I thought the previous post was going to be the last one for a while but I now got urgent news that’s upsetting me.
Long story short, my current Ph.D is a regional college classified as R2 and has been slashing the budget for Ph.D students in all four Psychology programs every single year ever since I started in Fall 2020 (I won’t say what it is since I’ll out myself but it’s in the central area of the state of Michigan and has had around a 45% enrollment decline from its peak about a decade ago (2013)). For my program (Experimental), it started with not funding first years for 2021-2022 and keeping the $14k stipend plus 24 credit hour tuition waiver for 2nd to 4th years, then cutting the stipend in half happened last academic year with the same tuition waiver, and (finally) this year it was the same as last year. The way these funding cuts worked year to year is the same across the board other than School Psychology. Now, they’ve confirmed they’re not admitting any Clinical or School Psychology Ph.D students for next academic year. The president of the university is also stepping down on December 31st.
The worst part? My offer letter I got from the program back in February 2020 never stipulated what my funding would look like for the entire program! After seeing the latest program offers from those on the grad school subreddit, this should’ve been a red flag when I enrolled in the program years ago. Thus, I’ve been at the mercy of things changing year to year. There also used to be a graduate student union on campus but it’s been inactive even before COVID happened due to how few Ph.D students are at this university. There are professional doctorate and medical doctorate programs since those don’t fund their students’ tuition, but not many Ph.D programs.
For those also wondering, there’s not exactly good external funding coming in either to help pay for current Ph.D students. The reason, based on a conversation with an alum of my program recently, is that many students (him included) were discouraged from applying for funding as it was seen as “hypercompetitive and a waste of time.” This led the program to rely on internal funding from the university and led to complacency from faculty. Note that I’m not saying this to blame the faculty as I think the university shouldn’t have been cutting funding like this in the first place. It’s just one reason why this issue sped up to where things are at currently.
Anyway, when I tried to revive the Graduate Student Union last academic year, I didn’t follow through on my plans due to indirect discouragement from my advisor when I brought it with his response, “You don’t need to tell me that.” I would’ve also needed over 100 in person signatures and this might not have worked due to most students not living in the area at all (most students would commute from Lansing and that is just under an hour away or another urban area). It wasn’t until the state representative who contacted me forwarded a journalist’s contact info that I got in touch with a reporter on a piece the journalist was writing at the time about the collapse of the Graduate Student Union. From there, she (the reporter) was going to publish the piece in the university’s newspaper. Fast forward nearly a year later and the piece has not only not been published, but things went from speculation about programs getting totally cut to now becoming a reality.
Would it be possible to contact other reporters to try and get them to cover this information and hold my university accountable? Things sadly need to be quick as the meeting with the Dean and department chair will meet to talk about the future of Psychology graduate programs will be on March 12th at 1 PM.
I’ll repeat my previous advice- focus on YOU. Period, full stop. Focus on your mental health. Focus on understanding your cognitive issues. Focus on getting well and moving forward with your life.
This is yet another sidebar/distraction/perseverating technique which you should report to your mental health team.
You do NOT need to do yet another deep dive into all the reasons why you made a bad decision, why the program failed you, why the university didn’t live up to its promises.
You need to take your meds as prescribed, continue with your therapy, continue working with your job counselor to find a solid path forward.
This news is upsetting you because you have conditioned yourself to find anything that confirms “I am in the wrong university. I made a mistake. I’ll never have a fulfilling career” to be monstrously catastrophic. This news is not about you. It’s about a university and there are plenty of other ways that the news industry can cover the story without your participation.
It’s probably not news but many people don’t know when programs are lost. I get that all of that hasn’t been covered in the past, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room to acknowledge it now. Could be the start of highlighting other Ph.D programs that will be lost due to funding issues as well.
The reporter for the school paper dropped the story so now you want to contact other (local?) reporters about this, is that correct?
Unfortunately the average person will not care in the slightest about this, imo, which makes it non-news. People sometimes care about the loss of undergrad programs. Sometimes. No one cares about the loss of PhD programs. Many people see it all as more privilege and elitism and since so few people will ever pursue a PhD, most do not how this affects them in the slightest. No journalist (aside from a school journalist, who also passed apparently) is going to run with the story because it won’t resonate with general readership. (This is purely my opinion.)
And fwiw, even back in the day when I got my Ph.D., I was not advised what funding was going to be available past what they gave me the first year. I worked with a professor and then at the VA doing a traineeship in the later years, then won a fellowship award. There are no guarantees.
