, um, in on my resume. So I don’t think I, I don’t think I’m a student, uh, in school. I think it as a, a career I’m at right now. So I know that I am not the best person, um, best on myself to do bench science when I went in, uh, grad, uh, the PhD program here and I want to connecting people and I want to bridge the science and market, um, gap. So I know that my goal long, uh, like four years later, my PhD after PhD, I want to do that kind of thing. Um, but I learned lot doing science and talk about science. And so I think I have that goal just over my head and took other opportunities, uh, in the professional development organization. And I took extracurricular, uh, courses, um, I P, uh, that taught by another, um, economic department. And then that lead me to an internship on campus at our tech transfer office. Um, and I learned, uh, really through their internship that one year time and, and got and just confirm my interest in tech transfer space. I really enjoyed talk to scientists and, uh, about their innovation and on different, um, topics of projects and then connecting that idea to their, the, the market, what could we amplify the value of research, um, and, and license this patent. So I think like networking, uh, in, in that space and outside our university and connecting to other tech transfer office, um, just, it was a great, I talked to a lot of PhD working in that space, really see myself can make that transition. Um, so that’s what I did. I applied and talked to people and eventually landed this tech transfer, um, role. And I think it’s very, um, a good fit for me to, uh, really combine my interest in the science background.

Emily (38:34): Yeah. I love how you emphasized like we’re not in a PhD program simply to finish the PhD and do research. I mean, if that is exactly in your professional goals and you wanna just keep doing research in that area and you’re gonna stay in academia or you’re gonna pivot to something really, really close. Actually, my husband followed that path. Like his research is very close to what he did during graduate school research wise. So like, it was a good preparation, but if you wanna make any kind of a little sidestep from that, like you need to start layering on those experiences and the, that networking and, and exploration. ’cause of course you don’t necessarily know right away what your goal is going to be your career goal. So it’s, it’s about figuring things out and exploring the space. And I love that you got to do an internship. Did you say it was for a year with the tech transfer office? And so was that like a part-time thing, um, that you were doing alongside your, your normal PhD type work?

Wen (39:24): Yes. And it’s on campus. Um, it’s very flexible, uh, terms of hours with my PhD, uh, advisor’s requirements <laugh>.

Emily (39:34): So it was something you had to again, negotiate with your advisor, right? To take a little bit of time to do that.

Wen (39:39): Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Emily (39:41): Yeah. Awesome, using that skill again. Um, this is so great. Is there anything else you want to tell us about that, about that career step,

Wen (39:49): Um, about transitioning to a new role or job hunting overall? I think it’s quite, um, a self discovery <laugh>, um, time for, uh, us as PhDs as we are going to this tunnel of focusing things on our field. And then suddenly we have to, I think, set up us to be very open-minded about the careers we’re, we’re, uh, we’re going to explore and I think it’s sometime we got break ourselves a little bit. Um, and it’s okay if we don’t talk in, in our research terms and it’s okay to just talk very, um, I don’t know, simple words. We don’t use scientific words. And, um, and I I think it there, the PhD is, is a, is a journey and that doesn’t represent us going to move forward, um, like connecting with others.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (41:06): This is so great. Well, Wen, thank you so much for volunteering to come on, on the podcast to do this interview. And, uh, we’ve gotten so many great stories out of this. I’m really glad that the listeners got to hear, um, about your journey. Um, would you please tell us 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.

Wen (41:31): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I think just to be able find yourself being financially independent in charge of your finance, um, is extremely empowering. And I have situations about myself going through, uh, co-living with someone and then we broke up and move out. I think all those, um, life-changing decisions need, um, ourselves have their confidence in our financials and now feel obligated to, um, make decisions around others. Especially I think as international students. I, I think the last advice is we prepare to save money for the applying for, uh, work visas EAD card. And if you want to get it on time, um, use a premium, um, service, which adds $2,000 <laugh>, um, to the application. So, um, don’t be shocked how expensive those things can take and, um, make, um, make informed decisions on that. Yeah,

Emily (42:54): I’m, I’m sure you’ve heard this since you’ve been consuming like other financial material, but I just love um, the sort of, uh, mantra or phrase money gives you options. So you’re just definitely able to, um, you know, so fully realize, you know, your potential and get yourself out of situations you don’t wanna be in and you know, pay for that premium service when you need it. Whatever needs to happen if you have the savings built up already. And sometimes we don’t know when we start saving what exactly we’re gonna be using that money for, but it’s just there as like a backstop and insurance policy just to give you, um, options in the future. So I’m really glad that you emphasize that, especially for international students. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. ’cause I totally agree that, um, you just, you need a, a bigger pool of money to draw from for it because a lot of expenses that international students experience are pretty large. Um, irregular expenses as I often talk about, about, um, on the podcast, like traveling home, like visa stuff and all that. So thank you again so much for volunteering to come on. This has really been a pleasure to talk with you.

Wen (43:52): Thank you so much, Emily. Thank you for, um, doing this and I, um, really benefit from this podcast and I, I know you will continue to serve a lot of PhD students.

Outtro

Emily (44:17): 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.

University-Level Policy Ideas to Improve the Financial Lives of Graduate Students and Postdocs

August 14, 2023 by Jill Hoffman 5 Comments

In this episode, Emily shares the microinterviews she recorded at two higher education conferences this past summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What policy at your current university or one you worked at or attended in the past would you change to improve the financial lives of the PhD students and/or postdocs?” Listen through the episode for numerous ideas for policy change to advocate for at your university.

Links mentioned in the Episode

University-Level Policy Ideas to Improve the Financial Lives of Graduate Students and Postdocs

Teaser

00:00 Michael D: And the reproduction of knowledge requires financial security. And when you’re in a situation where you’re not getting paid a living wage, it’s very, very difficult to achieve that financial security. So for me, that’s definitely the major policy change that I would love graduate programs across the country to adopt.

Introduction

00:19 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. 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.

