use these students are now on welfare
this is an ongoing problem in the u_s_
now it's incredible because i remember a
decade ago if someone had a p_h_d_ or
eight or doctoral degree you immediately
assume that that person
not necessarily well-off but
at least able to support him or herself
them however there's a growing trend in
the u_s_ where
people with master's degrees ed p_h_d_'s
are dependent on government assistance
because they can't find jobs
now this is really interesting because
with the economic downturn
more people are going back to school to
get advanced degrees to get their
masters to get their p_h_d_'s because
they feel like that gives them a
competitive edge in the job market
however it's important to keep in mind
that just because you have a p_h_d_
doesn't mean that you're going to be set
for life in fact what what do people
usually do with their p_h_d_'s page
usually now if they'd again it depends
on the field by for a lot you go in
because you want in the future
exactly sell i don't think a lot of
people are
fully aware of what ph details in terms
of
you know what you need finances to get
back to greet
i don't think people or even aware of
what a p_h_d_ program
entails and that what you learned when
you're in a p_h_d_ program so john you
were studying political science and
you're getting your uh... doctorate in a
political science tell me what your
experience was in that
look i a was i guess one of the lucky
ones that i did not have to go into
additional debt for my doctor and i was
given a position that you teach teaching
or running a lab i did a few things
there and that paid for
not only my tuition at all that but i
also was paid as well so think waiting
to any extra debt but i do know that
even for myself and i had one of the
best financial situations that are
usually available to graduate students
insults height
was living high life and if i had
finished my uh... dma dissertation gone
often taught
it would have been
a pretty good shot but it would have
ended up that
as an adjunct professor at one of these
smaller universe is making twenty maybe
thirty maybe forty thousand a year
that's not a lot of money now when you
have a hundred thousand dollars in debt
absolutely cell at the chronicle of
higher education wrote this excellent
piece
on the number of people who have p_h_d_s
and uh... need to live on food stamps
basically
and some of the numbers are incredible
so uh... apparently there was this one
one minute by the name of melissa we've
got a p_h_d_ and she's teaching at a
small university uh... in arizona and
she heard take-home pay is only nine
hundred dollars a month
and the reason why vertical base a
little is because after the economic
downturn
what's the first thing
politicians look at in terms of making
cuts it's always education whether it's
grade school or higher education
that's the first thing they don't see
you
so after university lost millions of
dollars in their budget
uh... in fact the operating budget went
from four point three million dollars
ten nine hundred thousand dollars a year
uh... so
what happened everybody got a salary
reduction up professors got laid off and
all these people who have these advanced
degrees
have no choice but to go on government
assistance yeah now another really add
good thing to take
not i don't know if it's a good thing
but it uh...
perspective to take away from this is
that
not all people who go to cut get
government assistance are deadbeats that
they're highly educated people in some
instances
affected by this economy
yeah i think that over time we're gonna
see
not mentally in terms of how we perceive
people on food stamps and other forms of
welfare but there's a lot of effort in
the eighties by the republican party to
paint them as welfare queens that they
were sort of thing
the abusing the system to make more
money than they would be able to be were
working and i think that
because of the recession and slow burt
of recovery from recession
a lot of people are going
on food stamps they they said master
students mpg since its tripled the
number that are on food stamps
uh... and over time it it's going to
become common not missing out as soon
end up on welfare but your likely to
know somebody that will and i think it's
on the stigmas gonna go away until the
economy recovers so maybe some higher
numbers food stamp use entries from an
average monthly caseload of seventeen
million in two thousand
so forty four million people in twenty
eleven and that's according to the u_s_
department backed culture last year one
in six people almost fifty million
americans
uh... were on food stamps that
now i must say something i'd maybe
slightly controversial no one should
understand going in that i was the inner
a doctoral program for a soft science so
i'm but in this group that i'm a talk
about but
look if you one of the examples in this
article is for a professor in medieval
studies are medieval history
if you go into a major like that you
should not be on food stamps i think we
can agree on that you're teaching a
skill that some students you know what
to wanna learn they worried about this
stuff
he shouldn't be on food stamps after
going to seven years of graduate school
but you also can expect to do
particularly well
mean you're never going to make a ton of
money teaching some of the subjects and
so i think that you need to be strategic
in terms of balancing your interest in
what you genuinely want to study and
want to teach
but also understanding that it's not
much one here
