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unionization

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

  • PF for PhDs Tax Workshops
  • PhD Stipends Database
  • PF for PhDs Tax Center for PhDs-in-Training 
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
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.

A Political Economist Explores How to Respond to the Financial Pressures on Graduate Students

January 22, 2024 by Jill Hoffman 1 Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Michael Dedmon, a PhD candidate in Political Science at Syracuse University and the Director of Research at the National Endowment for Financial Education. Michael’s research focus is in political economy, particularly in how governments respond to economic crises like the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. Emily asks Michael to share his view of what is happening in academia today as both a graduate student and a person with relevant academic expertise. They discuss how the strong labor market, high inflation, the lack of affordable housing, and constrained state and federal budgets for education and research are putting so much financial pressure on individual graduate students. Michael also explores the avenues for advocacy that are available to graduate students, such as unionization.

Links mentioned in the Episode

  • PF for PhDs Tax Workshops (Sponsored) 
  • PF for PhDs Tax Workshops (Individual Purchase)
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
  • Michael Dedmon Twitter

Teaser

00:00 Michael: Unionization is just one of the ways, right? That graduate students can really sort of band together, right? Really use that solidarity with one another and with graduate students across universities. To really sort of fight for a situation that really helps them reduce their vulnerability, but then also build a good financial sort of basis as they go into their career in academia, which is kind of a separate conversation. But we know that the challenge is right to. To living a financially secure life as an academic, are extremely challenging. So if you sort of start right from a negative as a graduate student, it sets you up for a lot of problems down the road.

Introduction

00:43 Emily: 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.

01:12 Emily: This is Season 17, Episode 2, and today my guest is Michael Dedmon, a PhD candidate in Political Science at Syracuse University and the Director of Research at the National Endowment for Financial Education. Michael’s research focus is in political economy, particularly in how governments respond to economic crises like the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. Michael shares his view of what is happening in academia today as both a graduate student and a person with relevant academic expertise. We discuss how the strong labor market, high inflation, the lack of affordable housing, and constrained state and federal budgets for education and research are putting so much financial pressure on individual graduate students. Michael also explores the avenues for advocacy that are available to graduate students, such as unionization.

02:02 Emily: The tax year 2023 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. While I do sell these workshops to individuals, I prefer to license them to universities so that the graduate students, postdocs, and postbacs can access them for free. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they sponsor this workshop for you and your peers? You can find more information about licensing 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. Thank you so, so much for doing so! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s17e2/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Michael Dedmon.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:27 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Michael Dedmon, he is both a PhD candidate, Syracuse university, and currently an employee with the National Endowment for Financial Education. And he and I met at a conference this past summer, the higher education financial wellness summit, where I was listening to him give a presentation. I said to myself that man has a PhD. And so I approached him afterwards and found out, I was almost right, he’s almost to the PhD,  Um, and yeah, so Michael, I know we’re going to have a fascinating conversation today. I’m really looking forward to it. Would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience? 

04:01 Michael: Absolutely. Well, first, thanks so much for having me. This is really a great opportunity that was totally unanticipated from that particular, uh, presentation. And I’m really thrilled to be here. Uh, well, I guess by way of introducing myself, uh, I’m from Colorado originally. That’s where I live. Currently. Um, I’m a 1st generation college student. Uh, and so by that extension, you know, also very much. So 1st generation PhD student, uh, I started off, uh, studying international relations at the American University of Paris. Uh, and then I studied in an MA in European politics at the European Institute at the London School of economics. Really, I had even gone into that MA level, really kind of wanting to focus on foreign affairs and international relations, but it was really kind of at that sort of stage where I really started to be pulled more in the direction of studying political economy after taking a few years off after the sort of starting with some early career research experience. I started pursuing a PhD in political science at Syracuse University. Where I’m currently a candidate, um, as a graduate student, you know, I got a couple of different, you know, sort of areas of research experience worked at a small research initiative focused mostly on international NGOs. And the Moynihan Institute of global affairs, uh, and then when I was more advanced in the PhD process, sort of started working in this field of financial security and financial education, uh, it started off at a smaller nonprofit in Brooklyn. Where I focused on identifying barriers to financial security for low and moderate income families, mostly in the New York City area and recently joined the National Endowment for financial education earlier this summer as the research director. And and I’m also an adjunct instructor in the political science department at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. So, sort of maintain my academic connection in that regard. 

Research Interests: Financial Crises, Financial Security, and Financial Education

05:52 Emily: So listeners, what we’re going to do with this interview is take all this fascinating experience and expertise that Michael has and ask him to apply it to the PhD population instead of the populations that he’s been typically studying and working with. Um, and since he has that personal experience being part of that population, I think it’s going to end up being a great conversation. Okay. So you went, uh, over that, you know, your CV a little bit. Is there anything that you’d like to dive in further and tell us more about that’s going to be relevant to our conversation today?

06:21 Michael: Well, I could maybe. Sort of start by talking a little bit about what really brought me sort of out of the academic, you know, sort of world and into this sort of field of financial security and financial education. Um, you know, I could maybe start by talking a little bit about what informs sort of my personal research interests, I guess, uh. You know, starting maybe with my, even my dissertation project and my dissertation work, uh, which is broadly speaking, sort of focused on the politics of economic crisis, specifically the politics of how and when governments choose to intervene to support individuals, families. Businesses really anybody in response to difficult economic times. I’m especially interested in how policy makers and academic experts. And politicians make sense of economic crises, how that sort of, you know, the frames, uh. Narratives the stories, the interventions that they think are necessary, uh, maybe have changed over time, uh, and what the political sort of determination of those stories that they find compelling are, um, my project specifically sort of asked this question in relation to the 2008 financial crisis, uh, and the recent economic consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic. Uh, you know, in 2008, we saw a certain type of discourse around what caused that particular crisis, how government should respond and what types of policies were needed to protect certain groups or certain firms or certain banks or businesses and then ultimately to get the economy back on track and, uh. Really, it was kind of my interest in how governments, how we, as people, how society makes sense of these types of crises and how the really serious consequences that individuals and families, especially people that are already vulnerable, uh, how they experience those crises and how that informs our politics. That’s really kind of what drew me, I think, into this particular field, which I would say is, you know, sort of the field of research and policy and advocacy that’s really focused on trying to understand the barriers that people. Uh, face to living their best financial lives and experiencing economic security and financial well, being, uh, and it’s been a really fulfilling experience. I think, to try to apply my academic interests, uh, both in the sort of policy and advocacy space. And then now, and, and, uh, I would say more of a broader, you know, sort of research, uh area looking at how financial education is just one out of many different ways that we can address economic insecurity and barriers to financial well being.

Financial Journey as a First Generation College Student

08:48 Emily: Of course, I love that working in the field of financial education for a number of years now. It’s so apparent to me in the last few years that there’s so much policy work that needs to be done, um, for us to even get to a point where financial education can be effective and can, it can really help people. So, um, I love that message. Um, would you like to add anything more about your personal journey through this period. 

09:09 Michael: You know, I couldn’t agree more with you as well, just really about seeing financial education really is sort of existing within like an ecosystem, right? Of issues in the ecosystem of problems. Really? Uh, that our society sort of has, uh, is presenting to individuals and families to living their best financial lives. And I’ve definitely really experienced that in myself. Um, you Not just before, you know, being a PhD student and after being a PhD student, or at least, I guess, after being really focused on the coursework, but being a graduate student as well. Um, you know, for me, and my personal sort of finance journey is really informed in a lot of ways by being a 1st generation college student. Uh, you know, could even say seeing, I would say, I guess, the, the sort of financial and economic struggles that, uh, that my parents, I think, experienced not having attained that college education, uh, trying to figure out, I think, how they were going to find their place in a labor market that was. I guess, maybe presenting different kinds of barriers to them being successful. You know, I kind of come from a family, like a lot of 1st generation college students where, you know, the idea of going to college was presented a little bit as a non negotiable. Partly because of how my parents understood their own experience and their own struggles. Um, and then. You know, my academic research interests, uh, are really sort of informed by how I experienced the financial crisis sort of period and in the U.S. and in the advanced industrialized world specifically. I mean, I was still in college. It was junior. Uh, no, I was senior in college, I guess, in 2008. so I sort of graduated in the spring of 2009 into 1 of the worst labor markets, right? That there was, uh, And not really sure exactly sort of how I was going to make my way, like, apply the things I had learned and and really just sort of start my career. It’s part of the reason why I continued on right away by pursuing an M. A. because it seemed. No, like, a lot of us, it seems like an answer to that question of what I was going to spend my time doing when we were looking at such a difficult economic situation. So, even though I was studying something else, and, you know, at the time had kind of, I think I wrote my master’s thesis on the relationship between the European Union and Russia. Which, uh, funnily enough, at the time, a lot of people said it was a very boring topic. Of course, that’s not the case now. Um, but, uh, what really pulled me to toward political economy and trying to think about these issues of, of, uh, financial security and political economy in general is seeing the extent to which the financial crisis created so many difficulties, uh, for people to sort of find financial security after, after that event. And really just being fascinated with the, the political and policy conversation about How we made sense of something like that. How did we sort of understand the fact that the economy had, uh, experienced this shock? How did we make sense of trying to get the economy back to growth? And how did we make sense of the fact that that really didn’t happen right away in most of the advanced industrialized economies?

12:11 Michael: Uh, so that was really, and experiencing that myself, I guess I would say, right? Uh, even coming out with an MA facing a tough labor market, you know, I found myself struggling to pay rent, struggling to sort of figure out, I think, how to. To to get on the career ladder, uh, you know, working a retail job, you know, going back and forth, you know, to different interviews. I have this very, very clear memory of, um. Interviewing for a job, I think is like an office manager at a at a apartment complex and I kind of remember leaving my job at the gap. A little bit early and getting in the car and driving, you know, and then showing up at this apartment complex and interviewing with what had to have been like, 35 or 40 other people, all of us standing there and, you know, uh, you know, press shirts and ties, you know, for like, uh, an entry level office manager job. And I think that that’s, that’s the experience that a lot of people had really just kind of trying to figure out what their place is going to be in a labor market. That was really, really not recovering from the crisis anywhere near fast enough. Uh. Okay. So that was really, I think, uh, a really big inspiration for me to try to understand what’s the government’s role in responding to those types of crises. And why were the types of responses that we saw to the 2008 crisis not working? Right? And that wasn’t just in the United States that we were experiencing that. And that was countries across, you know, the United States and North America and Northern Europe, um, where my research sort of has taken me. But, uh, yeah, that was really just a really, really important part of my personal. You know, development that informed, I think, my future research interests and, and now it’s sort of become, uh, really central to my career. 

Comparing the 2008 Financial Crisis to the COVID Crisis

13:52 Emily: What a vivid story. And I’m also thinking now about, you know, you made a comparison earlier, just that you’ve been thinking about the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis versus the COVID crisis that we’re having now. And I’m thinking about, um, someone listening to this podcast who is a recent college graduate and maybe graduated in 2020 or 2021. And how is what, I don’t know, can you tell us a little bit about generally over at the population level, how what they’re facing is is different or similar to what you and me and other of our peers experienced during that earlier crisis?

14:28 Michael: That’s a really fantastic question. Um, in a lot of ways, I think it really highlights how different the situation and the sort of post uh, landscape is compared to 2008. Um, And I think that should really cause us to ask a lot of really difficult questions, right? About why it is that, you know, maybe you and me, other people in our sort of, you know, cohort, uh, had such a different experience. Because 1 of the things that you really see, and I think we’re seeing additional evidence of this really every day, especially in the United States with additional sort of economic statistics is that the labor market situation that you and I faced, right? When we graduated from college, you know, in the early 2000s. Was one in which the premium, the benefit that you got from having an, uh, you know, higher education was certainly still there. But, um, the barriers that we were facing to really getting on the career ladder were really, really extensive. Um, there’s a lot of scarring in the labor market, meaning all of the layoffs really that had happened or the long term unemployment that people had experienced in the immediate sort of period after the financial crisis took a really, really long time to recover in the United States. There’s a lot of different explanations at the time for why that was. Uh, right you had a lot of people that were focusing on saying, well, maybe the unemployment insurance that the government offered in response to the crisis was too generous, right? It was keeping people from from taking additional jobs. I think we can kind of look back and see, especially given the extent of unemployment insurance, I guess, uh, generosity in the 2020 COVID crisis. That is a really, really difficult explanation to take seriously. 

16:03 Michael: But anyway, there were a lot of different reasons why economists sort of trying to understand why the labor market was taking so long to recover and why it was so difficult, even for people with college educations to really get on the career ladder and get a job that was going to pay them a living wage so that they can pay rent and pay the other expenses they needed. One of the biggest differences is that in part, because, uh, the government took a much more active role in responding to the downturn, uh, that was sort of caused by the COVID 19 pandemic that the labor market did not experience that same type of slow return to normal. After 2020, in fact, you sort of saw the opposite, right? Businesses had trouble hiring folks. They had difficulty hiring people to fill the jobs, which, uh, had a really, really beneficial impact on wages. Also, just something was completely different from what happened in the after the 2008 financial crisis. You had a labor market situation, which was incentivizing businesses. To try to pull people into those jobs, so they were offering higher and higher wages, right? This is sort of where you saw, you know, people getting offered 15, 16, 17, even in some places to work, uh, you know, places like McDonald’s coming after a number of years where fast food workers were trying to organize and demand, right? A 15 minimum wage in those same jobs. And we’re experiencing a lot of barriers to making that a reality. So on the one hand. The government’s willingness to spend a lot of money in response to the 2020 pandemic to try to make sure that vulnerable people specifically, uh, didn’t lose their homes. Didn’t lose housing. Uh, didn’t get too far behind on making payments on their debt or their mortgages or other types of, uh, you know, that’s that they had. Really put the economy in a much stronger position to recover afterward and in terms of facing, you know, labor market opportunities is 1 of the best ways to see the positive impact of that response.

17:56 Michael: And so, I mean, I don’t know. I’m interested to kind of know what you think as well. Talking to so many folks who are sort of leaving the, the, the graduate school situation and thinking about their finances. But I would say that on the whole, I think people are facing a very different type of labor market now that are not experiencing the same type of restriction of opportunities. That we experienced after the 2008 crisis, that’s not to say that they don’t also face a lot of difficulties, right? In terms of. Making the most out of their careers, earning a living wage, feeling like they have what they need to live their best financial lives. But in terms of the. Barriers they’re facing in the labor market. It’s really not quite the same. 

18:36 Emily: Well, I was thinking about so I entered graduate school I should say I entered PhD training plans to go into a PhD program in 2007, which is when I graduated from college So it was just before so I was kind of safely ensconced in my PhD program by the time things really started going downhill in 2008 and I say safely because my lab happened to be well funded which obviously is a very real concern inside academia my lab in the area it was in, we had funding, my, my funding was secure during that time. I don’t have any statistics on this at all or even anecdotes, but I’m just wondering if, you know, comparatively the stronger labor market, as you were talking about, um, didn’t incentivize people to go into academia to start those graduate programs and start the PhD programs in the last few years in the way that, again, we experienced back in 2008, 2009, 2010. Um, Um, yeah, so I’m just kind of thinking about maybe the different pressures on people and when they can choose to go into a job that would be satisfactory to them, then maybe earning a decent amount of money and they think, Oh, I was sort of interested in going to graduate school, but I can put that off for a few years and I’m going to work this job for now. Um, I don’t have those numbers on whether or not enrollment has decreased in the last, you know, couple of years compared to 2019, for example. I don’t know if you have looked into this at all or have any thoughts about this. 