00:50 Emily: This is Season 15, Episode 5, and today I’m sharing the microinterviews I recorded at two higher education conferences this past summer. The conference attendees, virtually all of whom work at universities and most of whom have PhDs themselves, responded to this prompt: “What policy at your current university or one you worked at or attended in the past would you change to improve the financial lives of the PhD students and/or postdocs?” Listen through the episode for numerous ideas for policy change to advocate for at your university. The two conferences I attended were the Graduate Career Consortium Annual Meeting or GCC and the Higher Education Financial Wellness Alliance Summit or HEFWA Summit. GCC is primarily attended by university staff members working with PhD students and postdocs in career and professional development. The HEFWA Summit is attended by university staff members working in financial wellness and financial aid across undergraduate and graduate populations. These two conferences were excellent networking opportunities for me on top of the built-in professional development. However, there are plenty of universities who were not represented at these conferences.

02:10 Emily: Would you please consider recommending my financial education seminars and workshops at your university? My most popularly requested events for the upcoming academic year are How to Survive and Thrive Financially in Graduate School or Your Postdoc, How to Not Hate Your Fellowship During Tax Season, and Up-Level Your Cash Flow as a Graduate Student or Postdoc. Please direct an appropriate potential host within your graduate school, postdoc office, grad student association, etc. to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ where they can learn more. Thank you in advance!

02:53 Emily: You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s15e5/. Without further ado, here are the microinterviews recorded at GCC and the HEFWA Summit.

What policy at your current university or one you worked at or attended in the past would you change to improve the financial lives of the PhD students and/or postdocs?

Understanding Financial Priorities of International Students: Karin Lawton-Dunn, Iowa State University

03:11 Karin L-D: Okay. So I’m Karin Lawton-Dunn and I’m at Iowa State University. And what policy would you change when you’re current or former university campus to improve financial life for graduate students or postdocs? Since I work primarily with international students, I think I would try to change the understanding of faculty and staff of all of the different priorities that international students have with their money, and so that, you know, they really will go without food, without meals, so that they’re able to send some money home to their families that are also in need and struggling with food and housing. And I think that we need to be understanding of that and not punishing them for doing that.

Fee Exemption: Laura Farrell-Wortman, University of Arizona Cancer Center

03:53 Laura F-W: I’m Laura Farrell-Wortman. I’m the assistant director for academic programs with the University of Arizona Cancer Center. So I think that the policy that I would change would be to exempt PhD students from required fees, because I think that it really is, you know, important revenue generation for the university. But it does feel a little bit like kind of like the company store right where you are getting the money for working there, but that you’re turning right around and giving the money back to the university so it doesn’t feel like it’s a really sustainable system. And I would I would be interested to see what kind of revenue generation they’re actually getting from the PhD students and whether or not that could be found in an alternative means.

Postdoc Stipends and Benefits: Kaylee Steen, University of Michigan Medical School

04:41 Kaylee S: My name is Kaylee Steen. I work at the University of Michigan Medical School, and my advice for changing a policy at our institution that we’re actually implementing is ensuring that all postdocs at least make the minimum NIH stipend for their years of experience at the university. I think is really key. And another policy that we have not implemented would be that postdocs receive the same retirement benefits as are the rest of our staff, with the 2 to 1 matching.

Postdoc Benefits: Chris Smith, Virginia Tech

05:19 Chris S: My name’s Chris Smith. I manage the Office of Post-Doc Affairs at Virginia Tech. And one policy I’d like to see change really across the landscape is treating postdocs more like employees with employee benefits, especially retirement matching. Some institutions do that. We are one of them, but a lot of them don’t. And I think it’s important for them to kind of set them up for success.

Postdoc Training and Benefits: Weiwei Xu, Tulane School of Medicine

05:40 WeiWei X: My name is Weiwei Xu. I’m the academic and career advisor for a biomedical sciences graduate program within the Tulane School of Medicine. I think we can actually provide postdocs with more training programs as well as social benefits and retirement benefits so that they feel more supported by the school and by their training programs.

Cost of Living Adjustments: Beth Hunsaker, University of Utah

06:05 Beth H: My name is Beth Hunsaker with the University of Utah’s Financial Wellness Center. I’m the associate director, and the policy that I would want to see changed is to have cost of living adjustments, how much it costs to have rent. When that’s over half of what their stipend is and they’re not able to go and work somewhere else does doesn’t work for their families.

Consistent Funding and Transparency: Chris Hamm, University at Buffalo

06:28 Chris H: My name is Chris Hamm from the University at Buffalo. And the first prompt it was asking about what policy would you change in your current or previous campus approved financial life for grad students? And for me, just working with graduate students, noticing the opportunities for GA TA and RA positions, we do have, you know, minimum amount of financing for those positions that are agreed upon. But I think it’s not consistent across the board for each of different departments. And also true, since it’s a larger university, it’s very siloed as far as what information’s available to graduate students. So I think being able to have that be a little bit more transparent, giving them the opportunity to be more competitive, get themselves these positions and also make them aware of it, because a lot of times it’s only specifically in departments and I think it’s a really great opportunity because that’s something that I did when I was in grad school as well to help fund my education and get my experiences.

Postdoc Benefits: Alexandra Schnoes, Science Communication Lab

07:22 Alexandra S: Hi, I’m Alexandra Schnoes. I am the director for professional development at the Science Communication Lab. One of the things that I think about a lot is, is how postdocs at different institutions are often under these weird sort of employment categories. They’re often in different employment categories at the same institution. They often don’t have access to things, even though they’re considered employees are also considered trainees. So they also often don’t have access to things like sometimes even health care. But potentially child care support or retirement accounts. And and all of these things are ridiculous. These are these are people with Ph.Ds who are acting as professionals and and they should be able to be treated like you know, the employees that they actually are, as opposed to some weird, crazy, you know, none of the above, which means they get none of the benefits and all of the work of being a postdoc sometimes for years on end, doing amazing work, making the university home. But then they’ve sacrificed finances, potentially health care, retirement accounts, the ability to have children, all of this, all of these are things that policies could actually help address.

Child Care: Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine, University of Notre Dame

08:57 Kathryn SV: So this is Kathryn Sawyer Vidrine from Notre Dame and if I were to change one policy to make life easier on graduate students and post-docs, it would be to provide childcare for children under two years old because there is almost none in our area.

Postdoc Benefits: Peter Myers, Washington University in Saint Louis

09:16 Peter M: My name is Peter Myers. I’m at Washington University in Saint Louis. The one policy that I would change for postdocs would be to make them all employees of the university.

