Making sense of finances in graduate school can be a daunting task–one that is exacerbated by funding shortfalls, delayed stipend checks, and slow reimbursement processes.

My goal in this post is to point out several hidden costs associated with pursuing doctoral studies and highlight opportunities to reflect on the roles we (i.e., faculty, administrators) may play in introducing and upholding barriers to participation in the psychological and behavioral sciences[1]. To be clear, the hidden costs I describe and the recommendations I make are not exhaustive and I welcome the opportunity to learn from the experiences of others so that I can better communicate how we can support prospective and current graduate students. As you read this post, please know that I do not mean to suggest that faculty do not experience financial hardship. Indeed, they do! For example, I just wrapped up moving from Chicago, Illinois to Long Island, New York, and, in doing so, incurred over $5,500 in moving costs. I will now need to carry those costs until I am reimbursed by my department (let the wait begin!).

Before beginning, however, you should know a little about me, so that you can understand where I am coming from. I completed my PhD in Psychology at the University of Michigan. As part of my funding package, I earned around $23,000-$25,0000 each year through fellowship and teaching assistant opportunities. While a graduate student, I had access to excellent healthcare, the premiums of which were covered by my program. As a healthy student without dependents or debt, I was able to make my funding work for me—truly a luxury as a graduate student. Unfortunately, this luxury is not afforded to everyone.

Earlier this year[2], I posted a survey on Twitter asking current and prospective PhD students to share more about their financial experiences. In that survey, I asked students to report on the degree to which they felt financially strained. As a group (N = 43), current PhD students reported feeling moderately financially strained, yet their open-ended responses suggested greater strain than numerically reported. Students mentioned making sacrifices and struggling to live comfortably, including not having reliable transportation, impeding research. In fact, one student described feeling “less strained” because they took on additional paid work, limiting their ability to make adequate progress toward their degree.

So why does this matter? Money is a major barrier to participation—one that is in place before even applying to pursue a PhD. For example, to be a competitive PhD applicant, students are often required to have research experience. As an undergraduate student, I worked in two labs. For my work in the first lab, I received course credit and then volunteered after maxing out the amount of credit I could receive. For my work in the second lab, I received summer funding through my undergraduate institution and then volunteered during the regular academic year. As an undergraduate research assistant, it never occurred to me that I could or should be compensated for my work, and perhaps this is because I never had to choose between making rent and putting in unpaid lab hours. So, if you lead projects and/or labs, please consider the following:

How much of your contribution to the field reflects unpaid undergraduate and/or post-bacc labor?

I have also noticed an upward trend in the expectations some programs and advisors have for prospective PhD students. For these programs and advisors, conference attendance and (co)authorship seem to be required to be considered a serious applicant. Yet, conferences are very costly. Authorship can also be quite costly given the time required to contribute in such a way to earn it. So, when recruiting students, please consider the following:

Are you aiming to recruit a trainee or a postdoc to join your lab?

To gain admission to a PhD program, students must first apply, and applications can be quite expensive. Further, programs like the Big Ten Academic Alliance are not widely known and fee waivers are often poorly advertised and difficult to obtain. Finally, standardized tests are expensive, and sending scores costs money. So, I ask those of you who take on graduate students to please consider the following:

Do you understand what it costs to apply to work with you?

Once students receive offers, there is asymmetric information. Faculty may know that students have room to negotiate, but this is not well-known among applicants. Further, students are routinely surprised by unknown or ambiguous student and health insurance fees, among other things, because they did not know to ask, and programs were not as transparent as they could be. Many students have dependents and/or chronic illnesses, among other needs. We know that PhD stipends routinely fall short of adequately supporting students. So, please ask yourself:

How are you financially advocating for your students?

After accepting offers, students must figure out the logistics of their transition to the PhD. Like faculty, students routinely uproot their lives, moving long distances to unfamiliar cities and institutions. Moving is expensive. Housing can be expensive, especially when security deposits are due months before one’s first stipend or fellowship check is deposited. Again, many students have dependents and other regular costs that cannot go unpaid. Fortunately, I have seen an increasing number of programs offering moving stipends and even bridge payments to help students get settled before receiving their first stipend checks. So, if accepting graduate students, please consider the following:

How are you helping your students navigate the transition to your program?

Before I share some recommendations, let me be clear: There is so much not discussed here. My goal here was to help you reflect on how you may be (inadvertently) introducing financial barriers to PhD participation.

So, what are a few things you can do to reduce financial strain and increase financial transparency?

• Hold yourself accountable for creating opportunities for all students. Some ways to do this include:
  • Moving away from exclusive research assistant recruiting practices (e.g., GPA cutoffs, relying only on word-of-mouth to advertise openings).
  • Exploring cost sharing with your institution’s work-study office. That is, if you have research funds to compensate assistants, see whether you can recruit work-study students and offload some of that cost to the work-study office.
• Understand your program and institution’s fee structures for graduate students.
• Write transparent offer letters to admits. Detail the entire package, including student and health insurance fees.
• Highlight when the first stipend check can be expected.
• Advocate to include moving costs and new equipment like computers in funding packages.
• Know your program’s reimbursement process.
  • Can you pay for your student’s conference travel upfront with university funds and then seek reimbursement through the student’s university account?
  • Can you work with academic services to have funds disbursed ahead of time and then have them accounted for via receipts?
• Be accountable. Work with your colleagues to identify ways you can shift financial burdens away from students and hold each other accountable for making progress toward those goals.

Some caveats: The ability to execute these items will be influenced by your own access to resources, institution type, department structure, etc. I don’t mean to suggest everything here is possible for everyone. But we can collectively do better and learn from each other.

[1] This post is based on an invited talk I gave during the pre-conference “Working toward a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive cognitive developmental science” ahead of the 2022 meeting of the Cognitive Development Society.

[2] This survey was launched ahead of the same pre-conference talk.