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Comment by sandwichukulele | Hacker News Reader

> "I was always one unanticipated expense away from not being able to finish my degree."

I finished the article but I am left struggling to understand what happens afterwards. Do these struggling students finish their degrees and have improved food security afterwards?

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Presumably they aren't tied up with school obligations after they finish their degrees, and they have time to take an adult job. But for many of us, the time between graduation and that first paycheck can be pretty hairy.

Doing a PhD is an adult job though.

Here in Europe we even have industrial PhD students, who do a PhD some of their time, and work in industry on stuff relating to the topic of their PhD part of the time. These people can be quite experienced even at the start.

As a PhD student, I was paid about a third of what I was paid at the first job I landed as a PhD, except for one year when I got a sweet scholarship and I made two thirds. Yes, they were adult jobs, but I don't describe them as such because those TA/RA/sessional positions have Mickey mouse wages.

I think that remains reasonable. However, it's still necessary to have doing a PhD be seen as a real job and to set things up so that PhD students are paid a wage they can live on.

This kind of 'I can't afford thing, even though I'm doing world-leading research'-thing isn't reasonable, and since we treat it as a job in Europe, one where you get a lower wage than in industry, but still one that pays a wage you can live on, shows that it's probably feasible to do the same in the US.

I agree, it's feasible to do this but the article, and the experience I relay, is the truth on the ground in the US and Canada today. In STEM, it's totally possible to pay one's way through grad school without taking on extreme debt -- but it requires continual employment and strict frugality.

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