Wages/Stipends: Elizabeth Eikmann, Washington University in Saint Louis

09:30 Elizabeth E: My name is Elizabeth Eikmann. I am the program coordinator for Postdoctoral Community Engagement at Washington University in Saint Louis, and I was a graduate student at Saint Louis University. And if I could change one policy for my former university’s campus to improve the financial life of the grad students there, it would be immediate graduate assistantship raises. The wages currently are not even living wage wages. Graduate assistants there are paid only nine months out of the year instead of 12. So not only implementing a raise but also instituting a year round salary, which also includes year round access to health insurance, which is not currently a policy there on campus.

Retirement Benefits: Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann, Humanities Without Walls Consortium

10:24 Maggie NH: My name is Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann. I’m the associate director of Career diversity for the Humanities Without Walls Consortium. Which is a grant for a Mellon funded, grant funded project at space at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But I am located at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So I think the policy advice that I would give and more systemically across, you know, higher education across the nation would be to recommend to universities that you consider one of the benefits for graduate students enrolled in your schools to give them access to starting their own 403b plans while they’re working on their master’s degrees or their PhDs, and making that a real benefit of, you know, if you’re at a public university that has you know, that regard, students are organized, making that a part of your union contract negotiations, aiming at private institutions, right? I mean, it’s not a heavy cost to the institution at all just to give them a framework or structure to start investing into those for all three plants. So that would be one of the policies that I would advocate as a shift in our higher ed, higher education ecosphere. Yeah.

Financial Education: Brady Krien, University of Iowa

11:32 Brady K: So my name is Brady Krien and I work at the University of Iowa, and the policy that I would change on our campus is to actually give us greater latitude to provide resources and information about finances for graduate students, and particularly related to the tax implications of fellowships that they win and how they need to prepare in advance to deal with those.

Financial Education: Yazzmynn Martinez, University of Colorado, Boulder

11:58 Yazzmynn M: Hi, everyone. My name is Yazzmynn Martinez. I am a events education and emergency response coordinator at the University of Colorado Boulder. I work at the Basic Needs center and one policy that I would change about the university campus to improve the financial life of our graduate and postdoc students is to provide a more formal education on basic needs in general so that can include how to get housing before they start college and also how to like budget with groceries and other expenses. And I would also advocate to increase the stipend just because oftentimes that’s not even enough for students to cover their living expenses.

Transparency: Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD

12:45 Katy P: Hi, I’m Katy Peplin from Thrive PHD. You can find me at thrive dash PhD dot com. I work with graduate students all around the world on being a scholar and a human. What policy would be useful. I think that the biggest policy that universities can put in place is transparency. I know so many students who have been caught in between different policies where they weren’t aware that certain things applied to them when they actually did or they lost out on money because things were well communicated. And I know that it’s extra work for universities to make some of those things transparent. But the more information that’s readily and easily accessible, the less grad students have to depend on their departments or their advisors who might not be well informed to let them. Know about opportunities. So transparency.

Commercial

13:31 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2023-2024 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/speaking/ 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 institutions 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.

Wages/Stipends: Sasha Goldman, Boston University

15:38 Sasha G: I am Sasha Goldman. I am the director of PCE resources at Boston University. And if I could change a policy on my current university campus to improve the financial life of the graduate students and postdocs, I would give everyone 12 months of funding and everyone more money.

Fellowship Payment: Joseph Gonzales, University of Miami

15:56 Joseph G: My name is Joseph Gonzales and I’m the senior director in the Office of Science and Assistance at the University of Miami. And the policy that I would change and this isn’t specifically related to my current campus. It’s based on my experience at different campuses. It’s how people pay like to pay fellowships, and especially when there’s a research component to it, they tend not to use the employment side of it where it would be there would be tax withholdings, because I believe sometimes faculty think that it’s a way to sidestep tax. The tax requirement when they don’t realize that it’s actually basically pushing it down the line for the student to deal with later and sometimes that often students don’t realize that there is a tax liability too, that comes with their financial aid. And by the time they’ve found out they haven’t saved money for that liability. So puts them in this financial crunch, sort of once their taxes are had been filed or they don’t claim it, and then it just gets pushed further down the line. So I would like faculty and universities in general to have said you’re trying to help other people. I don’t know if it’s more of a process that is that are aligned because it changes from one university to the other and how these are handled.

Wages/Stipends: Alex Embree, University of Missouri

17:39 Alex E: My name is Alex Embree. I’m the program manager at the Office for Financial Success for the University of Missouri. And the policy that I would want to have changed is that graduate student payment is in accordance with the value that they bring to the university when they are operating in a teaching capacity or grant. They need to be paid accordingly.

Time to Degree Transparency: Robbie Pearson, Southern Methodist University

18:03 Robbie P: My name is Robbie Pearson, and I’m the director of graduate and postdoctoral graduate career development and post-doc affairs at SMU in Dallas, Texas. And in terms of policies that I would be interested in revising around graduate education to improve the financial life of grad students and postdocs, I’m really interested in time to degree. I would like to see more transparency around how long it takes to earn a doctoral degree, and I’d like to see policies and initiatives around making sure that that’s a reasonable amount of time. Right. So in some fields it could take eight, nine, ten years to earn a doctoral degree or longer. And, you know, there’s some case that that’s important for the intellectual development of the scholar and for the research that they’re contributing to. But I also want to balance that against the reality that graduate students should be thinking of their time in grad student in grad school as an investment, not only into the intellectual development and into their field, but also into their financial futures. So getting them into the workforce in a reasonable amount of time is a really good thing. From my perspective.

Financial Education and Wages/Stipends: Stevie Eberle, Stanford University School of Medicine

19:03 Steve E: Stevie Eberle, executive director and assistant dean of biosecurity at Stanford University School of Medicine. So what policy would you change in your current or former university campus to improve the financial life of graduate students and postdocs? I would. We have an entry level class that all incoming graduate students have to take. And then there is a kind of an intro group that postdocs attend. And I really do wish we had financial training and planning built into the trainings, especially in the Bay Area because it’s so expensive and you you can’t quite understand it until you’re there. So I really would like somebody who can very directly explain the market and directly explain how to navigate it and have the resources to develop that. That being said, I think it is the administration’s responsibility to also help build better structures for that which we are working on, I will say. So we have subsidized housing in that type of thing, but subsidized housing is still very expensive. So I would like to have better pay, better caps, better minimum salaries and better coaching for faculty on how to treat something else. And often treat students and postdocs as more respectfully and more like adults and give them better tools for negotiation. Because I do think sometimes faculty just don’t know that. Sometimes they do, and that’s the problem, but sometimes they don’t. So I’d like to do better education on equitable offers and help better develop those kind of baseline expectations for parents and for this.