The Labor Markets Impact on University Enrollment

19:51 Michael: Yeah, that’s a really interesting point. I definitely can’t really. Speak very confidently, uh, at the graduate level, but especially because I’m teaching undergraduates right now, you know, the regional campus of a state school, I can definitely say, uh, that, you know, the University of Colorado system in particular is, uh. Definitely not experiencing the same type of enrollment surge that they saw after the 2008 crisis, especially at the undergraduate level, even campuses like ours here in Colorado Springs. I wouldn’t say, like, struggling with enrollment. But definitely having to ask some, some really difficult questions about what the future of, uh, right of enrollment is going to look like serving students best, helping them get the training they need for their future careers. But I think you’re exactly right that that those students are not feeling the same types of pressure and especially with the increase in wages that we. I would say that, you know, we at least saw in the 1st, few years after 2020, uh, the wage increases are sort of, uh, I would say, uh, leveling off now, partly because of the monetary policy response of the Federal Reserve and the increase in interest rates, which it was the goal, right? The goal was to sort of slow down that economic growth and see those wages, uh, not grow quite as fast. Um, but just the fact that wages were growing at all. After 2020 in the way that they were definitely presents people with a different set of opportunities. Um, and then I know this is something that you are very interested in and your podcast offers a lot of, uh, really important context, uh, around, but especially students that are looking at the trade offs between taking out debt to pay Right for their education, and then sort of considering that trade off in the context of what they can earn in the labor market. Uh, that’s becomes a little bit more difficult. Right of a choice. Um, and like you had said, if they can make the choice to put off right, getting additional credentials for a little bit, because of what they’re able to to do in their careers outside academia, uh, I definitely think that that set of choices is very different now for folks than it was in 2008, 2009, 2010.

21:57 Emily: I’m so curious and this is not a question for you, but I’m so curious to see how this new SAVE plan for federal student loans is going to impact people’s decision making around whether to enroll in school and how much debt to take out when there’s, um, you know, we’ve, we’ve eliminated with this repayment plan, the negative amortization that was so, so painful, um, for so many people on the back end of their degrees. And without that, I feel like the risk of taking out debt is much, much, much less now. Okay. The risk of the SAVE plan, we don’t know. Politically, we don’t know how long it’s gonna stick around for, but it’s, it’s here for the moment. So I’m just curious how people’s decisions are going to change around that.

Unionization Movements in the U.S.

22:33 Emily: But the next question for you, since we’ve started talking around, um, academia and versus the labor market and so forth. Um, I’m curious what your thoughts are around the unionization movements going around the U. S., around, that is to say, around graduate students, um, unionizing, and also how like stipend levels are, are being affected by this like strong labor market. I don’t know if you have any thoughts or data or speculation around that, just how academia itself and the graduate students going into academia and staying in academia are affected by these larger economic forces. 

23:09 Michael: Yeah, there’s so many, I mean, even just the way that you said that affected by the larger economic forces is such a great way of framing that issue because there’s so many different inputs, right? I think into, uh, the way that universities and the way that even departments are trying to figure out how they can do, uh, right by their graduate students, um, but also how they can attract, right? The best type of candidates that they, that they, uh, that they want. Um, I think that 1 of the ways that I think about this. Thanks. Of course, it’s just starting by thinking that graduate students on the whole experience of a lot of really specific vulnerabilities, right? Um, any type of event or situation that doesn’t conform to a more traditional sort of academic experience can also, like, really exacerbate those, um, coming into a, you know, a graduate program, something we both know. Well, there’s a lot of expectations, right? That are sort of carried over from. Decades and generations of the way that the graduate student experience is supposed to work. Specifically, right, like, figuring out how to live a decent life right on the graduate students stipend is who identified as kind of, like, the biggest thing that a lot of students have to face. Um, that includes trying to figure out how to pay rent, especially when, you know, rent inflation is out of control and most metro areas in the, in the U. S. including in places like Syracuse that traditionally speaking, right? Have had pretty depressed housing markets because of. Um, so. A lot of different dynamics of, uh, of, uh, economic vulnerability at the community level, right? That go back, you know, since the 1970s. Um, but as students are facing that, I think that that’s sort of combined with a lot of other, you know, sort of issues and concerns around equity and justice in general. Right seeing universities as being primary sites of contesting. A lot of those questions have really motivated a lot of graduate students to really participate in and unionization efforts to really try to not just have living wages, but also try to address other issues of fairness in the, in, in either their specific discipline or just in the, in the field more generally, um, you know, I can say from my own department, uh, we had a year’s long sort of unionization drive. Um, That kind of went in fits and starts and took a really kind of long pause and then I’m, I’m advanced enough of a student now to sort of be outside of the bargaining unit, but they just recently were able to, uh, to to to get that union recognized, uh, which is a huge achievement for them. And so at least still being part of the department and seeing how those conversations and negotiations are proceeding. You know, I already can look back and see how different that would have made my life right when I started in that program to know that there was a possibility of increasing the stipend on its own. But then a lot of other ancillary issues, right? Like. Uh, at what level is the department going to cover your health insurance premium? Uh, when I started in the department, uh, you know, I can’t remember now, but the percentage was really low, but even, you know, as as I became a more advanced graduate student, I could see that that was 1 of the ways the department was really trying to sort of reduce the, the cost right on students is by saying, well, if you are on a TA-ship, if you’re on an RA-ship, you know, we’re going to start covering that premium in full. Including in some cases for for other members of your family, which, you know, that’s a huge benefit that we identify with, like, a solid career job. Um, that maybe as a graduate student is kind of an afterthought. I guess also, of course, depending how old you are when you come into a program, um. But that makes a huge difference financially for folks, right? To not have to pay. You know, 1000, 2000 dollars and a yearly health insurance premium that, of course, you’re required to have. Uh, so unionization is just one of the ways, right? That graduate students can really sort of band together, right? Really use that solidarity with one another and with graduate students across universities. To really sort of fight for a situation that really helps them reduce their vulnerability, but then also build a good financial sort of basis as they go into their career in academia, which is kind of a separate conversation. But we know that the challenge is right to. To living a financially secure life as an academic, are extremely challenging. So if you sort of start right from a negative as a graduate student, it sets you up for a lot of problems down the road.

Commercial

27:35 Emily: 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.

Impact of State and National Politics on University Funding

28:27 Emily: I’m thinking now about. The comparatively strong labor market, surprisingly strong coming out of a crisis, um, perhaps competing with graduate school for talent, right? I’m thinking about the unionization movement, which is putting more pressure on universities to pay better wages and get better benefits and so forth. Um, but then more to your, I think, uh, research experience, I’m curious about the national and state level responses to these pressures, right? Because the funding for academia comes partly from the people participating in, like the tuition and so forth, but it also partly comes from the federal and state governments through grants and, and, uh, the state funding for public universities and so forth. And these, these pressures are, are coming against one another. And I feel in some sense, like graduate students and postdocs are the people, um, who get left behind. In these pressures, right? So can you talk about, like, sort of based on your research and how, um, you know, governments can intervene in crises, like what you see as potential, um, uh, pressure release in, in this, in this area? Uh, I hope that made sense to you. 

29:34 Michael: No, absolutely. No, and you’re so right. And, you know, again, there’s so many different levels that you can, you know, sort of analyze that on the one hand, you know, you sort of pointed to. The relationship between state level government and funding levels at state universities in particular, which affect stipends for graduate students and segments for postdocs directly the number of, you know, funding opportunities for graduate students to support their research, which helps reduce their time to degree, uh, you know, the number of services the university is able to offer, uh, to graduate students from, you know, um, Health, it’s not even just paying for health insurance premiums, but it’s just health services, you know, overall, um, going from that all the way to whether or not universities are able to provide child care support to students and to graduate students and even to faculty and other people who work at the university, you know, as you had said, like, all of that’s tied to the funding situation that the state university has. You know, and of course, that varies on a state by state basis, right? We see some states like the University of University of Wisconsin system. It’s really, really struggling with the sort of domestic politics of the of the state in general to to sort of figure out a funding model that really makes it to where they can support all of the good work that they’re doing across all their campuses. But Colorado struggles with that too, right? Trying to figure out how to really create a sustainable funding model for the state university system in the long term. So, that’s at 1 level that I really sort of see, as you had said, like, states being able to appropriately fund their state university systems. Interacts directly with graduate students and their sort of financial security and of course, like, how that impacts their, their long term career prospects. Um, but there’s also these other situations that really very also for graduate students to, um. That they’re existing, not only in a university community, but existing in a community that has all of these other dimensions, right? So the cost of housing, right? And a particular university community varies widely. And I think about this, even in a situation in Colorado, where you have the University of Colorado at Boulder, our sort of flagship research university is in one of the most you. If not the most right expensive, uh, sort of residential area on the front range and, uh, you know, I’ve never lived in Boulder, but I can’t imagine how challenging that is for the university to both attract graduate students and then for graduate students to figure out how to make the stipends that they’re receiving go as far as they can without having to choose to live 20, 30 minutes away right from from campus, which is. Not practical, right? Especially in the early years of your graduate student experience. Just even if we were to focus on, like, how much like, the cost of housing, right? Gets eaten up, uh, or eats up the sort of graduate student stipend. Um, that’s obviously something that universities can’t really do a ton about, right? That’s more of a role for, uh. For local governments or for state governments and can definitely see how the politics of that is really playing out in Colorado, an area where had a ton of influx of people since the pandemic that rent inflation is really, really high here. And we’re struggling, honestly, in a lot of ways to figure out how to how to control that.

Local Government and the Affordability and Availability of University Housing

32:38 Emily: I’m curious then, so I’ve noticed, um, there’s been struggles over, um, universities providing housing for, for undergraduates and graduate students, right? We’ve seen in, I can’t remember which UC is it, whether it’s Berkeley or another one, but um, struggles with local government in terms of permitting for additional, um, Student housing to be, uh, built. I know also at Vanderbilt, they opened up new, um, student housing a couple year or two ago, I think, and the students were very disappointed that the housing seemed closer to market rate and for a luxury apartment than like what was affordable for the students themselves. So the universities have some agency here, but they still have to play, as you said, with the local communities in terms of the permitting and everything. And, of course, the funding for those kinds of building projects. 

33:27 Michael: Yes, it’s interesting points, because you’re exactly right there, too, that, you know, the permitting issues, just the space, you know, sort of issues I think about different university communities that I’ve lived in between, you know, Syracuse. This is a completely different situation, right? Then, uh. As you had said, right, the, for, for Cal, like, in a city like Berkeley, or I lived briefly in Ithaca, you know, thinking about Cornell really struggling also with kind of figuring out where to even build right housing. If they, if they were able to for and making that available to graduate students and how the funding model works for that. So, that is a really great point. Maybe I, even in my sort of answer, letting universities off the hook a little bit too much. But in the same way, right there, like, you had said that there’s a lot of complex issues that. That they have to work with sort of the local community to figure out what is available to them. And I know that in Colorado, you know, this is relevant for us in the sense that we’re going through sort of a statewide conversation about permitting reform and there was, uh. You know, a bill that was passed by the Colorado state legislature to to really try to give local municipalities more power to change their zoning laws to build more affordable housing that ultimately was, uh. Was I believe vetoed by by by governor polis in part, because there was just so much opposition to it at the, the municipal level. So we’re going to try to sort of, I think, figure out how to proceed. But, uh, you know, we’re obviously not the only state that’s really struggling to sort of figure out the balance between Local control and state level control, uh, over, uh, zoning regulations, uh, to really try to incentivize, like, actually affordable housing or just more housing. Right? And, uh, so, yeah, lots of really complex layers there, but it has really, really, uh, serious impacts right on how graduate students figure out their, uh, their sort of budgets throughout their, uh, throughout their graduate student career.

35:17 Emily: And this is making me think about prospective graduate students, um, looking at, and I usually think about this actually, and this is not the full picture, right? I think about it as a snapshot in time. What’s the current cost of living in this particular city where I’m considering attending for my PhD, and what’s the stipend at this moment? But to be really comprehensive and fair, we have to look at the trends. Um, and whether, you know, states are struggling to, um, to really financially support the universities. And that means that the stipend raises not, might not be keeping up with inflation going forward. We need to look at housing and how that is trending and whether or not something like on campus housing is being provided or might be provided in the future. And just, I’m just thinking about a prospective graduate student, like, You know, for me, when I was applying to graduate school, like taking, you know, a day or two and visiting a campus where I might devote the next five, six, seven years of my life and, um, how much, uh, really should go into that decision on the financial side and how difficult it would be to collect all that information. for every single university you’re considering and really understand it. It’s such a, wow. It’s a really complex problem. 

Inflation and Financial Pressures During Graduate School

36:26 Michael: Yeah. You said it so well. And, uh, the time inconsistency situation is tough for graduate students because you’re exactly right. You’re coming in with sort of a quoted time to degree. You’re trying to plan your life out in that block. Um, and before you’re even talking about all the other changes that happen to you in your life, right. New relationships, you know, you have a kid. Other types of situations that happen to you and your family, you know, you live a whole lifetime really, especially at that age, right? Coming in and thinking about your 5 to 7 years before you’re finished. And then you have to make a decision about how you’re going to make the finances work. And you’re exactly right that. You know, the stipends don’t keep up and, you know, we are, we’re also living in a period where we have gotten used to, uh, cost of living inflation. Overall, not really being a huge pressure, right? Rent inflation. You know, the inflation of the cost of education cost of health care, you know, these things were always really difficult for for people that were early in their careers. But then you think about after the, the covid pandemic, and now we’re experiencing inflation on like a. A much more wide scale level, right? It’s like graduate students thinking about the cost of groceries going up, right? That’s not really something that if you went into graduate school in 2018, 2019, you really were thinking about. And, uh, I guess the only thing I’ll say for, for me is that this, I think highlights the importance, I think, of being able to really build that solidarity with other graduate students within a union. Because that’s where you really have the ability to to present that United front to your department of the university and say, look, these are the pressures, right? That we’re experiencing. This is the value that we’re offering to the department of the university through our work. And, uh, and we are going to work together, right? To come up with a solution that makes it to where we can have. A living wage, while we’re also sort of continuing to pursue our studies, um, and then linking that sort of struggle with other people in the economy. Right? I mean, these graduate students are joining, you know, the service employees in a national union. You know, some graduate programs are joining the United Auto Workers, right? I mean, they’re building solidarity. I think with other workers that are experiencing those same pressures. And it’s really inspiring. And I think it really is a really big part of the solution. I think at least from a graduate student perspective on getting to a point where can really make the finances, finances work. But your, your point about timing, I think it’s like, so it’s so true. Right. And so, so real on an individual level, especially. 

Shifting University Funding Models to Better Support Grad Students

38:45 Emily: I love your point about the, the power of the unionization movements and the unions that are already in place so much. I almost wish we could end the interview right there, but I have kind of like one more question, um, which is so with unions. You’re talking about advocacy at the very local level, and then of course we’re bridging to advocates and other, um, branches of that union. Uh, but I’m also thinking now about, you know, we just talked about funding from the state level. I’m also thinking about funding from the federal level, which in my field, like in the biomedical sciences, is what they do in academia, in graduate education, is so dependent on the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies funding. And so I’m thinking about also, like, Okay, we want graduate students to be paid, not just a living wage, in my opinion, much more so they can do even more with their finances and actually have some financial security. More than the living wage. Also, other people in academia, you mentioned the pressures don’t end with graduate school. It extends into faculty and administrators as well. More funding is needed for the whole system. I think if we decide as a country and as a planet that we really value what’s going on in academia. Right? So I think the advocacy has to also be at the state and national level as well, um, to increase the budgets again, if we decide as a society that what we’re doing in academia is valuable. Because. If society does not decide to value it, then academia has to shrink because the pressures on these lowest levels, as I said, the financial pressures are just too much, too much to bear and you’re driving people away at this point. That’s how I see it. What do you think? 

