I'm doing a PhD in the UK, and there certainly are people who are doing a PhD without funding (and paying quite high tuition, outside the EU is nearly £20k/yr),

I'm doing a PhD in the UK, and there certainly are people who are doing a PhD without funding (and paying quite high tuition, outside the EU is nearly £20k/yr), although they are a minority. I would guess 10%, less in STEM subjects. I started my program with only about half my funding in place while making plans to have secondary income to help fund my studies. Fortunately I was able to find the funding for the remaining part of my program, but it seems that most who try to find funding once starting their studies aren't successful in finding it (at least in the UK). Acceptance to the program is quite a bit easier than getting funding. I wouldn't recommend studying without funding - in addition to the expense I have seen these students are often treated as second class. In Canada, most people were funded in research assistantships coming from their PI, or had independent scholarships. This covered tuition and about $10,000 salary for research-based Masters or $15,000 for PhD, and could be supplemented by about $5000/year by teaching. This is marginally enough to live on without loans if you were thrifty and don't have dependents. I didn't know of anyone who wasn't paid (in Engineering - I think there were in Arts). Its worth noting especially for STEM people that the biggest cost is probably opportunity cost compared to the salary (or start up) you could be doing instead of a PhD. TL;DR - not paying tuition for a PhD isn't newsworthy.