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I feel for this woman because it sounds like her situation was really hard. At the same time, I have a hard time believing she didn’t hear what literally every

I feel for this woman because it sounds like her situation was really hard. At the same time, I have a hard time believing she didn’t hear what literally everyone who wants to do a humanities PhD hears: do not pay for it. Do. Not. Pay for it. She was paying £8,000 a year in fees! Nearly any professor in any humanities department will tell you that’s a terrible, terrible idea. Especially while trying to survive in London! A PhD can be a good idea or a bad one depending on what you are studying and where, but paying to do a humanities PhD is never going to be a good idea unless you are independently (very) wealthy.

twoslide 5y ago
In the UK, international fees are deducted from the standard fellowship. While already low, it then becomes a poverty wage. This practice should really be banned, if funding someone the university should do it a livable level.
- derbOac 5y ago
  Yes, I agree with the OP who noted the frequent warnings about doing humanities doctoral degrees without being payed in total to do it. However, higher education is full of all of these dark patterns where people get looped into something, and gaslit into accepting certain conditions under some promise that it's temporary, etc and so forth. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's not. The real scandal to me at some level is that the administration isn't just paying some livable wage with benefits, and so forth. If it's more expensive, pass those costs to the students and see if they pay for it. If not, don't string people into it as a career. Politicians constantly call for there to be some sort of costs to universities in terms of return on investment, with demands that degrees be paid as a percent of future wages, etc. But often the problems are more straightforward, with universities burying the true costs on the supply side. It's very similar to the textile industry, or fishery industries, where you get a nice-looking affordable shirt, and all the horrors involved in its production are hidden from society. Add in administrative largesse and it all becomes frankly immoral. I suspect if universities just paid people as they should be paid, with benefits, at the faculty levels that are necessary, and charged a true price, people would respond in kind. Higher education is a disaster at the moment. Sometimes we get news coverage of what matters, but often it gets wrapped up in tangential distracting political debates. Fraud, abuse, and corruption are the norm. It's not just the humanities either.
riedel 5y ago
To be fair: The article says that was awarded multiple fellowships. So it was not the PhD but the rent she could not afford after being forced out of an affordable place after starting.
jjoonathan 5y ago
It would be consistent with my repeated personal experience if promises were made to this woman and then not kept. Higher academia uses all sorts of dark patterns on students. In two summers of undergrad, I was "casually" promised a summer stipend by a lab which went on to vigorously avoid making it concrete or putting it in writing until I twisted their arms with a competing offer. I don't know that they wouldn't have paid me, but I later learned that they had done this to other students, so it's a thing that happens. When I was applying to PhD programs, my favored lab accepted me on the understanding that I would be funded through a particular grant and "discovered" after the admissions cycle was over that there wasn't room for me on the grant after all and could I please make up the difference? I refused, of course, and fortunately my second choice made a schedule exception for me. That worked fine for a while, and then they straight up altered the deal to the tune of $20,000 in my second year. I hit the "eject" button on Academia and didn't look back. The institutions involved were Harvard, Cambridge, and Carnegie Mellon, so this isn't a matter of getting caught on a sinking ship. They do it because they can.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  That's pretty horrible. Through circumstances I ended up dropping out of highschool, if not for that I would have loved to go to University but after hearing stories like these I'm wondering if I didn't dodge a bullet. It did cause me to end up in the employment cycle at just the right time to launch a small software development company and that would have never happened if I gone to university instead.

twoslide 5y ago

In the UK, international fees are deducted from the standard fellowship. While already low, it then becomes a poverty wage. This practice should really be banned, if funding someone the university should do it a livable level.

derbOac 5y ago
Yes, I agree with the OP who noted the frequent warnings about doing humanities doctoral degrees without being payed in total to do it. However, higher education is full of all of these dark patterns where people get looped into something, and gaslit into accepting certain conditions under some promise that it's temporary, etc and so forth. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's not. The real scandal to me at some level is that the administration isn't just paying some livable wage with benefits, and so forth. If it's more expensive, pass those costs to the students and see if they pay for it. If not, don't string people into it as a career. Politicians constantly call for there to be some sort of costs to universities in terms of return on investment, with demands that degrees be paid as a percent of future wages, etc. But often the problems are more straightforward, with universities burying the true costs on the supply side. It's very similar to the textile industry, or fishery industries, where you get a nice-looking affordable shirt, and all the horrors involved in its production are hidden from society. Add in administrative largesse and it all becomes frankly immoral. I suspect if universities just paid people as they should be paid, with benefits, at the faculty levels that are necessary, and charged a true price, people would respond in kind. Higher education is a disaster at the moment. Sometimes we get news coverage of what matters, but often it gets wrapped up in tangential distracting political debates. Fraud, abuse, and corruption are the norm. It's not just the humanities either.

riedel 5y ago

To be fair: The article says that was awarded multiple fellowships. So it was not the PhD but the rent she could not afford after being forced out of an affordable place after starting.

jjoonathan 5y ago

It would be consistent with my repeated personal experience if promises were made to this woman and then not kept. Higher academia uses all sorts of dark patterns on students. In two summers of undergrad, I was "casually" promised a summer stipend by a lab which went on to vigorously avoid making it concrete or putting it in writing until I twisted their arms with a competing offer. I don't know that they wouldn't have paid me, but I later learned that they had done this to other students, so it's a thing that happens. When I was applying to PhD programs, my favored lab accepted me on the understanding that I would be funded through a particular grant and "discovered" after the admissions cycle was over that there wasn't room for me on the grant after all and could I please make up the difference? I refused, of course, and fortunately my second choice made a schedule exception for me. That worked fine for a while, and then they straight up altered the deal to the tune of $20,000 in my second year. I hit the "eject" button on Academia and didn't look back. The institutions involved were Harvard, Cambridge, and Carnegie Mellon, so this isn't a matter of getting caught on a sinking ship. They do it because they can.

jacquesm 5y ago
That's pretty horrible. Through circumstances I ended up dropping out of highschool, if not for that I would have loved to go to University but after hearing stories like these I'm wondering if I didn't dodge a bullet. It did cause me to end up in the employment cycle at just the right time to launch a small software development company and that would have never happened if I gone to university instead.