The U.S. stipend is competitive with a lot of European countries, but less so the rich northern European countries (excepting the UK, which is very US-like in i

The U.S. stipend is competitive with a lot of European countries, but less so the rich northern European countries (excepting the UK, which is very US-like in its educational system). A typical CS PhD-student salary in the Netherlands is around $35-40k plus pension contribution, and in Denmark it's around $50k plus pension contribution. Partly because these two countries consider PhD students to be salaried MSc-qualified researchers on 3- or 4-year contracts, vaguely like a junior form of postdoc. US stipends are more often in the range of $20-25k with no pension contribution. Although you can also go directly to a PhD from a BSc in the US, whereas you need an MSc first in most of Europe, which complicates the comparison.