40:14 Michael: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. Um, I completely agree with you too, that it’s a national level question, right? And I think that this is at least from my perspective, one of the helpful insights that you get. From the political economy, sort of, you know, perspective coming within the political science discipline is that you see how these things interact with so many other things in our economy, right? Thinking about how we train people at the university level, what sort of skills we want them to have, who’s doing the training, right? Who’s gaining the skills to actually play that role of being those teachers. And that’s even before getting to the, to the other issues, you know, you know, a lot better than I do. I think coming in the biomedical field You know, who’s the ones who are investigating the types of advances that are going to help us solve the biggest issues that we’re facing, whether that has to do with, uh, you know, avoiding pandemics or responding to climate change or whatever it is. Right? And you’re exactly right that it’s a choice about whether or not we value that as a society and taking seriously what that looks like. And I think that both of us know quite well that, like, at the individual level, we’re not really just talking about having more access to funding for individual research, but that is a huge part of it. That empowers graduate students to be able to not only do their best work, but to be able to really focus on the work that motivates them. Right? Which gives them space for creativity for solving problems for asking questions. And it’s not to say that, like, you don’t gain a lot from teaching doing other research and that kind of stuff at the same time that you’re doing your own, but it is a lot of pressure. And a lot of the most successful, uh, you know, people emerging from graduate school are folks that didn’t really necessarily have to deal with those pressures in quite the same way. It’s 1 of the benefits of going right to 1 of the top programs is having access to more funding. And so you imagine what it would be like if. Everybody right going to graduate school has access to that same type of support, or at least. A lot more support and, uh, absolutely funding coming from the, you know, the National Science Foundation and other types of, uh, you know, federal sources of funding like that to really, really fund a wider range, right? Of research projects. And there’s also, you know, questions here related to what types of folks are getting, what types of funding and are we really supporting also marginalized voices in the academy that are really focusing on important questions, asking questions about. Yeah. You know, either the history, or the experience, or, uh, you know, of marginalized groups, uh, in our economy and in our society already. Right? Those are not necessarily the types of, uh, projects that get the. They’re the top choice for funding, um, because they’re more difficult questions to answer. So there’s, there’s a number of different benefits that we would experience at a societal level, um, from really embracing, uh, a university funding model That is actually oriented towards what we want to get out of universities, instead of just seeing them as sort of factories to train people with the skills to make them successful in the economy as important as that is. Right? 

43:05 Emily: I think about universities, both the product of a university that you just mentioned, people are the product, trained people, but also the research itself is a product. And graduate students do both of those things, right? They’re becoming those trained people and they’re also generating the research that is disseminated and helps on a much wider basis. But as you just said, if they can’t focus on the work that they’re there to do and then the skills they’re there to, um, to develop in themselves, like we’re really, we as academia, we’re really hamstringing ourselves by not supporting those trainees, um, financially and in other ways to the greatest extent they can so they can flourish. Um, I’ve been thinking recently about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So like at the top, like self actualization, like. That’s where we want academics to be operating. But if they don’t have the safety and the physiological needs levels met financially and again through other support systems, how, how can they be expected to be in that actual self actualization level, which is ostensibly what they’re there to do. Um, so it doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but as we have been talking about, there are so many different inputs to this system. That have to be, um, considered in the history of it. And gosh, well, I’ve enjoyed this conversation so much, Michael. Um, is there anything else that you would like to add at this point on How universities or state level or government or federal level governments could be better supporting their graduate students. 

44:31 Michael: I think that we have really covered, I think the wide range right of inputs. I really appreciate the conversation. I really appreciate your perspective and, uh, I think that you’re doing such great work. I think I’m trying to highlight how diverse right? This is the experience of, uh, financial life can be at the graduate student level. And, uh, Yeah, it’s just not really a story. I think that you think of immediately when you think of financial insecurity, but, of course, as we know, it’s, it’s, it’s a very, very pervasive feeling that a lot of us experience the graduate student level and it really resonates with me about how important the work that happens in universities is. Right? And I don’t even think that you really need to be overly romantic about it to think about the value those institutions have to public life and graduate students are a critical part of that. Uh, so I really have enjoyed this conversation and, uh, I don’t think I have anything additional to add.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

45:24 Emily: Okay. Then we’ll just end with the final question that I ask all of my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? We really haven’t gone in to that personal finance realm too much at all during this interview. So this is kind of your opportunity to enter that individual level and say what’s worked for you or what you think would work for other people at the graduate student level.

45:44 Michael: Yeah. I appreciate the time to sort of reflect, I think, on that, uh, on that question. And a lot of it is sort of connected to these key key elements that we’ve talked about so far in the conversation. I know that for me, 1 thing I didn’t think about enough about before I started was availability of funding, right? For my own research. And even looking at the availability of that funding, uh, what was it going to take to actually try to be competitive for it because of how limited it is, um, because it’s 1 of the key things, right? That we just were talking about this, but, like, relieving that pressure, um, of, uh, you needing to focus on the teaching and the work in order to make a living, right? To earn that stipend to sort of survive, um, the space then in your life gets shrunk, right? To focus on your own research, which it’s not even just about, like, you know, the, the personal fulfillment and self actualization as you were talking about, but it’s also about how long are you going to take to finish the degree? Right? I mean, I’m a graduate student. I’ll be candid about it. I mean, I’m, you know, in my 9th year, that’s definitely over the average sort of time to degree. A lot of that has to do with Trying to sort out sort of my own financial, you know, and my family’s financial situation at an individual level. I’m certainly not the only graduate student That’s tried to. To balance those 2 things with a limited availability of a funding to support me finishing my degree. So that’s something really just thinking about what types of opportunities are available to you and where you can get the best support for your own sort of research career if you have the choice, right? If you have the programs to choose from, if you have different types of opportunities available to you, just really thinking about that. And it’s hard when you’re just starting. Because you’re about classes, you’re thinking about where you’re gonna live. You’re thinking about, uh, you know, how you’re gonna read and pass your exams. It’s a lot of pressure, but taking some time to think about that earlier rather than later I think is really important. And then the last thing I’ll just end with to think resonates with the conversation we’ve had as a whole is trying to think about the various, you know, changes that are gonna happen to you in your life during that period of time. And how you can maybe try to anticipate some of them think about preparing, you know, for them, or just being mindful of how that might impact your financial situation. Uh, you know, changes in your in your family, right? Having, you know, a child, maybe experiencing a situation where you have to prioritize the care of a parent, um, these types of situations that can really come out of nowhere in life, you know, um, and I can say that Graduate students, I think are particularly vulnerable to these changes because the image of the graduate student is like a young person. That’s able to sort of stay up all night and eat ramen and read books. But that’s not every graduate students reality. Um, the onus is on you individually a lot of times, unfortunately, to really think about how to navigate that. And I know that for me, I think I wish I would have spent a little bit more time thinking about how my life was going to change over that period of time and how I could be better prepared for it.

48:51 Emily: That’s something I’ve definitely heard from other interviewees, um, something I also experienced to an extent while I was a graduate student. I mean, a PhD program is long. I took six years, you’re on nine now. Um, you can move through different life stages, as you said, during that period of time. And as we’ve been talking about, The economy can change underneath you. You can have a pandemic. If you started graduate school in 2018, 2019, you’re still in graduate school. Um, and so absolutely like as, as thinking of it as an individual decision, where am I going to go? How well are they going to support me there? You have to build in that. You’re going to need more support than you do at the moment, right? You can’t necessarily assume for five years, you’re going to be eating ramen and staying up all night, right? Your life is going to change and you, you have to think about those shocks. Um, but unfortunately Stipends being what they are, it’s very difficult to say, okay, I’m, I’m definitely going to go to the program that fits me best, the research interests, as well as supporting me above and beyond what my current needs and wants are, but factoring that into account, very, very, very difficult, but really, really good food for thought for anybody who is in that perspective stage.
49:56 Michael: Yeah, absolutely. Couldn’t agree more.

49:59 Emily: All right, Michael. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This has been a delight and I really appreciate you.

50:06 Michael: Thanks so much again, Emily. I really had a great time. Uh, really, really loved, I think, just being given the time to sort of reflect and think. about my own sort of financial life as a graduate student. And, uh, you’re doing such great work. And so I really love the opportunity to come on the podcast.

50:21 Emily: Thank you so much.

Outtro

50:28 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! 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.

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

  • Emily’s E-mail Address
  • PF for PhDs S12E7: This Grad Student Advocates for Higher Stipends Using Cost of Living Data (Money Story with Alex Parry)
  • PF for PhDs S5E9: Insights from the Bargaining Table with a Graduate Student Union Leader (Money Story with Mary Bugbee)
  • PF for PhDs S4E14: This PhD Compares Her Experiences at a Unionized University and a Non-Unionized University (Money Story with Dr. Carly Overfelt)
  • Dr. Katy Peplin, Thrive PhD
  • Host a PF for PhDs Seminar at Your Institution
  • PF for PhDs S8E7: Negotiating Your Grad School Stipend and Benefits: Five Success Stories (Money Stories with Various Guests)
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
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.

This Grad Student Advocates for Higher Stipends Using Cost of Living Data

August 15, 2022 by Emily

In this episode, Emily interviews Alex Parry, a sixth-year graduate student at Johns Hopkins in the history of medicine. Alex is a strong advocate for increasing stipends both in his department and at Hopkins broadly and is deeply involved with the grad student unionization movement. Alex and some colleagues recently released the results of a study of stipends vs. the living wage for about a dozen peer institutions to Hopkins, and he explains in detail the methodology of the study and the patterns that they found, making a case for the urgency to increase stipends at virtually all US universities. Emily and Alex discuss the benefits of this approach vs. how PhDStipends.com collects data. Alex shares a powerful concluding message on the need for collective action among graduate students.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

  • Alex Parry’s Twitter (@SafetyWorkHSTM)
  • PhDStipends.com
  • PF for PhDs Community
  • PF for PhDs: S12E7 Show Notes
  • Alex’s Tweet Comparing PhD Stipends
  • MIT Living Wage Calculator
  • IRS Form 1040-ES (Estimated Tax Worksheet)
  • PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs (Nature article)
  • Ph.D. students demand wage increases amid rising cost of living (Science article)
  • PF for PhDs Quarterly Estimated Tax Workshop (Individual link)
  • PF for PhDs Quarterly Estimated Tax Workshop (Sponsor link)
  • PF for PhDs Register for Mailing List (Access Advice Document)
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Show Notes
S12E7 Image: This Grad Student Advocates for Higher Stipends Using Cost of Living Data

Teaser

00:00 Alex: But ultimately, our ability to get what we need as adults and as employees of these universities done is contingent on what kind of pressure we are able to bring to bear. And what data we’re able to bring to bear. And the data are only a starting point, right? They provide the talking points you need, they provide the evidence you need. They provide the ability to do the negotiations, right? But ultimately, we will succeed or fail collectively. And we will succeed or fail on the base of our ability to sort of band together to demand what we rightfully deserve.

Introduction

00:37 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 the 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. This is Season 12, Episode 7, and today my guest is Alex Parry, a sixth-year graduate student at Johns Hopkins in the history of medicine. Alex is a strong advocate for increasing stipends, both in his department and at Hopkins broadly, and is deeply involved with the grad student unionization movement. Alex and some colleagues recently released the results of a study of stipends vs. the living wage for about a dozen peer institutions to Hopkins, and he explains in detail the methodology of the study and the patterns that they found, making a case for the urgency to increase stipends at virtually all U.S. universities. Alex and I discuss the benefits of this approach vs. how PhDStipends.com collects data. Alex shares a powerful concluding message on the need for collective action among graduate students.

02:01 Emily: If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, including my set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Our next live discussion and Q&A call is on Wednesday, August 17th, 2022. Basically, the Community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s12e7/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Alex Parry.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:23 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Alex Parry. He is a rising sixth-year graduate student at Johns Hopkins in the history of medicine. And we have a really valuable conversation coming up for you because we are talking about stipends and how to increase them, and the advocacy work that Alex is doing. We are recording this by the way in May, 2022. I know it’s going to be out a few months later. So, just for context, that’s where we are. Alex, would you please introduce yourself further to the listeners?

03:53 Alex: Sure. So, as it was already stated, I’m a rising sixth-year in the History of Medicine Department at John Hopkins. I work specifically on the history of consumer product safety and home accidents in the United States from about 1920 to 1980. And I’m also one of the organizers with Teachers and Researchers United (TRU) which is the currently unrecognized graduate student union at Johns Hopkins. So, one of many people who’s trying to push here and at other universities for increases to our stipends to accommodate a quickly accelerating rise in the cost of living.

Teachers and Researchers United (TRU) History

04:26 Emily: Yes. So, let’s hear more about that unionization movement right now. So, it’s currently unrecognized. Can you give us a little bit of the recent history, and where you’re hoping to go in the near future?

04:35 Alex: Yeah, absolutely. So, TRU has been around since roughly 2014. It started initially at the arts and sciences campus at Hopkins and was focused primarily on parental leave for graduate students as well as to try and increase healthcare benefits, particularly making sure that all graduate students had access to dental care and to vision care. Since then, the union has sort of grown and sort of formalized. And right now, we’re currently in the midst of an ongoing recognition campaign trying to basically work through the National Labor Relations Board or NLRB to try and seek an official union election at Hopkins. So, we’re hoping to basically have a unit that will encompass all PhD students at the university. So, sort of regardless of what division or campus people are located at, which is about 3,000 PhD students altogether. And we’re currently in the midst of trying to build up our core of organizers, have a lot of conversations with other graduate students at the university about things that are working for them and things that aren’t, in the hope of then sort of staging to basically a card petition with the NLRB sometime over the next couple of years.

How to Become an Officially-Recognized Union at a University

05:44 Emily: Okay. And walk me through this because my university was not unionized at the time. There was not even a movement when I was there. So, you basically gain enough support from the people who would be part of the union on campus through this card campaign. What happens next? The NLRB is involved, but then how does the university ultimately recognize the union?

06:04 Alex: Sure. So, there are sort of two main pathways to get to an officially-recognized union at a university, especially for a private university. Either the university can voluntarily recognize you, say that enough graduate students support this, that we’re just basically going to acknowledge your presence and then sort of work towards a contract from there. Most universities don’t take that path because they’re sort of concerned about having to bargain with graduate students. So, what ends up typically happening is, and this was recently reaffirmed by the NLRB over the last year or so, but if one is trying to seek an election through the NLRB, what one does is you can submit a petition to the NLRB to basically arbitrate an election at your campus when you have signatures from approximately 30% or more of the bargaining unit. Most unions will aim for a higher number than that because you don’t want to sort of rely on a third of the people at the university to 1) be a reliable indicator of how much people want a union, or 2) basically, one typically expects to have a more difficult time in the actual in-person election, which is what we’ll follow if the NLRB accepts your petition.

07:14 Alex: Because typically when you’re just signing the initial petition, you can basically do that remotely. So, people can just sign a digital card. During the actual election, typically those are done in person, which means that it’s harder to turn people out. And there, you’re looking for basically a bare majority of the voters. So, ordinarily, people will aim for more like 50% of the entire bargaining unit when they submit a petition to NLRB, and then after that, an election follows. If the election is successful, then you would then sit down with the university administration and basically negotiate directly over a contract.

