Well that's a lie. NC State is $20k for a CS PhD Student, oh, and that's before you pay the $4k a year on student fees.
The article glosses over it, but you're paid dirt. And what sucks more, is you're paid good dirt, so all the other PhD departments look at your with their barely 10k stipends and think you're ungrateful for your poverty line wage.
Even if you love research, the programs will select for people who have good grades/institutions, who lack student debt, can invest 4 years at 20k/yr and survive, and are willing to turn down 6 figure jobs in industry.
Given this, it’s not a surprise that 79% of CS phd students in the US are international, where undergrad costs are often substantially lower.
http://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/The-Importance-of...
Two examples of many:
- https://ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/working-teaching-and-resea...
There are also students from the French/Italian part of Switzerland, so there's a natural convergence towards English rather quick, at least that was my experience.
(take this with a grain of salt, it's been a while and my information might be outdated)
Depends on the country and programme, but more and more so. Even France, traditionally not at all known for programmes at any level fully in English, has been making huge advancements in those areas, and there are full programmes in the Paris Saclay university hub entirely in English, exclusively to attract foreigners who don't speak French.
https://www.cis.mpg.de/cs-max-planck/
"During the preparatory phase, students take courses to build on their existing knowledge of core computer science areas. Depending on a student’s prior academic background (e.g., MS degree), course requirements may be partially or completely waived at the time of admission."
or here:
https://ellis.eu/faqs#can-i-apply-if-i-don-t-have-a-msc-degr...
"Rules in Europe vary. Some participating universities require a MSc, others accept BSc students as well (sometimes under specific conditions). You will find this information in the portal if you click on the list of this year's recruiting advisors."
In some places you technically don't even need any degree, but in practice you wouldn't get accepted without one. (I was looking into this as an option for someone recently!)
Also notice that in Europe you can get a bachelor and masters in 4-5 years (3+1 or 2), which can be the length of a US undergrad degree.
Source: currently applying to grad school
Better source: https://www.cmu.edu/stugov/gsa/Campus-Advocacy/Stipend-Repor...
Um, ok, ouch... jk :D
There are ways to increase your pay and doing summer work is one of those. However, the student fees portion of my comment still rings true. You'll be spending about $4k on student fees, $500 on parking. Depending on your martial status, number of kids, type of apartment, you will still be barely scraping by.
Source: All but dissertation
This post is based on a Zoom call he conducted a month or so ago for folks and I signed up and attended.
Otherwise, I totally agree with you. Stipends are very little money, especially if you’re supporting others.
Further, in my experience, few professors actually do any research nor write papers. The vast majority of this work is done by PhD students and to a lesser extent post docs. Thus, PhD students are the linchpin that holds the entire "do research to publish papers to write grants to do more research" cycle together. If all PhD went on strike, the research output of a university would dry to a trickle, which would make obtaining further grants difficult to impossible, thereby depriving the university of that luscious 50% overhead.
Said another way, PhD student are net value producers for the university. Forcing PhD students to enroll in "thesis hours" that cost 45k per year is simply a cleverly worded scam to pilfer even more off the grants.
1) you don’t have to pay FICA taxes, which is a big deal.
2) you don’t have to pay tuition or taxes on the remission. That can be almost $30k per year before you reach candidacy.