Cost Transparency: Derek Attig, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

20:57 Derek A: I’m Derek Attig. I work in the Graduate college at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. And I’d like to see it be consistent that tuition and fees and the total cost of graduate education is completely transparent to people before they apply and when they’re making the decision to attend so they can understand the costs and weigh that against outcomes they hope to achieve.

Wages/Stipends: Michael Dedmon, National Endowment for Financial Education

21:25 Michael D: My name is Michael Dedmon. I’m the research director at the National Endowment for Financial Education and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Syracuse University. I can definitely say for me that the single policy change that I would love for my graduate program, which is still sort of considering to adopt, is to raise wages and raise stipends for for graduate students. My department recently unionized, even though I’m an advanced graduate student and no longer in the bargaining unit. It’s something that’s very, very close to my heart that I think is very important. It’s beneficial for universities in terms of recruitment and retention. It reduces time to degree. It reduces attrition. We all know the benefits of it, in addition to the fact that the work that the students put in is what makes the universities work. They’re teaching students, they’re producing research, they’re publishing papers. It’s a beneficial situation for everybody. And the reproduction of knowledge requires financial security. And when you’re in a situation where you’re not getting paid a living wage, it’s very, very difficult to achieve that financial security. So for me, that’s definitely the major policy change that I would love graduate programs across the country to adopt.

Wages/Stipends: Byron Kerr, Texas State University

22:30 Byron K: Hi, I’m Dr. Byron Kerr with Financial aid and scholarships at Texas State University, and I received my Ph.D. from Florida State University in Tallahassee and what I would like to see changed on college campuses is back in the day. At any rate, my stipend check for my for my Ph.D. always came in a month after the payment deadline. So I always generated a $100 late fee every single semester. So I was always costing me money to be employed.

Housing: Anna Sheufelt, Duke University

22:58 Anna S: My name is Anna Sheufelt I work at Duke University, overseeing the educational programing and outreach for the Office of Student Loans and Personal Finance. A policy change that I would love to see come to. My campus is guaranteed housing for our international masters and graduate students. These are folks who have some of the largest complexities going on in their lives and also some of the greatest financial constraints with the international student status.

Wages/Stipends and Tuition: Annie Maxfield, University of Texas at Austin

23:28 Annie M: My name is Annie Maxfield. And I am at UT Austin in Texas. Career engagement and I would say the biggest financial policy problem is that tuition has continually become higher and higher over the years. Yet graduates students stipends are not increasing at that rate. And so we know the university is taking in more funds. However, the distribution of those funds is inequitable in terms of how graduate student labor is actually compensated.

Child Care: Phil Schuman, Indiana University

24:03 Phil S: So my name is Phil Schuman. I’m from Indiana University. One thing I do expect to see for a lot of grad students throughout higher ed is more access to child care and whether or not that’s temporary or permanent or whatever. But just the ability for grad students to be able to focus on their studies, their academics when they have child, if you have childcare issues come up, just because we’ve seen a lot of childcare and daycare cost issues and closing on campus. But I think it’s one thing, it’s a huge barrier that could potentially prevent grad students from getting over that hurdle.

Fellowship Transparency and Experiential Learning for International Students: Sonali Majumdar, Princeton University

24:34 Sonali M: Yeah. Hi, everyone. I am Sonali Majumdar and Assistant Dean for Professional Development in the Grad Futures program of the Graduate School of Princeton University. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about what kind of inclusive policies university campuses could have to support their international graduate students. And most of population on their financial wellness. And there are two things that come to mind. One is transparency on what kind of research fellowships are open to international graduate students and postdocs. And a lot of the universities do have research, Discovery Fellowship. Discovery databases like David Hopkins has a public dashboard that like lists all sorts of fellowships at the Graduate and closed off level by citizenship accessibility as well. And the other thing is experiential learning. What can we do to make experiential learning more accessible to international population? One pathway that does work is our internships and our fellowships that are funded by the institution that the students are working on, and that relates to work policies of how much academic hours on top of academic hours are. Students are available to work at university offices or other units on internships. And so there is definitely some interesting new programs that are helping out in this arena. And I hope more universities would eventually think about accessibility for their international population. On experiential learning. Thank you.

Financial Education: Matt Hertenstein, DePaul University

26:05 Matt H: Hi, my name is Matt Hertenstein, a college professor at DePaul University, received my Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley in 2000. It may have changed since I graduated, but the policy I would change was to actually teach some financial literacy advice and financial wellness to Ph.Ds and make that a priority during orientation and make sure that people actually knew that that was available to help them.

Health Insurance: Alex Yen, Boston University

26:33 Alex Y: Hi, my name is Alex Yen I am a postdoc at Boston University in the Professional Development and Postdoctoral Affairs office. The policy that I would change or wish could change is that I hope that more universities will allow graduate students who take time off to keep their student health insurance during that time off. So that way they can take care of their mental health while they are recovering or taking some time away.

Outtro

27:14 Emily: 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! 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.

Unionization and Individual Negotiation to Improve Graduate Student Stipends and Benefits

July 31, 2023 by Jill Hoffman Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily shares first-person stories of graduate students enjoying improved stipends and benefits thanks to prior negotiation. The first half of the episode includes the experiences of four graduate students with their unions or when taking part in unionization movements. The second half of the episode includes four individual negotiation stories from prospective graduate students.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Unionization and Negotiation in Grad School

Teaser

00:00 Katy P: But having a union means that there’s a level of protection between a department or sometimes even an individual and a graduate student. And that level of protection is the thing that in my opinion, only becomes possible under collective action, collective organizing. So I know that if I had not had a union, I wouldn’t have had anywhere to go to say like, Hey, this doesn’t seem fair, this doesn’t seem right. And because of a union, I had a system, I had clear instructions of how to do it. I had designated people to talk to. I had resources. I had people in the administration to talk to. I wasn’t alone negotiating a disagreement one on one.