Winning an NLRB Election

07:48 Emily: Okay. So, if it’s gone through the NLRB for this like official card campaign, then the university has to recognize the union at that point. Is that right?

07:56 Alex: Yeah, that’s correct. If NLRB hosts an election and the sort of proposed union wins, then the university is obligated to negotiate in good faith. So, there are various mechanisms that then both the university and then the proposed union will use to sort of conduct negotiations. Typically, they’ll have like labor lawyers and/or sort of like corporate lawyers involved. And you’ll sort of haggle over the details. A really good example of what this looks like as ongoing right now is at MIT. They’ve just won their election earlier this year. They’re currently in the midst of negotiations which started sometime late April to the beginning of this month. Those are likely to extend for another several months after this.

08:39 Alex: So probably, they won’t have a contract ratified or least put up to a vote because after you’ve had their bargaining committee come up with a contract, you then send it back to the base to all of the membership, to see if people actually approve of the contract that’s been written. So, sometime, probably this fall, maybe this winter, MIT will finish negotiating a contract, will send it back to everyone to basically vote on, and then if a bare majority approves of the contract, then that will sort of be the first contract for MIT’s graduate workers.

Shift to Stipends Advocacy

09:10 Emily: Okay. Thank you so much for explaining that process to me. One other follow-up question. You said when the union at Hopkins was originally introduced as an idea, back in 2014, they had concerns about leave and about vision and dental insurance. But you mentioned that you’re now more focused on stipends. So, were those initial concerns like fulfilled in some way over the intervening years? And why are stipends the focus now?

09:36 Alex: Yeah, both great questions. Sort of to answer the first one, most of the things that TRU has been advocating for, eventually we were able to win. So, at this point, at least at the school of arts and sciences, vision and dental, they’re not perfect coverage. I don’t want to give the impression that it’s phenomenal, but they do have paid for health insurance, dental, and vision now, as well as parental leave at the Homewood campus. So, overall TRU has been relatively effective in terms of getting sort of these smaller asks dealt with, things that are relatively lower cost, and also things where Hopkins had sort of fallen behind many of its peers. One of the reasons this campaign on healthcare had been so successful is that, one, Hopkins is a world-renowned health provider and the hospital is literally attached to the university.

10:24 Alex: So, it was kind of a bad look that people weren’t getting the kind of healthcare coverage that they needed. But the other sort of major factor there is that other universities that Hopkins considers its peers had provided much better coverage than Hopkins was. That same sort of rationale is part of the reason why stipends have now come to the fore. If you look at Hopkins vis a vis some of its peers, one, of private universities, like private R1 universities, it has one of the lowest raw PhD stipends of almost any school. If you adjust for the local cost of living, it ranks basically in the bottom third regardless of division. So if you look at, you know, engineering, stipends versus medical students stipends versus like biomedical, I should say, biomedical PhD stipends, or social sciences, humanities stipends, more or less across the board, Hopkins ranks the bottom third.

11:16 Alex: The other sort of major reason why we’ve shifted to stipends, in addition to, again, this sort of increasing gap between Hopkins and its self-described peers, is that a lot of us have been hit very, very hard by the inflation post-pandemic. And many people were also affected financially by the time that they were trying to deal with the pandemic, whether that’s in terms of childcare, inability to use research funds that people had earmarked to go on research travel that couldn’t be deferred or delayed. In addition to basically just as soon as the pandemic was starting to change to the current moment we’re in, obviously the pandemic is not over, but we seem to have entered a new way of dealing with it from public health terms and in terms of the community. Since then, rents have skyrocketed, grocery prices skyrocketed. And because of that people, who used to feel a little more comfortable with their stipend here are really starting to feel pretty significant financial pressure.

12:16 Alex: So, the other reason that we really started to push for this at the school-wide level and university-wide level is because we’ve been hearing from many of our members that people are both feeling less able to pay their bills month to month, and are also becoming more and more financially precarious. Where if someone has an unexpected expense, like a major medical bill, or like last summer my car battery died and I had to replace all of my tires all at once. That thousand dollars was, was a pretty substantial hit for me. So, these are the kind of things that we’ve been concerned about, and this is why we’ve brought this to the administration. It’s something that really needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Departmental Advocacy

12:54 Emily: And you’ve been speaking about you know, school-wide and university-wide initiatives, but I understand that you’ve also been working just within your department on advocacy. And I really was happy to hear the example earlier of some, I guess, some success with advancing the benefits that are offered at Hopkins. Not even necessarily through unionization, but just through bringing awareness to it. And Hopkins realizing, as you said, it’s falling behind its peer institutions. So, you know, advocacy can be successful even before unionization is totally in effect or even without that being in effect. So, not that that’s not also worthwhile, but that’s a long process and there can still be wins along the way. So, I want to hear also from you about what you’ve been doing, like in your department, specifically.

13:39 Alex: Yeah. And I hundred percent agree. Like, you know, obviously I am a card-carrying union member. I, you know, really want us to have an election to have a contract, but one thing that’s important for people to know is that sort of just the gradual growth of pressure that accompanies unionization, where you’re sort of talking with your peers, gathering together, working as a group, is often enough to get small wins. Those wins aren’t necessarily protected because you have a contract, right? And those wins are not necessarily of the degree or magnitude that one would hope for in a contract. But there is something to be said for just doing the work initially will get you somewhere and you can just get further than with unionization. So, I think it’s definitely sort of a both-and situation, not an either-or kind of situation.

14:26 Alex: In terms of what we’ve done specifically in our department. One thing that initially brought stipends to our attention even before inflation started spiraling even more out of control, is I’m part of an interdivisional working group that brings together representatives from the student government associations, the recognized ones at the university, as well as the union, to sort of talk together to share information and to make sure that everyone’s on the same page about what advocacy issues are pressing to the community. And also sort of how then to mobilize both institutional channels, talking directly to the administration and sort of like more grassroots advocacy-style channels, more militant-style organizing. So, we were having one of these conversations and realized that apparently the School of Medicine as a whole has a minimum stipend that at that point was approximately $34,900 a year. At that time, folks in my department were making $30,500.

15:23 Alex: So, we were a little bit confused and concerned about the fact that we seemed to be making $4,000 roughly less than our peers while working in the same school and, you know, being under the same umbrella. And everything we saw online was indicating at least that this should have been an across the board minimum. So, we went to our department and asked basically why this discrepancy had appeared, or why this was the case, and didn’t get phenomenally helpful answers. And so we went then to speak with the Dean of the school, Peter Espenshade, who works on basically like graduate student affairs and graduate student research at the School of Medicine. And eventually what sort of came out is that our stipends in particular were tied to the stipend of the school of arts and sciences for a series of sort of complicated and frankly not super compelling <laugh> historical reasons.

16:18 Alex: So, this kind of got us to think more about the fact that, one, not only are all graduate students at Hopkins being underpaid relative to the local cost of living, but also there are significant and often sort of inexplicable disparities between programs and departments at the university. There really is no good reason why social science and humanities students are paid less than hard science students at the school of arts and sciences, and why those students are then paid less than the biomedical science students and the engineers at this university. And then at the very sort of bottom of the economic food chain here, people at the School of Education and people at the School of Public Health have even lower stipends. And at the School of Public Health, some students aren’t even guaranteed stipends at all. In which case they have to basically perform hourly work.

17:06 Alex: So, part of what this advocacy looked like was, you know, going through institutional channels, sort of talking to both sympathetic faculty and our department chair and our DGS. Then sort of like going to Dean Espenshade, being then redirected to the School of Arts and Sciences, where we were able to basically lobby successfully both folks from my department, as well as other members of TRU and other folks at the School of Arts and Sciences to get all of our stipends increased to $33,000. So, it’s a substantial raise, $2,500, at least for my department. But it’s also still not close to enough. The estimated cost of living for Baltimore as of this previous December is over $38,000, which means that even after this raise, we’re looking at a $5,000 shortfall.

TRU Study Comparing Stipends Across Institutions

17:51 Emily: Yeah. So, you can pump your arms and say, “Okay, great! Like good job, partial win here, but like, let’s keep on going. Like, people are listening to us.” And yeah, that’s great. Okay, well, let’s talk more about this study that you did. So, I found you because of something that you shared on Twitter that got a ton of traction. So, I wanted to talk to you more about it.

18:12 Alex: Yeah. So, essentially what I and some other folks from the TRU data and resource committee have spent some time doing was, one, trying to find basically stipend figures for particularly biomedical science and social science and humanities programs at a few sort of select institutions. And then comparing those stipends with the cost of living estimated by the MIT Living Wage Calculator for a given county. And then what we did is basically to calculate the raw difference between those things, and then to calculate basically the percentage of the living wage that a stipend would cover in those areas. Some first major results, then we could talk more about method and why we did this this way and not some other set of ways. One, we found that only two schools actually did meet or exceed the local cost of living out of the set that we used. Out of our sample, only Brown and Princeton actually exceeded the cost of living. Every other institution, including big names like UPenn, Yale, MIT, and Cornell as well as Harvard, Columbia, and others, were falling anywhere from about, you know, 98-99%, so close to local cost of living, all the way down to closer to like three-fourths, like 75% of the local cost of living.

19:34 Alex: And basically, our goal here was to demonstrate that stipends, while they have risen and have been rising, one, are not keeping up with inflation. So, even though a lot of these schools have been getting somewhat regular raises, the raises have not been enough, especially in recent years to cover that inflation. And that sort of given that the MIT Living Wage Calculator is really only supposed to cover bare essentials, not sort of the comfortable lifestyle, not, you know, it explicitly says in a technical documentation that it doesn’t account any eating out, basically no savings, you know, no travel. And some of those things, at least travel, often graduate students are expected to pay for out of pocket if they need to do it for their own work. Unless they’re able to get an external grant or have access to enough research money to cover things in full, which is pretty rare.

20:27 Alex: Given all of that, it was also important for us to note that the MIT Living Wage Calculator data is supposed to be sort of a minimum standard of living that is not the poverty line. As we all know, the poverty line in the U.S. has fallen well below what is even reasonably livable in basically any part of the country. And so, this is an alternative measure, and graduate students are consistently getting paid less than that sort of bare minimum standard of living.

20:53 Emily: Yes. I also point people to the Living Wage Calculator, which is an incredible resource. It covers every county and every major metro area in the country. So, you can look up, basically depending on your family size, how much this sort of, again, just to pay for basic expenses, I’m not talking about poverty level, but just basic expenses, basic housing, basic food, basic transportation, healthcare, these kinds of things, what it would cost for a single adult. That’s what I usually reference for graduate students. But there’s also like if you have a number of children or if you have a partner, et cetera. I love referencing this, especially for prospective graduate students who haven’t yet moved to the city that they’re going to be attending and haven’t yet experienced what the costs are. This is one way to give them kind of a touch point.

21:36 Emily: But as you said, what I also very much try to emphasize to them, and I don’t want the listener to miss this, is this is only talking about necessary expenses. There’s no saving included in this calculation. There are no discretionary expenses included. It’s just to run a baseline lifestyle. And as you said, not even those numbers are being met at the institutions that you studied. I do want to sort of reiterate, because I think this was maybe missed on Twitter, but like you were only looking at, it sounded like maybe a dozen different institutions. Private institutions, R1 institutions, maybe all in the Northeast to Mid-Atlantic. Is that right?

22:11 Alex: Not just Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, but only a handful of schools for other regions.

22:16 Emily: Yeah, so like, and I just sort of know from experience that the situation is worse at other places outside of private universities, outside of R1 universities. So, even this bleak picture is sort of like the best picture of the data that probably you could have selected.

Commercial

22:34 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! These action items are for you if you recently switched or will soon switch onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe in 2022 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is September 15, 2022. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives.

23:54 Emily: If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. Even better, recommend that your grad school, grad student association, postdoc office, etc. sponsor the workshop on behalf of yourself and your peers. I offer a discount on these bulk purchases. Please point the potential sponsor to PF for PhDs dot com slash sponsor Q E tax. Now back to our interview.

Resources for Comparing University Stipends

25:00 Emily: What I would love to talk more about right now is how you found the stipends. So, the Living Wage is very easy to work with, a calculator from MIT, but how did you find the stipends to compare it to at these different institutions?

25:13 Alex: Yeah, so it was not super easy. A lot of universities do not make their stipend data particularly public, which is one reason why we’ve also used data from your basically database of self-reported data, PhD Stipends, which is, you know, a great sort of way to get self-reported information about what people are making in different departments at different places. We found that when we were working with the administration to try and lobby for increased wages that self-reported data weren’t as compelling to them as having something where we could point to an official university communication. So, all the data that we’ve collected have been sourced directly from offer letters, from university websites, or from internal university correspondence. So, you know, announcements of raises, for example, that went out to a graduate student listserv.

26:04 Alex: This has its cost and benefits. On the bright side, what this means is that it’s very, very difficult or impossible for administrators or other folks who are sort of less willing to provide increased stipends to sort of just basically wave the results away as badly reported self-reported data, or as sort of potentially not being an accurate reflection of all the quote unquote benefits that accrue to a graduate student. On the flip side, it means that we were then very limited in the amount of data we were able to collect. We’re a small team, it’s about four or five of us who work on this. And all of us are obviously also full-time graduate students. So, this is kind of a spare hours what little free time we have kind of project.

26:51 Alex: And so, that’s part of the reason why, as you’d mentioned that we really limited ourselves to the schools that Hopkins like self-describes as its peer institutions, which means R1, private, mostly Northeast, right? Which also as you pointed out means that this data is looking at the schools that should in theory provide the best of the best in terms of stipends. And the data looks substantially worse if you start looking at schools that, and there are many of them, that pay closer to like $16,000 a year, in some cases, in large metro areas. So, things could be better <laugh>.

27:29 Emily: Yeah, I’m really glad you brought up, like, so my website, my database PhDStipends.com. I say mine, but I just put it up. People can use it how they want, they can enter what they want into it, because it’s, as you said, it’s all crowdsourced and self-reported. We have thought about different ways to sort of verify like what people are reporting, the way that you’ve done for your study. But as you said, it’s very labor-intensive, and you’re asking people to give up very personal information. In my case, to an anonymous website, which is like out there and what protections do they have, you know? So, I think it really does, these are like complimentary approaches, I think. Because PhD Stipends can give you kind of a starting point. And that’s all it’s really meant to be, is like the more people use it, the more people enter, the clearer the picture gets. Yeah, you’re going to have some people write in typos or like people who are clearly making things up, but it’s a starting point. And you’ve, you know, jumped off from that point and done much more in-depth verification, which is wonderful.

28:23 Emily: But as you said, the data set only get so big when you go that route because it takes so much willingness on the part of the participants to let you have access to this information and then for the volunteers to verify it. So, I love that approach you took, and I know there are some other people working, you know, with similar approaches at different universities and different fields around the country. It’s all great work. And I love it. And that’s why I wanted to have you on to talk about this, but yes, I totally can understand. Some people do use PhD Stipends for advocacy work, but I think it’s, as I was just saying, a starting point rather than like the end all be all of what the data can be.

Stipend vs. Living Wage Patterns

29:00 Emily: Are there any other patterns that you want to share with us when you were doing the study regarding the stipends versus living wage?

