Dive Brief:
- Northwestern University will increase its minimum stipends for graduate students by 26%, bringing the lowest-paid PhD candidates up to earning $29,000 per year.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the change would have eliminated 80% of stipend negotiations with students considering other programs last year, a time-consuming process.
- Students getting their PhDs in the humanities often fall on the low end of the stipend spectrum and, at Northwestern, they have complained for years that their pay restricts their ability to focus exclusively on their research, according to the article.
Dive Insight:
Students who decide to go to graduate school rather than seek full-time employment make certain sacrifices. Putting off the search for salaries and benefits in the job market isn’t so much of a sacrifice for PhD students in economics or engineering, for example, because their stipends can be significant. In the humanities, that is often not the case and graduate students sometimes need to supplement their modest stipends with part-time jobs. This necessarily affects their academic output. Northwestern’s move ultimately makes it more competitive with other elite institutions vying for the same bright students who, like any job-seeker, compare pay when deciding where to go.