Introduction

00:44 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. 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.

01:12 Emily: This is Season 15, Episode 4, and today I’m sharing first-person stories of graduate students enjoying improved stipends and benefits thanks to prior negotiation. The first half of the episode includes the experiences of four graduate students with their unions or when taking part in unionization movements. The second half of the episode includes four individual negotiation stories from prospective graduate students.

01:39 Emily: I’m beyond excited to announce that I’m offering a brand-new live one-hour seminar titled “How to Not Hate Your Fellowship During Tax Season.” It’s all about how to understand and properly handle your fellowship stipend that will not be reported on a Form W-2, which is what I call awarded income. Awarded income typically doesn’t have income tax withheld from it, which can become an unwelcome surprise and even financial hardship if the recipient is not taught what to do starting with their first paycheck of this type. In addition to teaching about estimated tax and self-withholding, I give pointers for preparing for and navigating tax season with awarded income. This seminar is intended to be taken during orientation or shortly after by people who are switching onto awarded income for the first time, so it will be exclusively available between August and October of this year. If you are starting on awarded income in the fall and your university doesn’t withhold income tax—or you’ve dealt with that scenario in the past—would you please recommend this seminar to your fellowship coordinator, program head, or graduate school? Please cc me [email protected] so I can pick up the conversation. My goal is for every grad student receiving awarded income to be forewarned about this issue before it rears its ugly head during tax season!

03:06 Emily: You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s15e4/. Without further ado, here’s our compilation episode on unions and individual negotiation.

What is Your Union or Unionization Movement Story?

03:25 Emily: This portion of the episode includes four responses to my open-ended prompt of “What is your union or unionization movement story?” If you would like to hear other episodes on unions, look up Season 12 Episode 7, Season 5 Episode 9, and Season 4 Episode 14.

Courtney’s Union Story, Oregon State University

03:49 Courtney: Hello, my name is Courtney and I am a third year Ph.D. student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, in civil engineering. The Coalition for Graduate Employees at Oregon State was established in 1999 with the first bargaining contract in 2001 and since then, the union has successfully bargained for amazing health insurance, including dental and vision, and they have continuously raised wages and reduced student fees and provide a no strings attached hardship fund for graduate students. I directly benefit from this union by fully utilizing my health insurance. My deductible is only $100 and my co-pays are very minimal. I can go to the dentist every four months too. And my funding source is currently an external fellowship, so I’m not a full member, but I pay $10 per month to be an associate member as I still benefit from this work and I want to support them. Full membership is 2% of pretax monthly salary and is optional for grad students and assistantships and grad research assistants. The union also often has socials and provides many resources to support graduate students and assist with grievances. Full members also get discounts and deals at local establishments in Corvallis, which is pretty cool. And there are many hardworking members in this union who I am very appreciative of and make my graduate experience much more enjoyable.

Michele’s Union Story, Michigan State University

05:25 Michele: My name is Michele and I’m a Ph.D. student at Michigan State University. When I first saw MSU, I didn’t know very much about unions because of the pandemic. My department had lower participation in their graduate student organization or GSO, so there was no one to discuss unions at the orientation. However, the president of our GSO encouraged me to be our steward or graduate employees union. After I discovered that I was interested in learning more. So I’ve been representing my department for the last year and then continuing that role in the upcoming year as well. My funding is actually from fellowships and not from a teaching assistantship or a research assistant position in Michigan. Only teaching assistants are allowed to be covered under the current contract. So our research assistants and fellows are not covered under the current contract. However, the benefits that the teachers went through their contract are typically also given to RAs and fellows. For example, the previous contracts the graduate students bargained for gave to free health insurance, which was also extended to RAs and Fellows also received health insurance coverage. But we have to pay taxes on it as it is dispersed as a fellowship.

06:46 Michele: Even though RAs and fellows cannot be covered under the contract, they can join the union as affiliate members. This may change in the state of Michigan, though, as there was recently some legislation passed in the Senate that would allow us to start bargaining for a contract. I think one of the most important benefits of the union is that unites the grad students together and helps with information sharing. For example, the way fellowships are dispersed, MSU is typically in a lump sum at the beginning of the semester and during this spring semester. This past year, I did not receive my semester payment until about a month after it was stated that I was supposed to receive it on my tax form. But then I was able to contact other members of the union through our Slack channel who had a similar problem in order to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. I have also seen other members of the union get help on a myriad of other topics such as late pay and overwork. One drawback of having a formal union is that dues do need to be paid by members in order to help the union run. And then these dues are used to pay for staff organizers and paying dues to the The American Federation of Teachers and the MSU Union also had two recently increased dues for affiliate members because membership dropped a lot during the pandemic. However, as more people join the union, then the cost of running it can be spread out among more people. In addition, the benefits and pay increases that can be negotiated when the majority of graduate employees are in the union will also offset this cost.

08:31 Michele: It is also more important to make sure that you have an issue that you want to organize around, and the dues can then come later to cover the operating costs of the union once it grows. For those of you who are looking to organize a union at your own university, it will often depend on state legislation. Some states do not classify their graduate students as employees, even if they work as teaching or research assistants. And this means that they are not eligible to unionize. And a good book about learning how to organize is the secrets of a successful organizer.

09:08 Michele: And then from a personal finance point of view, the union has been beneficial to me and to all graduate students. They recently were able to negotiate a 5% raise above the minimum across the board, while bargaining has been on pause. And in addition to the health insurance, there’s also a 50% coverage on dental insurance. Overwork is also written into most union contracts, and enforcing it would also give someone more time to focus on a side hustle if they needed some extra cash. As long as it’s permitted by the university, their program. In addition, enforcing the contractual working hours, could also free up more time to focus on research.

09:54 Michele: Tuition waivers can also be negotiated into the union contract. So for MSU’s current contract, nine credits can be waived in fall and spring and five in the summer. And there’s also medical leave and bereavement leave. And so this year is also a collective bargaining year, and a new contract will be negotiated. So some of the bargaining planks that MSU has been focused on or full dental coverage, a pay increase that tracks inflation and cost of living and interest for late payments.