29:08 Alex: Sure. So, one other thing that we’ve tried to do, and this is still sort of in the early stages, we’ve only gotten a few schools’ data collected so far for this, but we’re also trying to compile some longitudinal data. So, the table at the beginning of the Twitter thread and things that I think, you know, PhD Stipends sort of attempts to do is basically primarily to give like a one year snapshot. Like this is kind of like where things were in this single year without sort of then trying to do the detailed work of trying to figure out exactly what that means when you start accounting for inflation or especially inflation and cost of living in the local area. But one thing that we’ve been trying to do with the data set is now to compile using sort of both either sort of synchronic pictures at different moments of what the MIT data look like, or using right now, we’ve just basically been using data from the consumer price index to look at inflation over time and then tracking the stipends backwards for about five to six years.

30:03 Alex: What we have been noticing is that for almost all these schools, if you look at the, at the four, five-year trend, the overall real wage is declined. So, not only is the situation now that stipends are below the local cost of living, but in fact, we were making more in real terms five years ago than we are now. So, a lot of schools have been sort of touting the fact that they have increased stipends or are trying to increase stipends either, you know, a couple years back, or even now in response to inflation, but we still haven’t even recouped the amount that we’ve lost over the last few years, let alone actually gotten to the point where graduate students are making a livable wage. So, that’s another major trend. This long-term decline is something that we want to do more research on and sort of see how consistent it is, and also try and assess this magnitude in a more systematic way.

Effect of Unionization on History of Stipends

30:53 Emily: Yes. Wow. I guess also another question that I have, and I don’t know if you’ve looked into this at all, is to see what effect unionization and unionization movements have had on that history of stipends, because I would guess that, at the point when a union contract is first ratified, there’s probably going to be a substantial jump in at least some of the stipends at these universities. Maybe they’ve been falling behind in recent years and that jump helps catch them up a little bit, but it may be these sort of not gradual changes, but very abrupt changes when certain outside circumstances like that occur.

31:29 Alex: Yeah. I mean, I think what I’ve noticed from schools that have recently gotten contracts or have been, you know, in the process of getting contracts for a few years is, typically, if you look at the year when the contract is ratified, even if it doesn’t bring them up into sort of like the absolute upper echelon of schools in terms of the pay given to graduate workers, in many cases, because there’s been a many-year delay that added to the pressure that led to the unionization campaign to begin with. A lot of those schools have a very substantial percentage raise. So, if you look at the stipend table that was on the Twitter thread, you’ll notice that Columbia is near the very bottom in terms of relation to local cost of living.

32:08 Alex: Columbia would be even further behind, like closer to, at the moment, humanities and social science programs there are paid about 75% of the cost of living for New York. Without the most recent raise, which was substantial, I think like a 10% raise or something along those lines, you’d be looking at closer to like 68%. So, it’s important to note, when sort of interpreting the effect of unionization, yeah, there are some schools like Brown. Brown is the best-paid program relative to cost of living in the country. And a big part of that is the fact that they have a very strong militant union that has done a lot of great work. But even for schools that you might turn around and say like, well, how is it then that Harvard and Columbia, which have unions, don’t rank higher? There, it’s just a factor of 1) that the cost of living in Boston and New York is so high, and 2) that they actually are getting raises that are outpacing the annual raise of other places, but because they were so far behind to begin with, those additional raises or that super added raise is only just bringing them sort of further out of the gutter, so to speak, not necessarily actually again, launching them into an above cost of living style wage.

33:18 Alex: So, those are the things I would sort of initially note. I guess the last thing I would say about this is that one other effect that we’ve seen that’s happened a lot in unionized schools that is really important is that wages tend to get standardized across the school. And what that actually means in practice is that the folks at the lowest end of the income scale get pulled up to the highest. I’ve heard concerns or rumors that graduate students are afraid that if a union contract passes that wages will “meet in the middle.” That has literally never happened in a graduate student unionization campaign. In all cases, what’s basically happened is, if schools of public health or humanities and social science students at the bottom end of the income scale, they get boosted either all the way up to where the hard science students are, or get boosted up to some arbitrarily set lower level. And we can talk more about the fact that hard science students are consistently paid more than humanities and social science students, and more than public health students. But regardless, the effect is raises for everybody, but really big raises for folks who are at the bottom.

Consideration of Non-Employee Stipends

34:23 Emily: Yeah. So good to hear. Very, very reassuring for anyone who has that concern, or like heard that rumor or anything. Something that has always interested me about these let’s say the stipends that universities claim that they pay their students, or like announcing, okay, everyone in this school is now going to be paid this baseline stipend, is that I believe it’s focused on people who have assistantships, usually. Because they are the employees of the university and that’s where the best and most consistent data comes from. But as you well know, there are many, many, many graduate students who are funded, not because of assistantships or employee positions, but through fellowships or training grants or other non-employee sources of funding. My understanding is that technically, if a union does come into place those people would not officially be part of the union when they have those types of positions, because they’re not employees, and unions are just for employees. But I think at some universities, they found a way to sort of include people who are non-employee graduate students in some of the benefits that may come about with a contract, like, you know, better health insurance, for example. Did you consider these non-employee stipends in your study at all? Or do you have any comments about how they might or might not be included in like these advocacy pushes?

35:43 Alex: Absolutely. So, it is a complicated question, sort of how external fellowships are factored into a bargaining unit effectively. Or how they would be folded or not folded into a filing union. One thing to keep in mind is that basically, if any of your revenue or any of your income is being given by the university, it doesn’t matter if you have an external fellowship, really. That seems to be the consensus that we’ve seen from previous cases. So, for a lot of training grants, especially at places like Hopkins, almost all graduate students are paid above the NRSA rate, which is basically the NIH training grant stipend level, which I think for this coming year is somewhere on the ballpark of $26,000, roughly.

36:27 Alex: At Hopkins, because most people on those grants are then paid a super added stipend on top of that to basically get them up to the School of Medicine level, we have a bunch of people who are on external money who actually would be a part of a final bargaining unit. And at least in our case, when we’re looking at School of Medicine stipends, they’re sort of equivalent across the board. There are places and there are some grants where that’s not the case, right? One of them is the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program. Depending on what institution you’re at and how much money that’s valued at, in many cases that will come out to above whatever the university’s pay is. So, in those cases, many times during NLRB elections, those folks have been excluded, and actually they were recently excluded in the MIT election.

37:18 Alex: One thing that’s important to keep in mind, as you already indicated though, is that if we’re able to push for higher stipends for everybody, right? Then ideally <laugh> we’ll be able to push things above the GRFP rate, and/or make sure to apply external pressure to the GRFP so that it pays better as well. And obviously, our benefits are not often given through the external fellowships. Things like the healthcare access to library resources, additional research funds that are not controlled by a granting agency but are coming from your department from your institution, are still things that we can lobby for. Another thing that we’ve been pushing for at the School of Medicine that’s sort of along the same lines is to provide relocation funds for folks who are moving from other states or overseas to Baltimore.

38:05 Alex: So, those types of benefits, even if we can’t necessarily include someone explicitly in a contract, those benefits that apply to all graduate students enrolled in the program would sort of directly accrue even to those who are not sort of an official part of the bargaining unit and therefore sort of attached directly to stipend benefits. So, these are other things to consider when we’re talking about a unionization contract, we’re talking about benefits as we’ve already sort of been indicating. Stipends are one indicator and are, I think, the most important indicator, but things like healthcare coverage, access to research money, relocation money, things like childcare support. These are all also really important aspects of thinking about what a graduate student needs to survive and also sort of what is and is not made available by their institutions.

Look-Back Formula for Voting

38:58 Emily: Would someone who is, at the moment, not considered an employee of the university be able to sign a union card or vote on a contract? I ask this because at other points in their career as a graduate student, they may be an employee, and it may, you know, very well affect them at that point. But maybe at the moment those things are happening they’re not an employee. How does that work out?

39:20 Alex: Yeah, that’s another complicated question. The NLRB clearly does not think first and foremost of graduate students when they’re coming up with their policies, but they do actually have a workaround for this. The NLRB has something called a look-back formula. So, if you’re a graduate student who goes on and off of external fellowships, for example. So, just as a personal note, right? This spring I’ve been off of department funding. I’ve been using money from the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the School of Public Health. It’s internal to Hopkins, but it’s an external grant funded by the CDC. But for that period, I am not a W2 employee with Hopkins, right? When I’m teaching, I am. But when I’ve been on this fellowship and when I’ve been on, Hopkins provides to graduates in my department basically two years of what’s called fellowship funding, which essentially is just, you know, you’re paid without any TA or assistantship work requirements.

40:23 Alex: Obviously, we’re still working, right? We’re applying for grants, we’re still publishing papers, we’re going to conferences. We’re doing everything except for the teaching or assistantship stuff. So, I always find it a little funny that it’s called a fellowship as if it’s not work. We are actually still doing work, just different work, right? But the point being that, for folks who move on and off of different kinds of funding what the NLRB will say is like over the last, you know, two years or something, were you at any point being paid directly by the university? Especially if it was a W2 employee. And if the answer is yes during any of that period, you are eligible at that point to vote in the election. So, the other thing to, I guess, keep in mind along those lines is that, even if you’re technically receiving fellowship income from the university, so not from NSF or NIH or somewhere else, we’re pretty confident at this point, and again, the legal aspects of this are a little murky, but we’re pretty confident that for all those graduate students, they also count even if they’re not receiving a W2 and even if they’re not TAs or RAs in the same way that other people are. So, basically, if your paycheck is coming from the university, you can be pretty sure, or part of your paychecks coming from the university, you can be pretty sure you’d be included in the final bargaining unit.

41:40 Emily: It’s very interesting. I had not heard that update yet. So, I’m really glad that the NLRB has been examining the special case of graduate students to kind of figure out how to handle those. Because it is so common to switch on and off of external or internal or whatever, you know, employee, non-employee kind of statuses.

Best Practices for Advocacy

41:56 Emily: So, as like kind of takeaway messages for the listener, are there particular best practices that you have identified or put in place with respect to advocacy that you’d like to share with other graduate students, et cetera, who are trying to do the same on their campuses?

42:12 Alex: Yeah, I think one thing is, as we were talking about earlier, to be a little bit agnostic about sort of what approaches work. You know, you should try to talk to faculty, you should try to talk to the administration. Institutional channels sometimes will get the job done, right? However, that’s not always going to be the case. And especially when it’s something as dicey as stipends, where universities, many of them, I won’t say Hopkins is one, right? But many universities are relatively cash-strapped right now and are sort of deeply concerned about sort of their futures and how much money they have. And in situations like that, often, even if there is money out there to basically increase graduate student stipends or priorities need to be reshuffled at the level of the university budget, really the only way to do it is going to be talk to your colleagues. If you can, try to unionize and sort of work together.

43:00 Alex: I think the main thing that’s essential to both kinds of advocacy, whether you’re doing it within the institutional channels or outside of them, or some combination, is that graduate students really have to work together. You know, obviously faculty can be supportive, undergraduates can be supportive, administrators can be supportive, right? But ultimately, like our ability to get what we need as adults and as employees of these universities done is contingent on what kind of pressure we are able to bring to bear. And what data we’re able to bring to bear. And the data are only a starting point, right? They provide the talking points you need, they provide the evidence you need, they provide the ability to do the negotiations, right? But ultimately, we will succeed or fail collectively. And we will succeed or fail on the base of our ability to sort of band together to demand what we rightfully deserve.

43:48 Emily: Very strong message. Thank you.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

43:50 Emily: Alex, thank you so much for this incredible interview! It’s been wonderful to have you on. Glad to hear about all the wonderful work that you and your colleagues are doing. I’d like to finish up by asking you the question that I ask of all my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve already touched on in the interview, or it could be something completely new.

44:12 Alex: I guess I would say to prospective students to, you know, choose wisely. Even a funded PhD does not mean that you’ll be really making the kind of money you’d be making without doing the PhD. So, you know, I think just having your eyes open about both what it means in terms of your financial future to get a PhD is important. And also, you know, also being aware that in some fields, a PhD will significantly improve your earnings potential and in others, it might not. And in some cases, it can even sort of be, frankly, a pathway to downward economic mobility. So, just think very carefully before doing a PhD.

44:53 Alex: For those who have already committed to it. And, you know, I don’t regret my PhD at all. I’ve found this a very intellectually rewarding experience and have really appreciated the chance I’ve had to both do my own research and to work with others, both on, you know history of medicine topics, but also on things like unionization. I’d say the big thing is join your union if there is one, and make sure again, to work with your colleagues. Figure out what people need to get through this degree. It’s a long slog, and it’s a very, very difficult job. But I’d say, you know, get together with your colleagues, make sure that you know, what you need and what they need, and do whatever you can to work together to achieve it.

45:33 Emily: Thank you so much, Alex, for joining me!

45:35 Alex: Thank you. That was really a pleasure!

Outtro

45:42 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? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to 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 Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

The Necessity of Both Economic Justice Advocacy and Personal Financial Responsibility

May 25, 2020 by Lourdes Bobbio

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Ian Gutierrez, a PhD in clinical psychology and former union leader at the University of Connecticut. While in graduate school, Ian served on the bargaining committee for the newly formed graduate student union, and viewed a higher income as the solution to his personal finance challenges. During his internship year, despite earning about what he had as a graduate student, Ian challenged himself to live within his means and pay down his previously accumulated debt and in the process reformed his practice financial attitudes and practices. At the end of the episode, Ian and Emily discuss the importance of both advocating for economic justice and, to the extent possible, having good personal finance practices.

Links Mentioned

  • Find Dr. Ian Gutierrez on Twitter
  • Related Episode: Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Choose a PhD Program That Will Support Your Personal and Professional Development
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Financial Coaching
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Podcast Hub
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grad student union

Teaser

00:00 Ian: It was about at that time when all of the failings of my financial planning became extremely evident. Suddenly I realized that I had to live within my means, which was sort of embarrassing to say 29 or 30 year old.

Introduction

00:23 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season six, episode four, and today my guest is Dr. Ian Gutierrez, a PhD in clinical psychology and former union leader at the university of Connecticut. While in graduate school, Ian served on the bargaining committee for the newly formed graduate student union and viewed a higher income as a solution to his personal finance challenges. During his internship year, despite earning about what he had as a graduate student, Ian challenged himself to live within his means and pay down his previously accumulated debt. And in the process reformed his financial attitudes and practices. At the end of the episode, Ian and I discuss the importance of both advocating for economic justice, and, to the extent possible, having good personal finance practices. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Ian Gutierrez.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:23 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Ian Gutierrez, and Ian and I first connected actually when I was looking for guests for my “Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise” episode that came out season five, episode two. That was the one that was a compilation episode, with a lot of people and had a couple of guests talking about unions. Ian and I connected and we had such a great conversation that I was like, “Can we just have a whole episode, just your own interview instead of trying to cram all you have to say into just this little tiny spot. So that’s how this episode came about. So Ian, will you please introduce yourself a little bit further to the audience?

02:01 Ian: Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the podcast. This is very exciting for me. My name is Ian Gutierrez. I have a BFA from New York University in recorded music, which was actually my first love. And then I got my Master’s degree in psychology from the New School, prior to becoming a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut, where I was enrolled from 2012 to 2018 when I defended my dissertation. So I now hold a PhD in clinical psychology from UConn. Shortly following the completion of my clinical training at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, I was very briefly a postdoctoral fellow at the Uniform Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. And I am currently a research psychologist with Tech Works LLC in the Washington DC area, where I conduct psychological research on mental health and resilience in support of our nation’s service members.

The Intricacies of Unionization for Graduate Employees

03:03 Emily: It sounds like a fascinating career path, something that would be great to explore at another time, but we’re actually going to go back to your graduate school days at UConn. And of course you were involved at that time with the union. Can you talk a little bit about what the climate was UConn at that time and why you got involved with the union movement?