In my STEM program, we were guaranteed funding, but we did not know how we would get it or exactly what it would look like. Some were funded by faculty, some had university-sponsored fellowships, some taught or graded. We reapplied to the department each year and they basically ranked us - the top 2 got university-sponsored, the next 10 got a training grant spot (we were lucky enough to have a NIH training grant during my time there), then faculty who had money paid for their students, and then the rest did some sort of work for the department - usually teaching, but sometimes doing the tech at seminars and for certain classes. I knew somebody at a different school who had a small stipend and worked nights at a department store, so unexpected funding challenges have been around for a long time (this was in the 90s). I agree…no guarantees.
We were guaranteed funding for up to 7 years but it was primarily through teaching positions. If you stayed on track and took (and passed) your qualifying exams on time, then the university would give you a one year “normative time” fellowship, but otherwise your funding was based on teaching each semester - we were guaranteed a teaching position (and hence the funding) for 6 years. I actually outlasted my 7 years of guaranteed funding and had to find an additional fellowship to fund me for the extra year I needed to complete my dissertation. That extra year of funding had not been guaranteed.
Mine was a lot longer ago than yours! My USPHS scholarship lasted a year or 2 (I can’t recall) and then the dept helped the students with positions in faculty labs, VA traineeships, etc. Bur after the first scholarship, the student did much of the legwork for continued funding
My situation was similar to yours. I didn’t even have funding mentioned in my offer letter for my Ph.D program at all. Just before the deadline for me to accept my offer though, I was told that they had funding for first years. Beyond that, they told me they weren’t sure at all. I got funded for 3 years but didn’t need 4th year funding since there was a loophole that let me get the remainder of the tuition credits I needed completely and totally waived in this case. Students who came in when I did got funded this academic year thankfully, but I fortunately didn’t need it.
For some clarification, the reporter did not pass on it due to lack of interest. She couldn’t get any staff or faculty to speak on their side of the story and be transparent about whether or not the Graduate Student Union (this is what she was writing her piece about) was still active or not in this case. It was important to the students and the public because there were huge budget cuts going on for both undergrad and grad programs (some of which are losing accreditation, which is nuclear) without any input from the students it seems.
I won’t say the university I attend for my Ph.D but if you go on Google and type in “Detroit News some worry about its viability” you’ll see that there was already coverage on program cuts early on. Use archive.ph and paste the link in to see the details.
Well sure, it looks like the Uni has lost 1/3 of its undergrads and a similar % of its grads over the past 10+ years. No question the school is facing significant budget cuts, as it should. Yes, Grad Union will be upset, as will faculty.
The Graduate Student Union is inactive though. My university is somehow pretending they exist though. No one other than the reporter who I contacted (a state rep forwarded her contact info to me after she contacted them).
Administration needs to take a cut first before everyone else beneath them does! They’re also hiring a ton of new admins despite bleeding money apparently. I’m sorry, but I’m adamant on this becoming a story.
What about writing an Op/Ed for your school or even the community paper? (Personally, I think your time is much better spent finishing your research and studies.)
I’m going to be real. Part of me feels if funding goes away with me fighting back and trying at least that I sabotaged myself.
I was already a passive participant in my studies at the Bachelor’s and Master’s level (see my previous posts that elucidate why) and I suffered the consequences. I get I can’t control others’ decisions, but if I don’t say something then I sabotaged myself.
No, what is sabotaging yourself is focusing on something irrelevant to you right now. You’ve already told us that you are behind in your teaching responsibilities; you are working on your mental health; you are working with a job coach to find a job.
Getting agitated over providing a story in a newspaper is a total distraction for you. It requires you to stew in the sauce that is apparently keeping you from moving ahead in your life- worrying about the “tier” of universities that you’ve studied in, the “reputation” of your program, etc. If you continue to mine the past for “here’s what went wrong” I am reasonably sure that you will NEVER be able to move forward.
Has your therapist explained what perseverating is- and why it’s different than just plain vanilla “thinking through” a problem? You grab hold of something (which in no way impacts your life) and won’t let it go. You’ve started numerous threads here trying to get folks to agree with you that your U is a third rate institution. Where does that get you? Nowhere.
Your path seems pretty clear to me. Work with your medical team. Work with your job coach/counselor. Get healthy, take your meds, make sure you are eating right and getting enough sleep and exercise. Focus on finding a job which will lead to a career which brings you joy and doesn’t cause too much anxiety for you.
Once you’ve mastered that, you can go back and relitigate every single “what’s gone wrong in my life” that you want. But until you’ve accomplished these things, you are fishing for yet another distraction.
Don’t get distracted. You’ve got enough on your plate right now.
And being adamant about a story? That’s for the editor of the publication to be adamant about. You can’t force anyone to write a story they don’t think is interesting or newsworthy or can’t get enough “on the record” commentary to be accurate.
Time to let this go, my friend. Focus on getting well.