Katy Peplin’s Union Story, Thrive PhD

10:33 Katy P: Hi, I’m Katy Peplin from Thrive PhD, and I am a proud member of two former unions, both as a graduate student and as a teaching assistant. I was part of the UCLA union when I was there as a master’s student, and then I was part of the Graduate Student Union, GEO, at the University of Michigan my entire tenure there. I wholeheartedly believe in unions for graduate students. I think that one of the things that is most important about them is that they provide collective power in a place where individual concerns can really easily get swept under the rug. For example, when I was in my last year of teaching, I was supposed to be teaching a class which was a 50% workload. But in reality it was two sessions that I had taught for 2 hours of direct teaching, some grading, and then attending the lectures. And that assignment was switched without my knowledge or consent over the winter break into a four direct teaching hours plus screening, plus grading upper level writing class. And I was just informed that it was still going to be a 50% contract and that I would be making the same amount of money. So I immediately went to my rep and was like, Is this legal? And unfortunately it was legal, but I was able, with the help of my union, to negotiate for better terms of my pay. I was able to reduce the writing requirement and therefore the grading requirement of this class. And I knew that I would not have to rely on the word of my department and my advisors.

12:07 Katy P: So now that I work with graduate students all over the world, I think it’s really important to say that most faculty in most universities aren’t out to get graduate students. Universities run on the backs and labor of graduate students in a lot of different ways. But having a union means that there’s a level of protection between a department or sometimes even an individual and a graduate student. And that level of protection is the thing that in my opinion, only becomes possible under collective action, collective organizing. So I know that if I had not had a union, I wouldn’t have had anywhere to go to say like, Hey, this doesn’t seem fair, this doesn’t seem right. And because of a union, I had a system, I had clear instructions of how to do it. I designated people to talk to. I had resources. I had people in the administration to talk to. I wasn’t alone negotiating a disagreement one on one. My unions also made it possible for me to have livable health care, livable stipends, even if they were below the cost of cost of living at the time. And I know that those things were only possible because the group that provided so much labor for the university banded together.

13:19 Katy P: If you are a grad student who is thinking about unionizing, I really encourage you to reach out to other unions. The union that I was represented by as a Ph.D. student was formed in 1974. It’s one of the earliest university unions for teaching assistants. It’s geo at the University of Michigan, and I know that they have consulted with all sorts of burgeoning union movements all around the country. So there’s a lot of people who have walked this path before. GEO has experience dealing with shifting administrations, changing state laws, changing labor laws. They have experience with withheld pay and strike grievances and health care negotiations. And there’s a lot of information that becomes available when you start organizing in union that most graduate students don’t know anything about. Like, I had no idea what a bargaining plank was or how to get into meetings or what a provost was or who the board of Regents were. So being in a union for me was both a way to give back to the thing that was supporting me and giving me so much benefit, but also it was a really great way to learn about how universities work. Obviously, it’s a singular point of view about how a university works, and I’m sure that there are other administrations that might come back and say, You know, this isn’t exactly how it works. But for me on the ground as a union member, I learned so much about how university budgets worked, where my stipend even came from, how my health insurance was negotiated. And those are all really important skills that I’ve needed well, after I’ve left university. So even though I am no longer part of the union and I work for myself, I still use all of my union skills to think about what’s in the best interest, to look at insurance plans, to think about how budgets are made, or if I’m approaching universities to ask for funding.

15:06 Katy P: And it’s certainly something that I work with some clients every day, because the reality is that graduate school takes away from some of your prime earning your prime living years, and it’s for a good cause to create research and add to the knowledge in the world. But also there’s material impacts for taking a big chunk of your twenties or a big chunk of your twenties and thirties. Or to leave a secure job and come back to grad school. There are impacts for taking that time away. And the more that I work with people, the more I really see a distinct difference between campuses that have unions and their graduate students feel like they have some level of security, they have some level of a reliable stipend over the summer or they have some sense that their health insurance will continue from year to year, and students at universities who don’t have it.

15:56 Katy P: Sometimes it can be really easy to reduce unions to like, Oh, they’re the reason I get my good benefits or like, that’s the reason that I get a good stipend as opposed to a very crappy stipend. But I think that the the real benefit outside of those material benefits is just understanding and having some protection for these vulnerable years where you’re really giving a lot of yourself and wanting to have some protection back to them

Anonymous #1’s Unionization Story, A Private Christian university

16:25 Emily/Anonymous #1: This submission is from an anonymous contributor. Quote I’m a Ph.D. candidate and graduate assistant at a private Christian American university. When I started in my program, I was making just over half of what is considered the minimum cost of living in my city. I was not provided health insurance over the summer through my job. Needless to say, it is difficult to make ends meet in these circumstances. Eventually, the graduate assistants at my school put out a letter of demands to the university, insisting that we be fairly compensated and covered for our medical needs. We demonstrated how much money we bring into the university with each class we teach and how dependent the school is on us to teach many required courses for undergraduate students. For example, from what I can calculate when teaching just one class for one semester of 25 students, the school brings in six times more money than I am paid in a whole year. We also appealed to the school’s religious ideologies and ethics and pointed out the hypocrisy of a Christian institution taking advantage of people in this way.

17:28 Emily/Anonymous #1: The school did respond and met some of our demands, but continued to refuse to pay us a living wage. Higher ups at universities want to tell us that because we are also students, that much of our labor is an educational experience for which we should be grateful and not expect compensation. But the truth is that our labor is real work that we have trained hard to be qualified to do, and that the universities could not function without. To get a job as a graduate assistant a person must have a college degree and go through competitive selection processes. Many of us even already have master’s degrees before we start in Ph.D. programs and take these jobs. And it’s not as if we’re asking to be paid as much as professors. We are only asking for the bare minimum of what it takes to live in this particular town. But the university has refused. We realized that we weren’t going to get our basic needs met unless we united and organized. So the union effort began.

18:22 Emily/Anonymous #1: I am keeping my identity and the identity of my school. Anonymous, as we have not yet gone public with our union efforts. But we did want to take this opportunity to get our story out there so that graduate assistants at other universities would know that they aren’t alone in their struggles. Additionally, I want to say that we have been very inspired and invigorated by the efforts and successes of graduate students unionizing at other universities throughout the country. So a big thank you to all who have come before us and for the risks they took. It feels like this is a moment of progress for graduate assistants and we are excited to become a part of that. We gave our university the opportunity to write this wrong without us organizing, but they have refused. So we are going forth with our unionizing efforts. Thank you so much. Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast for having this episode and inviting me to share my story. We have a hard road ahead, but we are ready.