Impetus for the Union

03:22 Ian: Sure, absolutely. I would actually say, first and foremost that it was one of the best parts of my graduate school experience was being involved with the graduate student unionizing effort. I often tell people that the experience that I had negotiating our first contract after we unionized was one of the best classes I ever took in graduate school. I first got involved with the unionizing effort in 2013. I was serving on our university’s graduate student government, and at the time the university was moving, or attempting to move graduate students over from a state-based employee health insurance plan into a student health insurance plan. Some people call it a SHIP. And bottom line was that we were getting worse health coverage for a higher price. Within the graduate student government we tried to advocate as best we could, but parallel to that, a number of other students thought that maybe unionizing was the way to go.

04:37 Ian: Now, personally, I grew up in a union family. All of my parents are union members in the theater business, actually. So that naturally struck me as the far more effective way to go about advocating for what we needed. I joined the organizing committee for our nascent union at the time and we, after interviewing a number of international unions, where you talk to the Communication Workers of America, Service Employees International Union, AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, we ultimately decided to organized with the United Auto Workers, which had had a lot of success in the area, unionizing graduate students, for instance, just up the road at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. So we organized our union in 2013 we ran a membership drive, a card counting campaign, to get legal recognition for our union, and that it was a very successful campaign. Very exciting. The state of Connecticut recognized our union in April of 2014, and from that point we moved into the bargaining process with the university administration. At that point, ran to be one of the six members of the bargaining committee, and then over the course of the following year from starting about August of 2014, up until June of 2015, we met with the university administration, I don’t remember exactly, a dozen times, maybe more, as we negotiated our first contract. We were fortunate enough to successfully negotiate our first contract with the union in 2015.

Issues at Play in Union Negotiations

06:29 Emily: Thank you so much for giving that context. I’m wondering when you, when you went into negotiate that first contract, was it mainly the health insurance issue that you all were focusing on, or were there some other issues that also came into play?

06:42 Ian: When we went into negotiating our contract with the administration, of course health insurance was a major issue for graduate students. Of course, it wasn’t the only one. I think actually the university was quite surprised by the litany of issues that we brought up and the many things that we wanted to negotiate over. Healthcare, in the end, turned out to be a remarkably, I won’t go so far as to say easy, but there was a very equitable solution that we were able to come to. In this particular case, the state of Connecticut had what they called the Connecticut Partnership Plan, where the state would work with local governments to work out affordable health care plans for local employees, and so that provided a very nice rubric that could be applied to graduate employees at the university.

07:39 Ian: But that was again, not the only issue that we covered. I think the biggest issues that really came up for us were fee waivers, and then a lot of the rights and protections for the union itself. One of the major differences from being a graduate employee who’s not unionized to being graduate employee who is unionized is that there’s a clear grievance procedure, which in my opinion is actually one of the strongest components, one of the most important components of being unionized as an employee anywhere, is that there’s some kind of legal recourse when something comes up in the workplace, and there’s very clear rules about who to go to, who to raise the issue with, and how the difference can be resolved.

08:34 Ian: But second to that, of course money talks, right? Fee waivers for us was, I very clearly remember, was sort of the last issue that we negotiated over it at some great length and turned out to be the hardest thing for us to come to an agreement on. We ended up coming to a resolution where, what the university called it’s infrastructure fee, which was a $460 per year fee, ended up being waived for graduate assistants. And then the university provided GAs with a hundred dollar credit every year, that ramped up by a few dollars over the course of the contract, to help offset the cost of fees. So those were some of the major issues that came up. I think that barely scratches the surface and certainly we could talk for a long time about the, the 30 to 40 provisions in the contract, but healthcare, tuition and fees, and a grievance procedure where, I think, some of the biggest issues that we really cared about.

09:45 Emily: Yeah, I think all of those are also really common ones to come up in these negotiations across many universities. And I really appreciate your point about the grievance procedure being one of the most important components because it is like the wild west out there in academia. I mean, there’s all these power structures and imbalances and just lack of clarity, and so that actually sounds really great that you would have that in place after that point. Something I wanted to ask you about is from your position at the bargaining table, how did you come to understand that the university, or at least that university, that administration, the people who you were talking with, how did you understand that they viewed graduate students and especially around their financial issues?

Grad Students vs. the Administration

10:27 Ian: Yeah, really interesting question. That to me was one of the more shocking components of the experience. You know, university administrators talk a lot about how important students are to the university, and will say things about how the student body is the lifeblood of the university and the reason that it exists, of course, and there’s a whole political rhetoric around the way in which administrators talk about students. And I think a lot of that comes primarily from their dealings, especially with undergrad, what the undergraduate population, where things are a little bit cleaner. Undergraduates are the public consumers of the education that the university is providing. And they also make up the majority of the student body at almost almost any university.

11:20 Ian: With graduate students, it’s a little bit more complicated because on the one hand graduate students are students. We are receiving an education, but in our roles as research assistants, teaching assistants, graduate assistants, generally, we’re also employees. So things get a lot murkier there and they’re very comfortable talking about us as students. They’re much less comfortable talking about us as employees and at the bargaining table where we’re really presenting fully and in that context only as employees, a lot of that kumbaya rhetoric about us being students really falls away remarkably quickly.

12:03 Ian: At the same time there’s a lot of nostalgia that comes up for a lot of these administrators because most of them, not all of them, but most of them, were graduate students at one point, too, but a lot of their touchstones to what the graduate student experience was like, is what it was like in the sixties, seventies, the eighties, the nineties. And they were looking at a much different financial picture then, than graduate students are looking at now. Not only that, but the demographic of graduate students has in many cases shifted pretty dramatically as well. So it’s not like you’re getting…I mean, who’s ever heard, nowadays of somebody getting out of school through PhD at the age of 24 or 25. Impossible? No, but pretty rare. A lot of folks are getting their PhDs, I know at least in clinical psychology, the average age is about 31. So we’re talking about folks who might already have kids, maybe elderly parents to care for, potentially. Possibly chronic health problems.

13:08 Ian: We’re looking at a much different, a much more complicated picture of who we are, and for the administrators to come to the table and understand who we are, I think was a leap for them, in as much, to be perfectly frank as it was for us to understand the complicated financial picture that the university has to deal with. And I want to be clear in saying that, well certainly there are many acrimonious relationships between graduate employees and administrators at many institutions. I actually came away from the process being more proud of being a graduate of the University of Connecticut, because I think that, while we didn’t always see eye to eye, the administration was really fair in their dealings with us, and I think that we returned that to them in kind. It was certainly a learning experience for us, and I like to think of what’s a learning experience for them as well.

14:11 Emily: So fascinating. Thank you so much for adding that. And I am glad to hear that it wasn’t totally an adversarial relationship there at the table. I actually thought you might’ve been going in a little bit of a different direction when you mentioned the shifting demographics of current graduate students versus maybe some decades ago. Because I’m thinking about more like first generation students getting to graduate school and earning their PhDs. Also people who don’t necessarily come from families that can provide them financial support in the case of an emergency or just on an ongoing basis. I don’t know the stats on this, but I would assume that’s more common now than it was some decades ago, as you know, diversified who’s earning a PhD, which is a great thing, but it certainly comes with different sets of issues and problems then maybe people who got their PhDs some decades ago were facing

14:59 Ian: Just to jump in on that point, I think it’s also really important and one of the other really key components of what makes me proud to have been a part of that union too, was the union’s strong focus on diversity and representation. I understand full well that as a white man, receiving a PhD at a university that I come to the table with a lot of privilege and a voice that some other people might not have. But one of the things that really struck me in the way that our union organized is that the people who in my personal view really made it happen were the student employees of color, and the women who were in our organizing campaign. And it was really actually two women in particular who really made our union possible, and in many ways, to the extent that I was a part of it, I think I sort of rode on their coattails. And when we were negotiating at the table, equal protection policies for our students who might have green cards, or students of color, making sure that there was bathroom access for the trans community at the university — all of these things were a very large component of what our union was about. And I’m very proud of that.

Commercial

16:35 Emily: Hey, social distancers, Emily here. I hope you’re doing okay. It took a few weeks, but I think I have my bearings about me in my new normal. There is a lot of uncertainty and fear right now about our public and personal health and our economy. I would like to help you feel more secure in your personal finances and plan and prepare for whatever financial future may come. You can schedule a free 15 minute call with me at PFforPhDs.com/coaching to determine if financial coaching with me is right for you at this time, I hope you will reach out, if only to speak with someone new for a few minutes. Take care. Now back to our interview.

Personal Finances in Grad School in Relation to Unionization

17:21 Emily: Okay, so you’re in graduate school, you’re at the bargaining table, you’re working for better benefits, better processes, higher stipends, fee waivers and so forth. That’s one aspect of personal finance, right? What income is coming in, what your benefits are and so forth. What was going on with you? How were you handling the money that you actually received at that time?

17:43 Ian: Oh man. I would say that despite my heavy involvement in the union, I would mostly describe my practice for personal finance in graduate school as primarily relying on some degree of magical thinking. I didn’t really have a theory of the case regarding my personal finances really in any sense. I had a big picture sense that “more money, good, less money, bad,” but I never had any kind of robust plan on how I was going to move away from debt and towards wealth. I think the implicit thought process that I had was, well, I’m a graduate student and I’m poor and I’m in debt now, and somehow it all kind of come out in the wash after I get my degree and get a real job.

18:40 Emily: I think that’s super common. That sentiment is everywhere in graduate training.

18:47 Ian: And for me, even thinking about personal finances, a component of my life was…I engaged in a lot of avoidance around my own money management. And I think, as I have read into more financial guidance, you know, your Dave Ramsey or your Suze Orman’s or whoever — where do they start? They always start with, in a budget you want to first take a look at how much money you think you have coming in every month. Well, personally, speaking personally about my family background, my family worked in theater and even though you might be a part of a union, how much money you’re making in a month, you don’t know how much money you’re necessarily making in the next week or two weeks. You don’t know when your paycheck is coming and when it comes, you don’t necessarily have the best idea of how large it’s going to be. I never really had a financial budget education from my family background. But then sort of even more strikingly, I never had it in high school. I never had it in college. I never had it in graduate school. I just never had it, which, for being a pretty well educated person, still kind of leaves me. floored. Talking about money, it was almost like talking about sex. It was like everywhere and defining the culture, but you couldn’t actually get a grasp on what was going on.

20:34 Emily: That’s a great analogy.

20:34 Ian: Really striking. I think it really is because money is so personal and it’s such a component of who we are that we all have a lot of the feelings — good, bad, otherwise — around what it says about who we are and our understanding of what our life is and where our lives are going. Long story short, I just really engaged in a lot of avoidance around it, and I also think that part of the way that my own income from graduate school was structured led me into some poor practices as well. For one example, I received half of my income from a GA stipend that I received every two weeks, like a paycheck, but then the other part of my income I received from a fellowship check, which came in these two big checks every year. What it sort of led me to believe was that, well, as an adult, twice a year, you’re just going to received this huge windfall, so I can just spend up a lot of money on a credit card, and, well, no big deal because I’m going to get this big windfall every August and every January. Come to find out, at the end of this golden brick road, that’s actually not what happens in the course of typical adult living. Suddenly, after graduate school, I had this student debt and the cavalry’s not charging over the hill anymore.

22:18 Emily: That’s so interesting. I haven’t interviewed anyone before who’s spoken about the pay frequency, which I mean what you described as maybe a little bit unusual, but there’s plenty of people who deal with a couple of times per year, big checks coming in, or maybe just a pay frequency that they were unfamiliar with, like monthly instead of biweekly, or just any kind of shift. It’s interesting just to hear how that impacted actually the way that you handled your money. Of course there are many budgeting techniques to deal with this and that’s a conversation with me for another time. But I’m really curious now to hear about what actually caused you to change these attitudes in this behavior. Was it getting out of graduate school and realizing that you had a steady paycheck and it wasn’t ever going to be these windfalls? What was your motivation to start exploring the subject area?

23:05 Ian: Well, the one thing that I did decide, and this is a little bit particular to the way that graduate education is structured in clinical psychology, is that if you’re pursuing a doctorate in clinical or counseling or school psychology, you have to complete a year long internship. Most people move for this year long internship and the internship pays a stipend that is roughly similar to what you would get paid as a graduate assistant, depending on locale. It’s anywhere from $20 to $30 grand a year. When I made this move, I knew that I wasn’t going to be enrolled in enough course credits to access loans and I can either fork up a bunch of money to take on six credit hours or whatever it was, so that I could have access to student loans, or I could not sign up for those credit hours and not be eligible for loans.

24:03 Ian: I chose to not sign up for the credit hours and not be eligible for loans. I sort of took the cold turkey approach to student loans. And it was about at that time when all of the failings of my financial planning became extremely evident, because now I wasn’t receiving my windfall fellowship twice a year and I had cut myself off from student loans and a lot of my credit card balances were fairly high. Suddenly I realized that I had to live within my means, which is sort of embarrassing to say as a 29 or 30 year old, but that’s part of the reason I’m here on the podcast saying it, is because I know that my assumption in life is that if it’s affecting me, it’s probably affecting someone else. I can only imagine that there is a silent, I don’t know that it’s a majority, but a silent plurality, of current or former graduate students out there who have also suddenly realized at the ripe age of 30, that they know nothing about financial planning, have been behaving, you know, somewhat irresponsibly, and now they’re in a bad situation.

25:26 Ian: I never really took myself as someone who lived wildly outside of my means. I bought and paid off and used car and sure, my wife and I would go out dinner from time to time, but I wasn’t living the high life by any stretch of the imagination. And yet still, after all of that, I realized that I just didn’t have any scheme for how I was going to manage any of this. To keep on with the language of addiction, and there’s certainly many parallels to be drawn between credit cards and addiction, to be sure, I had sort of hit a rock bottom, where I suddenly realized that I need to come up with a plan, not only so I can pay this stuff off, but so that I can build and save for the future.

26:20 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that because I think you’re absolutely right that many people are waking up at some time or another to realize that in the same way that you did. So first of all, average American kind of thing, a lot of people don’t live within their means or they do in some aspects of their budgeting and they don’t in other. Like they are racking up credit card debt and then occasionally will pay it down, and there’s this cycle there. That’s pretty common. But I think that the graduate student experience sort of exacerbates that mentality. I think academia tells us that well, while you’re a graduate student, even to some extent while you’re a postdoc, you’re excused from the general financial responsibility that you might feel at another stage or at another time in life because well, you know that your pay is going to be low and so what expectations can you really have of yourself when your pay is so low. That’s one aspect of it. The other one is, as you mentioned, the access to student loans, which I think that if people aren’t necessarily using them, they may kind of forget that they do have access to them all the way through graduate school really. But it is there as a backstop, as a good decision or as a bad decision to take it out. You really are given an out all through graduate school that you don’t have to live within your means, unless you choose to, because the culture is telling you you don’t have to do, you have student loans there if you need to take them out. It kind of just contributes to that overall problems. I definitely don’t think you are at all alone.

27:46 Emily: I really think about myself going into graduate school. I very intentionally told myself I’m going to live within my means. And I actually thought about it that way at that time, for various reasons. But that was partially because I had a break between undergrad and grad school, where I had to live within my means. I didn’t have access to student loans, and so it was like, okay, I’m just going to carry forward into my graduate degree with what I learned when I was out of school. But if you don’t have the same attitudes that I do or didn’t have exposure to the same stuff, or you went continuously from college to graduate school, you may not have had the wherewithal to even think about it that way.

Personal Finances After Grad School

28:22 Emily: Okay, you’re getting into your internship year, you don’t have access to the loans, you have the high credit card balances, you’re realizing you actually have to live within the paycheck — what did you do? How did the story evolve?

