The 1990s were a pretty good time for grad school compared to the 2000s.
The 2000s were pretty good compared to the 2010s.
Things are now at a breaking point.
Last week I had a mentoring conversation with a first year grad student that ended with tears about looming eviction due to over-due rent (un-reimbursed conference travel from months ago) and was followed by a call to a friend who still lives in the area to drop off some food as well as a... perhaps unprofessional... letter to a dean.
Those $30K/year stipends from the 90s were decent money; these days, at many institutions, it's still $30K/year. With a dependent and no family nearby, that's one late reimbursement from homelessness even in a comparatively cheap rust belt city. Remember: if you had a mortgage or owned a home before 2019, you feel basically none of the inflation happening in the USA. (And no, I wouldn't fault a mid-20 year old for not predicting double digit inflation in 2019.)
I can't help but wonder why anyone would go into a graduate program today, given the conditions you describe and the seemingly widening perspective that graduate degrees aren't worth it.
Perhaps we're heading back to a time where the "gentleman scholar" from a monied family is the only person who can survive in that system. That would be a shame.
100% Agreed. To make matters worse, the economic value of the data modeling / computational skills one can learn in graduate school has vastly eclipsed the typical graduate student stipend. Having recently started a graduate program after many years in Tech, I was a bit surprised to learn that most people in my department are implicit data scientists, or at the very least, data-science adjacent.
The monetary opportunity cost is not great for society. In California, typical graduate student stipends are roughly on par with the state's minimum wage ($15 an hour). Good luck trying to buy a house with that money, or trying to recruit anyone who is not straight out of college.
The 2000s were pretty good compared to the 2010s.
Things are now at a breaking point.
Last week I had a mentoring conversation with a first year grad student that ended with tears about looming eviction due to over-due rent (un-reimbursed conference travel from months ago) and was followed by a call to a friend who still lives in the area to drop off some food as well as a... perhaps unprofessional... letter to a dean.
Those $30K/year stipends from the 90s were decent money; these days, at many institutions, it's still $30K/year. With a dependent and no family nearby, that's one late reimbursement from homelessness even in a comparatively cheap rust belt city. Remember: if you had a mortgage or owned a home before 2019, you feel basically none of the inflation happening in the USA. (And no, I wouldn't fault a mid-20 year old for not predicting double digit inflation in 2019.)