Commercial

19:11 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, goal-setting, investing, frugality, increasing income, or student loans, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer seminars and workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2023-2024 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/speaking/ 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 institutions 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.

Individual Stipend Negotiation

20:31 Emily: This portion of the episode includes four responses to my prompts regarding individual stipend negotiation. The prompts were: “What was your original stipend and benefits offer? What was the process of negotiating this offer? What was the outcome of the negotiation?” If you would like to hear another episode like this one, look up Season 8 Episode 7.

Anonymous #2, University of Georgia

20:58 Emily/Anonymous #2: This admission is from an anonymous contributor. Quote, I’m an incoming doctoral student at the university of Georgia, located in Athens, Georgia. I’m in the social sciences.

What Was Your Original Stipend and Benefits Offer?

21:09 Emily/Anonymous #2: My department gave me an offer of a research assistantship and they nominated me for a university wide fellowship. The RA-ship pays $26,000, and the fellowship is $7,000 per year for four years. In addition, my tuition is waived, and every student in my department gets a $500 conference stipend per semester. All in all, I am receiving funding from two sources, one from my department and one from the university overall.

21:35 Emily/Anonymous #2: I also had a competing offer, which is what allowed me to feel comfortable negotiating with my department. The other offer was about $5,000 more a year at a roughly comparable institution. Both are one SEC schools, although the departments and selves aren’t as comparable. That offer was also comprised an assistantship and fellowship with the extra $5,000 coming from the fellowship.

What Was the Process of Negotiating This Offer?

21:57 Emily/Anonymous #2: At the time I had these offers, I was also in the last year of my master’s program, and I was really well-positioned to negotiate by virtue of my existing professional connections. Members of my faculty knew the faculty at both of the institutions I was looking at, so I asked them if negotiations were the norm in our field or if I would be perceived as out of step. I also think it’s worth asking the newer faculty in your department what they did when entering grad school and during their job search, because the tenured professors haven’t job search in a while, so their norms and experiences might not be as up to date for the actual negotiations.

22:31 Emily/Anonymous #2: I drafted an email that laid out that I had a competing offer and asked if there is anything else I should consider while making a decision. I wasn’t sure what would shake out as a result of me asking, and I was told asking directly for more money wouldn’t be the best way to approach negotiations. So I gave them an opportunity to sell me on the program. I had been corresponding with the program coordinator, so that’s who I sent the email to.

What Was the Outcome of the Negotiation?

22:54 Emily/Anonymous #2: They responded with a very kind email that basically said that they weren’t surprised I had other offers and they offered me a named department award that was specifically for professional development funding for $5,000 over four years.

23:06 Emily/Anonymous #2: I was happy for a few reasons. One, it showed me the department was willing to invest in me. Two, I got the money I asked for, and three, because it was a named award. I can put it on my CV. At that point, I went ahead and immediately accepted the offer and let everyone involved know that it had worked out. Ultimately, I’m glad I negotiated it because I got the funding I requested and because it told me more about the department culture than anything else could have. I also feel really well-positioned to take advantage of conferences and professional opportunities in my field without worrying about how I’ll pay for them. I would recommend negotiating as a graduate student, even if just to see how the department reacts. In most cases, it’s a reasonable request. So if they respond with disapproval, that could be a sign for your future in that department, end quote.

Anonymous #3, a Large Public University in the Midwest

23:58 Anonymous #3: So I just completed the second year of a five year humanities doctoral program at a large public university in the Midwest. My current program was my top choice during the application process, and thanks to guidance from the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, I was able to use the offer for my second choice program to negotiate and improve the financial package of my top choice program.

What Was Your Original Stipend and Benefits Offer?

24:22 Anonymous #3: Originally, my top choice offered me a five year funding package that included a two year fellowship to be used during a first and last year of my graduate studies. This fellowship relieves me of teaching duties and also offers a higher stipend. The original 12 month stipend was $28,316, but the university increased the stipend right before my first semester to $30,420. So this is the amount I received during my first year when I was on fellowship and I will receive this amount or perhaps even more if the university decides to increase it again for my fifth and final year. My remaining three years of graduate study are funded by a teaching assistantship. So as a GTA, I teach one course per semester. The nine month GTA stipend is $21,280 in my department. There seems to be more and more opportunity to teach a course over the summer, which pays approximately an additional $7,000 on top of that nine months stipend. However, this is not a guarantee and international students have priority over domestic students for these positions, specifically in my department.

25:29 Anonymous #3: My second choice program offered me a 12 month, $24,000 stipend for the five year program, in addition to an extra $5,000 to be used for research over the course of the five years. So in total, the financial package is about $5,000 more than that of my first choice program. But of course, this is not taking into account small differences in fees.

What was the process of negotiating this offer?

25:51 Anonymous #3: Ultimately, I sent a brief direct email to the DGS at my top choice program. I explained that I was deciding between two programs and that the other program of interest, which I named specifically in the email, had offered a more competitive funding package which included guaranteed summer funding. And I outlined all of the details of the funding package in the email to the DGS.

What was the outcome of the negotiation?

26:13 Anonymous #3: My negotiation process was actually quite easy. The DGS responded the next day and offered an additional $6,000, a lump sum that I could use any way I wished. So there was really no back and forth. I sent the email. I asked if there was anything that they could do to increase the financial package, and they responded and said, yes, here’s an additional $6,000.

26:33 Anonymous #3: So this is the financial commitment that I needed to make my final decision. I accepted the offer and I received this cash amount when I arrived on campus. Ultimately, my second choice program has since increased stipends to $30,000 per year. However, my current program has also made changes to funding packages. Summer teaching opportunities have increased in my department specifically for domestic students, and health insurance will soon be covered 100% by the university, so my first two years there was an 85% subsidy. So it seems to me that financial packages can really shift and evolve over the course of one’s program. But I think it’s critical to make sure that you have a guaranteed financial package that is workable for you from the very beginning. For me, as a 31 year old doctoral student who left a career to pursue a PhD in a completely different field, financial security is really important and pursuing programs with strong funding packages in affordable cities and then negotiating with my top choice and continuing to seek out additional grants and awards now that I’m here has been really important for my success in the program and also for my well-being overall.