28:36 Ian: Well, let’s see. I would say that I didn’t start by coping with it in a very…I mean, despite my training in clinical psychology, I want to say that I dealt with it like in a very logical or sensible way. I think mostly I felt terrified, and then anxious, and then afraid, and then hopeless, and then angry, and I cycled through all of this stuff. That was my first reaction, and of course none of that was really particularly helpful. Eventually, I took out a Dave Ramsey book from the library. And I would say that I have mixed feelings about his guidance. I certainly have mixed feelings about prosperity gospel, for sure. But I think the basics, like the super, super basics of what he, or I mean really anyone — him, or Suze Orman, Gaby Dunn — any of these folks out out there, is that the 101 clearly gets you on the right path of figuring out how much money you have coming in every month, determining your expenses, and figuring out what you need to do to balance that equation. There were some other components that I found particularly helpful, where my feeling was, I had heard about this thing called debt snowballing with credit cards and I knew that I wanted to do that, but reading, at least based on Dave Ramsey’s recommendation, that if your finances are really a hotness, which that’s me, the first thing you want to do is save $1000. Save enough money so you have some kind of stop gap if car breaks or unexpected medical bill or what have you.

30:41 Ian: I think that’s what really got me started with it, but I do also want to say that what also got me started with it was after graduate school, having an income that gave me enough hope that I could pay down some of these debts, which I think brings me sort of full circle to a point of balance in my own way of thinking about finances, where I personally believe that true financial responsibility is not just about managing your own finances, but also advocating for greater economic justice. That they’re not separate. Blaming all of your financial problems on the world and the way it is, is not the healthiest way to look at things. Viewing your finances as a personal responsibility that you, yourself need to carry like Atlas to the end of time, come hell or high water, no matter what else is going on out in the world, I also don’t think it’s particularly healthy.

31:52 Ian: There needs to be a balance where we can say to ourselves that the world can be a cruel and unfair place. We have to do whatever it is that we can to live a financially healthy life now, while advocating and fighting for a better future for ourselves and for our children. Even in sort of tying it back to my time in the graduate students union, if I have two legacies that that I left at university of Connecticut, one is my dissertation, which is going to metaphorically collect dust on a server, because the likelihood that anybody will read it except for figuring out how to format own dissertation is pretty low. But the legacy of knowing that we have left, that I and all of the other students who worked together, hand-in-hand, to create a union so that future students could have a more prosperous future while they were in graduate school, that’s something that I can really look back on with pride. I think coming to that sort of healthy balance for me is where I’m currently at in my own thinking about financial health.

33:15 Emily: Yeah, thank you so much for that articulation, that was absolutely fascinating. And I think I also am going on a similar journey to come to the same place, but starting from the opposite side of, okay, just keep your head down, focus on your own business, and not necessarily look up at the wider picture as much. I’m sort of emerging from that viewpoint. Thanks to a lot of these interviews that I’m doing through the podcast, it’s been really a big growth experience for me.

33:45 Emily: What I wanted to ask you about though is in coming to that healthy place of being able to do both of these things, what you think about the idea of the necessity of having your own personal finances in the best shape that they can be in as enabling you to go out and do that good work in the world and advocate for others. I won’t say it’s impossible to do the latter without the former, but I think if you come from an area of personal strength, that it just further enables you to do that work. What do you think about that?

34:17 Ian: I like that idea. I think it resonates with this idea that to help others you need to help yourself, like on the airplane where you’ve got to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you help somebody who’s sitting next to you. I think that that can be true. I don’t think that one needs to preceed the other, however. I think that it’s important that we have a broader conversation, both within higher education, but within society as a whole, about the relationship between economic justice and the economic structures that we’re embedded in, and our own personal financial health. I think, actually, that unions could be a really nice and really good nexus at which students can find that, because at least to me, if a university administrator who’s making $200,000, $300,000 a year comes and lectures me about financial responsibility, my response is not going to be, Thank you, I appreciate that. As a graduate student, my response to that would be, go take a hike, to put it politely.

35:46 Ian: However, I think if unions can sell this idea that a stronger union, a more just economic society is one in which its advocates and its members and its stakeholders are able to responsibly manage their own finances, I think that’s really important. While, at the same time recognizing that there are some situations in which financial responsibility is not itself always the primary problem for someone who’s having financial difficulties. A few examples that come to mind are if you have a child or a loved one or yourself who has had a severe medical emergency and suddenly you have a six figure bill put on your doorstep, the problem there is our healthcare system, and not necessarily how you’ve managed your own money. Of course you still have to come up with a solution and that’s important, but let’s not lose sight of the big picture.

36:59 Ian: I think it’s also important that we recognize the impact that mental health can have on a person’s finances. While I was in graduate school, one of the things that I studied was gambling disorder, for instance. The processes that underly gambling disorders, I mean, I’m sure there are graduate students out there who have issues with gambling, but sort of more broadly just than gambling, if you think about shopping addiction, any kind of mental health problem that might lead to episodes of irresponsible financial behavior. Bipolar disorder would be another one that would fall very neatly in that category. We have to make enough room within our economic justice advocacy to recognize that there are people for whom their financial problems are not primarily caused by a lack of what you might call personal responsibility. I think we can come at it from both directions, but part of getting folks who are able to be financially responsible, to be financially responsible is to have the right vehicle for learning about that, that says the world can be a terrible and unfair place, but in light of that, in recognition of that, let’s help give you the skills to thrive to the best of your ability, financially, in spite of that adversity.

Best Financial Advice for Graduate Students and PhDs

38:27 Emily: I’m so glad you put that in the larger context. I’m really glad that we took the time for that. So as we wrap up the interview, what is your best financial advice for maybe a graduate student or another early career PhD, perhaps something that you’ve learned, post this transformation after you’ve reformed your own practice of personal finance?

38:50 Ian: Sure. I would say that I have three small pieces of advice. The first is keep track of everything that you spend. And this is just personally, I think if you keep track of every little thing you spend, you really understand where your money is going, and it starts to sort of become like a fun game of saving money, where you can go “Oh, well, you know, I could spend, you know, $4 at Starbucks or I could buy a bag of beans and make a cup of coffee at home for 25 cents.” That’s sort of my simple suggestion.

39:29 Ian: Number two is forgive yourself and it’s never too soon to start. Again, sort of having worked in the world of recovery, it’s never too soon to start. Whether you’re 22 and just thinking about graduate school or whether you had gone back to graduate school and you’re 37 and you have two or three kids and you’ve never really seriously considered how to build wealth, it’s never too soon to start.

40:07 Ian: And then number three, my final point would be make economic justice advocacy a core component of your own financial responsibility. Really own the idea in your heart, that taking care of others is taking care of yourself, and taking care of yourself is taking care of others. And in that spirit, hopefully, all of us can create a more economically just life for graduate students in higher education and more broadly, in society at large.

40:45 Emily: Thank you so much Ian. I’m so glad to learn from you and to have your perspective here on the podcast. So thank you so much for giving this interview.

40:53 Ian: Thank you so much. If you would like to, you can follow me on Twitter at @ianagutierrez and it’s been a real pleasure to be here.

Outtro

41:02 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPhDs.com/podcast is the hub for the personal finance for PhDs podcast. There you can find links to all the episode show notes, and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind the scenes commentary about each episode. Register at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe. 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 Poddington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC podcast editing and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

Insights from the Bargaining Table with a Graduate Student Union Leader

March 2, 2020 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Mary Bugbee, a fourth-year PhD student in anthropology at the University of Connecticut. Mary tells the story of the grad student union at UConn, from its inception in 2013 to through the start of the second and current contract. Mary served on the bargaining committee for the second contract and gives her insights from the bargaining table into how the university views graduate student labor. She tells graduate students what they can do to support higher pay and better benefits at unionized and nonunionized universities. Mary also shares how her personal finances have benefitted from the strong union contract and her excellent financial advice for other early-career PhDs.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

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grad student union bargaining

Teaser

00:00 Mary: The economic model of universities is exploitative. We’re cheap labor. A lot of us aren’t going to get tenure-track jobs. It’s designed this way for a reason. The problem is structural. Sometimes it’s not individual.

Intro

00:19 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode nine, and today my guest is Mary Bugbee, a fourth-year PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. Mary tells the story of the grad student union at UConn, from its inception in 2013 through the start of the second and current contract for which she served on the bargaining committee. She gives her insights from the bargaining table into how the university views graduate student labor and what graduate students at unionized and non-unionized universities can do to support higher pay and better benefits. Mary also shares how her personal finances have benefited from the strong union contract and her excellent financial advice for other early-career PhDs. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Mary Bugbee.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:13 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, Mary Bugbee. She is a graduate student at the University of Connecticut, and she has been very active within their graduate student union. So, we’re going to hear a lot more about how that works from Mary. So, please, Mary, take a moment to introduce yourself to us.

01:29 Mary: Hi, and thanks for having me on this podcast. I am very passionate about unionization and that’s what I’ll be talking about. So, my name is Mary Bugbee. I’m a fourth-year PhD student at the University of Connecticut in Anthropology. I’ve also served as the vice president for the graduate employee union, UAW Local 6950, and then served as the president. And during that time, I also served on our bargaining committee for our second contract.

UConn Grad Student Union: First Contract

01:59 Emily: Yeah. So, when you started graduate school, which it sounds like that was during the first contract, what was the status at that point? What was in your offer letter for your stipend and the benefits? What was that first contract including?

02:13 Mary: Okay, so I was really lucky. I came into a university that had a unionized workforce of graduate employees. So, my benefits were really good starting off. I started in the fall of 2016, which was the second year of the first contract that they ever had. I was funded fully, which means for 20 hours a week, split between research assistantship and teaching assistantship. And that was $22,000 about for my nine-month academic year stipend. So, the University of Connecticut, in the Storrs campus, it’s not typical to have 12-month funding. People are usually funded at nine months, and then some people get additional funding. I also had a really good health insurance package. I pay $200 a year, I have no deductible, and my copays are $15, $20, depending on where I go. And it’s awesome.

03:14 Emily: That does sound really good. And you came in as a master’s student, is that right?

03:18 Mary: Yeah, so I got my master’s on my way to the PhD, and the way our stipends are set up is there’s a beginner’s level, a master’s level, and then the PhD candidate level. So, if I had come in with a master’s degree, I would have been making more than $22K.

03:34 Emily: Okay. And was that all part of the contract as well? That sort of graduated stipend level?

03:38 Mary: I believe the graduated stipend level was something in place before the contract, but it was maintained with what they negotiated. Instead of just having the same amounts for like many years in a row, we got raises from year to year. So, that was where the improvement was. So, not just a raise when you get to the next level, but also just a raise each year to help keep up with the cost of living.

Summer Research Fellowship

04:03 Emily: Yeah. So, one more question kind of about what was going on when you came in. You mentioned that your offer didn’t include summer funding. So, for you in particular, did you end up getting summer funding some of the years? Or how has that worked out in the years you’ve been there?

04:16 Mary: Yeah, so my department, the Anthropology Department, has something called a summer research fellowship. It’s basically guaranteed for first and second-year students to do exploratory fieldwork or language training during the summer. So, I had that my first summer and my second summer, which helped a lot. It still only covered my costs in the field, so I had to have savings to pay certain bills when I left for the summer. And since I was in Mexico, I couldn’t work. I didn’t really have any income. So, it was really important that I was able to save during the year. I did have side gigs.

Summer Side Hustling and Housing

04:54 Emily: Okay. Yeah, I was just about to say. So, the $22,000 in that first year that you received over a nine-month period–was that basically just paying for your living expenses during that nine-month period and then you had to side hustle to do the summer self-funding or how did that end up working out?

05:09 Mary: So, I’ve always had a side hustle or two. At one point I had technically four, but I’d say I just had one extra side hustle that first year. I got some per diem hours working as an administrative assistant at a local hospital. It was something I had before I started graduate school. So, I was lucky. I would say the stipend alone was enough to pay my living expenses. I lived with my partner at the time, a one-bedroom apartment. We split rent, although he paid a higher percentage of the rent. Had I lived with just a regular roommate and had a two-bedroom apartment. I think things would have been a lot tighter, because Connecticut is an expensive state. But, I never had a month where I was broke, and I was always able to put a little bit of money away. I’d say I earned maybe a hundred to 200 extra dollars a month with my side hustle.

Was Side Hustling Allowed Under the Union Contract?

06:04 Emily: Okay. I’m always very curious when people talk about side hustles. Is side hustling officially allowed under that first union contract? Or is it something that’s not really addressed?

06:14 Mary: So, the union contract has nothing about whether or not we can have outside employment. The graduate school at UConn actually governs that. And officially, you’re not allowed to work beyond the 20 hours a week in your offer letter. However, with advisor approval, you can. It really depends on your program and your advisor. I’m very fortunate to have a program and an advisor who has been completely okay with me having side hustles as long as I was meeting the academic criteria and progress goals. But some people at the University of Connecticut do not have the same luxury, and their advisors or their programs will give them crap about it if they find out. So, it’s really dependent on where you are in the university.

07:06 Emily: Yeah, that’s unfortunate. I definitely come down on the side of, if you’re doing what’s expected of you in your role as a graduate student, your advisor or whoever should not care what you’re doing outside of that, whether it’s a side hustle, whether it’s other stuff in your personal life. Especially when you’re being paid a stipend, like you were just saying, that’s like maybe adequate, sort of. Really, if you’re going to be making the choice between, “Okay I’m going to side hustle a little bit or I’m going to experience a bunch of financial stress,” and that can affect your work too. Thanks for adding that detail. So, how did you first get involved with the union and what was your role? I mean, you already mentioned a little bit what your roles were, but what were you actually doing?

Mary’s Role in the Grad Student Union

07:42 Mary: So, my research area is actually health policy. And I know a lot about health insurance. So, when I knew the contract was going to be reopened for bargaining–that was in 2017–I decided to get more involved. I wanted to be part of the bargaining committee and help with issues around health insurance. And then from there, I became super involved. I ended up becoming the vice president as well as a member of the bargaining committee. And from there, I’ve just been actively involved ever since. I did resign from the presidency this past May. So, I was the president for the past academic year, but I really need to focus on my research now. So, I’ve moved on and now I’m just a rank and file member and a volunteer. So, that feels good.

08:33 Emily: Yeah. But still doing outreach like this podcast.

08:36 Mary: Yes.

History of the UConn Grad Student Union

08:37 Emily: Okay. So, can you tell me a bit more about maybe the history of the union? When did it first come into place, and how did that work?

08:45 Mary: Yeah. So, from what I understand, there were multiple attempts at unionizing at the University of Connecticut over the years, but it culminated in 2013 when the university decided to just unilaterally change the health plan that the GAs were on to a higher deductible and just a more limited coverage network. So, not only was it more expensive, but it disrupted care for people. There were people who had to switch therapists or primary care physicians because they were no longer in-network. And that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. People realized that, without having a collective bargaining agreement, without having a union, the university could do that sort of thing at will, and they didn’t like being in that vulnerable situation. And on top of that, they were increasing student fees every semester. Wages were stagnant, the workload was becoming an issue. So, there were a lot of factors, but I’d say it was the health insurance. That was the last straw.

Health Insurance as a Common Catalyst for Unionization

09:46 Emily: That’s actually a little bit similar to the story that I heard out of the University of Missouri where–I think this was as a result of the passage of the Affordable Care Act–the university decided to stop offering health insurance or stop making it an included benefit. And so that again, as you were just saying was–and they did this like the day before the start of the coverage period. So, people literally we’re going to be without insurance the next day and finding out–I mean, that’s an extreme scenario. And so that again, as you were just saying, that was the catalyst there for a unionization movement. And I don’t know how quickly they got that into place, but yeah, please continue on with what was happening at UConn.

