5 ms·
Are PhDs expensive, do you get paid? In Europe you are actually a full time worker for the university and get paid a living wage (bit lower than industry but it
by Rainymood 11y ago
Are PhDs expensive, do you get paid? In Europe you are actually a full time worker for the university and get paid a living wage (bit lower than industry but it ramps up I guess).
- theparanoid 11y agoThey pay a subsistence living.
- frozenport 11y ago$21k USD in the USA, I've often been envious of my European colleagues!
- 4426e6 11y agoThis is not true in the UK. You are paid a tax free stipend (currently ~£14k) and not considered a full worker - you certainly don't have the rights that full time staff have. There is no salary progression, bonus or pension and your funding cuts off at 3/3.5/4 years. After that, you aren't eligible for any govt. benefits as you are a full time student. In some parts of the UK £14k can go a long way, but UK PhD students definitely aren't equal to full time staff as it stands. The pay can be higher with industry partnerships (£30k tax free!!) but this is the more usual research council level.
- _Wintermute 11y agoThankfully there has been a shift recently by the funding bodies to increase the stipend beyond the required minimum. Many in biomedical programmes are offering £18-20k a year.
- liedra 11y agoYou might get a tax free stipend... :) Depends on whether you get a scholarship! (I have a PhD student of mine who has a "fees only" scholarship - she is employed doing other things at the university but that's separate from the PhD.
- jventura 11y agoNot true for Portugal too. For my PhD I got a scholarship of 980€/month (too much below standard market rates for software engineers around here) and was not considered full time worker, so I had no benefits, no insurance, nada, zip. Although I consider it to be one of the best times that I had, in professional terms I didn't got much from it unfortunately..
- emeryberger 11y agoIn Computer Science, PhD students at any reasonable institution are invariably funded (stipend + tuition & some fees). Most who are in non-theoretical fields get research assistantships, which pay for them to do their PhD without any teaching responsibilities. The pay is in no way comparable to industrial salaries (OK, it's comparable; it's WAY less). The University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I am a faculty member, pays our PhD students more than $2,500 per month, plus benefits. This is a pretty competitive figure. However, many PhD students do summer research internships at places like Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Facebook, and Google, and these pay pretty handsomely.
- peter303 11y agoFurthermore the student stipend may go further because many needs at a big university may subsidized. These include student residences, gyms, health care, etc. To maintain the same lifestyle after leaving the ubiversity was more expensive.
- emeryberger 11y agoI should have clarified: the above is for US institutions (and I believe Canada). I do not know how things are in other countries.