Anonymous #4

27:47 Emily/Anonymous #4: This next contribution was submitted anonymously. Quote, Hello. Newly minted Ph.D. student here today. I’ll be telling you a bit about my experience of “negotiating” my offer letter for grad school. I say negotiating with air quotes because my experience was not the typical case of using an offer from one school as leverage to improve your offer at another school. But I think my experience can help motivate others to negotiate, which is why I’m happy to share.

28:14 Emily/Anonymous #4: So for a bit of back story, I knew from early on during my undergraduate education that I wanted to go to graduate school. However, the research I was doing as an undergrad wasn’t something I was super passionate about. By my senior year, I found a research area that was more interesting to me, But felt that I wasn’t ready to apply to grad school since I’d be switching fields in order to gain a better understanding of the state of the field and really specify a topic. I could devote six years of my life to. I worked as a lab tech for two years doing research in the field. I thought I wanted to pursue in graduate school and yay, I was correct in my judgment. I found a research topic I really enjoyed. The downside to this perhaps, was that I consequently narrowed my options for grad programs.

28:58 Emily/Anonymous #4: I ended up applying to two programs that are both direct admit, so I knew which lab I’d be joining and have a general idea for a project I’d work on. Following interviews, I realized that one of the labs was not the right fit for me. So by the end of the application cycle, I only had one offer letter. Now, during my interview at this institution, two PI’s, neither of whom were the P.I. I was interviewing for, and one of whom was on the grad committee. Both encouraged me to negotiate my offer. Then, prior to receiving the offer letter my PI emailed me saying we should zoom once I got it so we can go over the details and, quote, discuss anything I’d want to negotiate. So I was confident that negotiation was not taboo for this program and was reassured that my PI would even help me.

What was your original stipend and benefits offer?

29:41 Emily/Anonymous #4: But how exactly do you negotiate without the leverage of another offer? You just ask. My original offer was a 12 month appointment with a stipend of $32,000 for my first two years. Then the departmental rate guaranteed for nine month appointments for three more years, as well as an additional departmental award to be paid over my first three years. Even though I didn’t have another offer, I was still planning to ask for smaller things such as relocation assistance. Then I was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. With the Fellowship. I recognized I had a little bit more bargaining power, but at the end of the day, there was only one school I’d be able to take it to. Still, I knew that my PI and department were generally okay with negotiations, so I figured I had nothing to lose if I asked for more.

What was the process of negotiating this offer?

30:26 Emily/Anonymous #4: I first zoomed with my PI, That’s when I asked about relocation assistance. But I followed up on that zoom call with an email basically saying, I’ve heard that other NSF recipients asked for these things. Is any of this even possible? And listed the following agreement to pay the NSF stipend on non-NSF years: partial control of the $12,000 cost of education fund that is part of the fellowship and a sign up bonus.

What was the outcome of the negotiation?

30:52 Emily/Anonymous #4: My plan was to gauge what my PI thought would be reasonable requests, then go forward with only those. But they actually just went ahead and asked about all of them. And two days later I had my answers. First, the school will match the NSF statement. First, the school will match the NSF stipend on non NSF years. Second, I won’t have control over the $12,000 funds. However, the school may top it off with $2,000 that I can use for conferences, workshops, etc. I say may because this component is negotiated separately from the stipend and is still in the works. Third, a sign on bonus is not possible. However, the department award in my original offer letter was reworked into a larger amount that I will receive in my fifth year. So while it’s not technically a sign on bonus, it is an additional lump sum that I’m being guaranteed. And finally, my PI can reimburse up to $600 in relocation costs.

31:48 Emily/Anonymous #4: So overall, my negotiation, which was nothing more than just asking, was largely successful. I do want to note that there are two important factors to consider in my case. One, because this is a direct admit program, my PI was in my corner doing the asking for me. I never did any of the negotiation with the department directly, which may be the case for those entering rotation programs and why asking can be more intimidating for others. Second, my PI has external non-government funding which allows for more flexibility in how it’s spent. I’m almost certain that I would not get the NSF stipend match nor relocation assistance if my PI didn’t have private funding. So it can be useful to know what sources of funding your potential PI has to help you gauge if certain asks are reasonable versus unreasonable. I hope my story will help motivate others to ask for more than what their initial offer consists of. Whether they have offers from five schools or one school. And even if you don’t have an external fellowship like I did at the end of the day, the school offered you a spot. They want you there. I truly believe that making reasonable requests will not hurt you in the eyes of a university that wants you to commit to their program. You’re never going to have an answer unless you ask. End quote.

Anonymous #5, Negotiation Advice

33:06 Emily/Anonymous #5: This is from an anonymous contributor. Quote, I will be starting in a PhD program in fall 2023. After some correspondence with the professor in charge, I managed to secure a bit of additional funding. My advice is to think of the process as just asking questions instead of negotiation. Make a convincing case and focus on controllable and movable points.

33:30 Emily/Anonymous #5: One. Thinking of the process as simply a communication exchange helped me in two ways. By removing the pressure of negotiation, it helped me to think clearly about what I need to support myself financially and the pressure points in the initial offer, e.g. rent. And as such it help me to communicate clearly about my financial concerns. Admitted, but not accepted is the time to discuss financial details and faculty fully expect students to ask questions and are prepared to leverage their resources to adjust offers to convince students to join

34:06 Emily/Anonymous #5: Two. Making a convincing case stemmed from thinking concretely about how I would support myself on the initial offer and subsequently asking questions that were detailed and specific. Asking many detailed questions served as evidence of real and reasonable financial and material concerns. I had. Functionally, this worked analogous to asking research questions in the statement of purpose.

34:28 Emily/Anonymous #5: Three. focusing on controllable and movable points made this correspondence actually productive. What are the principal pressure points in my current offer? What tools does the program have at their disposal to improve offers? Often they do not have much wiggle room over a pure stipend amount, but have other programs or fellowships they can leverage. Focusing on effective and real possible offer adjustments helped me to help the professor better understand what they could do to turn an admission offer into an accepted offer. Relatedly, I advise taking advantage of additional funding opportunities, such as filling out optional personal statements, end quote.

Outtro

35:14 Emily: 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! 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.