10:27 Mary: Yeah. So, from there there was a lot of organizing and these were mostly volunteers–or all volunteers at that stage–of people, graduate students who just decided that they needed a union. So, they got buy-in from other groups on campus, including faculty, the Graduate Student Senate. By November, December, 2013, they had selected United Auto Workers for their parent union. I think they had talked with a few others, but they decided UAW was probably their best bet. They have a really good track record in higher education.

11:00 Emily: As I understand, UAW does most, or virtually all, of the grad student unions, is that right?

UConn Breaks Higher Ed Record for Fastest Card Drive

11:07 Mary: I think there are a few AFL grad employee unions, but yeah, UAW I’d say might have the monopoly in higher education graduate employees and postdocs. So, from there, we had the card drive in February 2014 and we actually broke a record at UConn for fastest card drive in higher education organizing history. By early March, over 50% of graduate assistants had said, “Yes, we want a union. And yes, we want to be a member of this union.” By April it was recognized by the university and certified with the state labor board. Bargaining kind of got off on a bad foot. That June, the university decided they didn’t want to do summer bargaining. But they ended up bargaining from August, 2014 to April, 2015, and the first contract was in place by July 1st, 2015. And it was a three-year contract.

12:07 Emily: I see. So, really the initial phase of, “We want to get this in place, let’s get the buy-in.” That happened relatively quickly. But then the bargaining–I’m learning about this for the first time–the bargaining took quite a bit of time.

Bargaining: A Long, Arduous Process

12:19 Mary: Yeah. So, the process of bargaining can be very frustrating. The first contract is always going to take longer because you have to write everything from scratch. So, I was on the bargaining committee for the second contract. So, if you’re a member of the executive board you’re automatically on the bargaining committee. But there are also elections for district representatives so that there’s representation across the graduate assistant community. And then usually there’s a survey that’s done prior to bargaining, or there always is in our case, to elicit what people’s priorities are–to see what matters most to them. And then that’s used to define the bargaining goals. And the membership ratifies that and then bargaining can begin with the university. So, we started the second contract October, 2017 and we bargained until April, 2018. And it was a long, arduous process.

13:18 Emily: So, can you give me some examples of points that people brought up to you during the survey process that they wanted to have on the table for bargaining? Maybe some that ended up in the final contract and some that didn’t.

Issues: Health/Vision Insurance, Parking, Student Fees

13:29 Mary: Yeah, so everyone has always wanted vision insurance. We haven’t gotten that in either of our contracts, unfortunately. But you know, a lot of us wear glasses and contacts, so that gets brought up a lot. Health insurance–people want to keep the health insurance we had. People want wages. Parking is a big issue at UConn. It’s very frustrating. You have to pay to park and then you might pay for a permit and you still won’t be able to find a spot at certain times of day. I understand this is probably a problem at a lot of universities, but it always comes up with our members. But yeah, the student fees are another issue because each semester before we start, before we’ve gotten our first paycheck, we have to pay fees. And my understanding is that before the union was in place, fees were close to a thousand dollars a semester. Now they’re like $600, $700, and that’s with the university increasing fees during that time. So, we’ve kept it pretty low. So, the financial stuff is always big, but there’s other stuff too. And sexual harassment and discrimination protections, those are very important to our members as well.

Active Membership is the Key to a Bargaining Committee

14:41 Emily: I see. So, can you tell me a little bit more about how the bargaining committee works? You just said it was a six-month process. It’s arduous. What are some details there?

14:49 Mary: So you have the team–the negotiating team–and for us, our lead negotiator was an international rep from the UAW because none of us really have experience in bargaining. So, that’s one of the reasons you go with a parent union, because they have all those resources for you. So, he was the lead negotiator. We would try to meet as often as we could. The university wasn’t great about giving us a lot of time. We even met over breaks. Sessions could be from like two hours to four hours, and by the end, like all day sessions. We signed the tentative agreement at two in the morning. So, that’s the actual, active bargaining at the table. What’s most important for people to know about the bargaining process is that you need an active membership. You need to have collective power behind the bargaining team. So, our organizing committee all year long was organizing direct actions, was doing member outreach to educate them about the bargaining process and the trials and tribulations at the table. People would write op-eds for the campus newspaper or other news outlets. So, we were constantly putting pressure on the university from behind the scenes of the actual bargaining table. And that is the reason why we’ve gotten strong contracts both times. It’s because we have really active members who put so much time and energy into securing really good contracts.

Ways to Be an Active Member (Beyond Striking)

16:22 Emily: What does it mean to be an active member? You just mentioned writing op-eds. Did it come to really visible action, like strikes, or anything like that? Or maybe there are some intermediate steps.

16:32 Mary: Yeah, so, we never had a strike. Connecticut is a no-strike state, which doesn’t necessarily mean people wouldn’t strike, but we’ve never had to do that. I’d say being an active member is doing what you can with the time you have. And for graduate students, even the smallest thing can be a big ask. So, it was very inspiring to see people turn out for our big direct action at the end. We had a sit-in at the student union. We had three simultaneous sit-ins. We had some people at the student union chanting, then we had people in the Office of Institutional Equity because sexual harassment was a major theme in bargaining, and then we had people who went to the president’s office. Prior to that, we’d had a big sit-in in her office building a day she was offering office hours. So, like big, public, noisy, direct actions that called attention–not just to people at the university but people outside the university–to what was happening. And some of those people I had never seen at a membership meeting before. They weren’t regularly involved, but they turned out that day, and that was awesome.

Commercial

17:47 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us, and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation. And don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns, from free articles and videos, to paid at-your-own-pace workshops, to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax. That’s P F F O R P H D S.com/T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now, back to the interview.

Sit-ins Demonstrate Collective Power

18:51 Emily: So, how does something big and visible like a sit-in translate to the bargaining table? Are the people from the opposite side coming in, they’re saying, “Okay, okay, we see, we see”? What’s actually happening?

Mary (19:03): They see the collective power that we have. They see, “Wow, this group of GAs, they do really important work at this university. And if they were to ever not do that work, that would be a big deal.” So, even though we haven’t had a strike, I think that’s always on the back of the mind of the employer, because we do the day-to-day research, the day-to-day teaching. There are 2,200 of us at the university. The university wouldn’t be able to do what they had to do without us, so they have to listen to us. And when they see how much we care and how we’re able to band together in those crucial moments, then they take us seriously.

Changes from the 1st to the 2nd Contract

19:47 Emily: What were some of the changes from the first contract to the second contract that you worked on? Or, was it more about, like, maintaining the really good health insurance that was in place initially?

19:57 Mary: So, I can’t think of anything that we had to give away. But yeah, we wanted to maintain the health plan, and we also wanted raises. So, Connecticut is in a huge budget crisis right now, but we were still able to secure 2% raises year to year. The first contract, it was 3% raises.

20:18 Emily: So, that 2%, it’s basically the cost of living raise. Every year, you get another 2%. Is that right?

20:23 Mary: Yes.

20:23 Emily: During the length of that contract?

Hold On to Your Fundamental Rights

20:25 Mary: Mhm. And we fought tooth and nail to maintain a grievance procedure for sexual harassment and discrimination. The university tried to take that away from us. They tried to use it as a bargaining chip for economic items, which was to me just like completely despicable because that is a problem at UConn, as it is anywhere in higher education.

20:50 Mary: So, we fought tooth and nail to make sure that we still had an avenue of recourse in our collective bargaining agreement in cases of sexual harassment and discrimination. I think that might’ve been our biggest fight at the table. We also tried to get a full fee waiver. That’s what we try every time. We didn’t get that, but we did get an increase in our fee waiver. So, that was helpful. And we secured a relief payment for a new fee that went into place this year for a very beautiful multimillion-dollar student recreation facility they just built, and it’s $200 a semester. So, we get that money back in our first paycheck of the semester.

21:31 Emily: Okay. So, it’s still a fee that you pay, but then you get the money back. And that’s for the length of this contract.

21:37 Mary: Yeah. And the reason it was structured that way was because of how it was financed in bonds. They couldn’t legally give us a waiver. So, that was our work-around.

Union Fees Are Minimal and Worth It

21:46 Emily: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it’s good, I guess, to hear about all the different little levers that can be put in different ways. Although, as you said, some levers you don’t want to allow. I’m wondering, what is the fee for the union members? And then, are you totally confident that, based on, for instance, just the lowering of fees or not increase of fees, has that paid back immediately?

22:12 Mary: Oh, definitely. So, people pay 1.095% in dues, and it’s just taken out in paychecks. So, when I was at 75% funding one year, it came out to be like, I think around $10 a paycheck for me. I think for people making the highest amount you can make, it’s around $15 a paycheck. But you get that all back in your fee waiver, and your raises make up for it as well. So, for me, it’s a no-brainer. The union has been instrumental in making sure that I have a decent living wage. So, the least I can do is pay my union dues.

22:52 Emily: Gotcha.

22:52 Mary: And it takes resources to run a union, so that money is needed. You might have to go to arbitration, which costs money. We pay dues to the international UAW who provides us with resources like our lead negotiator during bargaining. And yeah, we also have to pay staff to handle grievances. So, it does take resources to have a strong union.

Remaining Insights About the Bargaining Table

23:18 Emily: Mhm. And are there any other insights that you want to share with the audience about what it’s like to be at the bargaining table? Or, what they might want to know if they are union members but maybe not active in the leadership at the union in their university, or maybe their university doesn’t have a union? Anything else you’d like to share from your unique position?

23:36 Mary: Yeah, so it can be a bleak place at the bargaining table because you come to learn that the university really only cares about its bottom line. And it was very upsetting for me to see them try to use, like, our right to have a grievance procedure for a sexual harassment case as a bargaining chip for economic items. It was very disillusioning, but it was also so inspiring to see what we were able to do as a collective. So, for people who don’t have time to contribute, like signing a card, that’s enough. That’s all what some people can manage. Like sign a card, pay your dues. Whatever little thing you can do helps your union. So, the bargaining is nothing without a strong membership.

What About Postdocs and Non-Employees?

24:24 Emily: Yeah, that’s good to hear that this work is not done by a few individuals who decide to volunteer a great deal of their time, but rather it’s those people, yes, plus they need to have the backing of at least a little bit of effort from a great number of the other workers. What I always wonder about with unions is, like they cover employees of the university–graduate assistants, TAs, RAs. What about the students and the postdocs who are fellowship recipients, who are not technically employees–or, at least for a period of time, they aren’t employees? Are they still benefiting from the negotiation that happens with the union?

25:01 Mary: Yes, absolutely. So, even though they can’t be classified as employees–some postdocs can, which I’ll get into in a second–they can’t be covered by collective bargaining agreement. But some of the things we’ve gained at the table, like our health insurance, that health insurance package is now available to those postdocs and to graduate students on fellowships.

Health Insurance, Not Fee Waivers, Benefit Non-Unionized

25:25 Mary: It’s subsidized a little differently, but it’s still pretty affordable. And I think there are a lot of studies that show when you have unionized employees at a workplace, the non-unionized employees can benefit as well. So, I’d say the health insurance is the big way that it’s benefited those folks.

25:44 Emily: I would imagine fees too? Or, is there a different fee structure for fellows versus employees?

25:50 Mary: So, they don’t get the fee waivers we get because they’re not employees.

25:55 Emily: So, it’s not like the fees have been lowered. It’s just, the fees are high, but you get a waiver for a certain amount of it. Is that how that works?

26:02 Mary: Yeah, exactly. And we always stand in solidarity with grad students when fees are being raised overall because we are in principle against any of that for anyone at UConn. But currently, unfortunately, they still have high student fees.

26:19 Emily: I see. But yeah, the health insurance seems like a big one. Especially what you described earlier, it seems amazing not having a deductible.

26:25 Mary: Yeah.

Unionization Effects on Personal Finance

26:25 Emily: That sort of leads into our second to last question here, which is how has being at a place that has a strong union affected your finances personally?

26:34 Mary: So far, I’ve accrued no debt in grad school. I’ve been able to live on what I’ve made, plus my side hustles, in addition to my TA work. So, I wouldn’t say I’m ever truly comfortable financially, but I do not feel financially vulnerable. I save. That’s why I have side hustles, so I can keep saving, and I don’t have to worry about a medical emergency. For me, that’s a really big thing because I have a chronic illness that’s in remission. It’s been in remission for a long time, but it can rear its ugly head at any moment.

27:12 Mary: And if I don’t have good health insurance, I could go into medical debt in like a week. Or medical bankruptcy, practically. So, I mean, the union is like the reason I went to the University of Connecticut, because I knew the health insurance would cover me in a worst-case scenario. So yeah, I’d say I haven’t been completely comfortable. I definitely took a pay cut from what I was doing before graduate school. But what I’m making allows me to live a decent lifestyle and to put money away.

Pro Tip: Look into Health Insurance Prior to Enrolling

27:45 Emily: I want to follow up on just that point about the health insurance, because I’m curious. So, when you were applying to graduate school and you received a few offer letters, how did you evaluate the health insurance that was being offered to you at that stage prior to actually enrolling?

27:58 Mary: So, I actually didn’t apply to that many graduate schools, and this was the only anthropology program I applied to. So, when I got the offer, I just took it. But I’m from Connecticut, so I knew about the unionization efforts, and I knew to look online and see about the health insurance. So, I don’t think it was mentioned in my offer letter, the health insurance, but the collective bargaining agreement was cited. So yeah, I didn’t really have to do a lot of comparison in the selection process.

28:29 Emily: That’s good to hear though that you were able to just find the information about the health insurance online. Because I know, not necessarily universities, but just in general with private health insurance, sometimes it’s really difficult to figure out what your benefits are, even once you’re actually enrolled in it. So, to do that as a step prior to actually being enrolled, it’s impressive. So, it’s good that they had that transparency that you were able to find the information that you needed right away. Yeah. So, that’s really good to hear. I mean, I’m happy for you, right? That you have a degree of stability and of course not having to take out debt at this stage is awesome.

Best Financial Advice for Early-Career PhDs

29:00 Emily: And so, final question, a standard one that I ask all my guests, is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be related to something that we’ve talked about today or it could be something completely else.

29:13 Mary: So, individually speaking, this goes back to something you said earlier. I personally like to have side hustles and I think saving is really important. I prefer to have money in the bank and be a little bit more stressed out in terms of my schedule than to have more free time–well, “free time”–and no financial safety net whatsoever. So for me, I think that’s one of the reasons I haven’t had major issues financially in grad school. It’s because I do work on the side. And also, live within your means. But if you can’t–if you can’t balance a budget–don’t be so hard on yourself, because the economic model of universities is exploitative. We’re cheap labor. A lot of us aren’t going to get tenure-track jobs. It’s designed this way for a reason. The problem is structural. Sometimes it’s not individual, so don’t be so hard on yourself if you can’t make ends meet on your stipend. And also, that’s why you should be involved in your union if you have one. And if you don’t, definitely, definitely get involved in a unionization effort. Because even if it fails, it still lays the groundwork for future efforts. For me, it’s the most important thing for my finances in grad school–has been the union.

30:35 Emily: Well, there’s nothing I can add to that. Thank you so much for that statement and for this interview. It’s been wonderful talking with you.

30:41 Mary: Thank you for having me.

Outtro

30:43 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, subscribe to my mailing list at pfforphds.com/subscribe. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. 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 and shownotes creation by Meryem Ok.

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