Cost of Grad School

cptofthehouse
Sun, 31 Aug 2014 18:40:46 +0000

The situation with fellowships, tuition remissions, stipends differ from school to school and even among programs at schools. For instance, back in our day, going for a PHD in economics at UChi, meant a likelihood of getting a “full ride”, living expenses included if you lived the poor grad student life, with no loans, but if you were at the med school or going for your MBA, you were unlikely to get a dime. You took out loans.

However, these days, from what I’ve been hearing, many programs that once met full need and including stipends for living expenses are also including loans in their packages. That’s quite the blow for those who want to go into disciplines highly unlikely to result in jobs that will pay enough to make taking out that loan a good business decision. If a discipline or field is ones passion and is worth paying for, that’s one thing, but the chances of it being paid for are very low. Jobs have always been few for a lot of those areas, but at least back in my day, you were not likely to go into debt doing future study in it. Just meant a few years of your life living poor but doing and studying what you love.