D1 is in a fully funded PhD program.
D2 just got accepted into a dual JD/MBA program. She got a nice scholarship, but the bank of Mom and Dad is paying for the rest of it.
The first time was for a professional Master degree (City Planning). The first year was paid for with a university funded research assistantship where I got in state tuition and a stipend. The second year, I found another research assistantship that also waived OOS tuition and have me a stipend. I could pay for in state tuition OOP.
The second time was for a doctoral program and it was fully funded with a stipend. I also taught classes later on after passing comps. I had worked for several years so I also had savings if necessary to supplement my stipend.
Both times, I lived a modest but comfortable lifestyle; I had roommates, and no car. Ate at a nice restaurant (sushi) maybe once every two months. Both times parents were available as a safety net but I fortunately didn’t need them.
One kid is considering grad school (masters). If so, I have no problem paying for it.
I wanted a law degree but went for a MA in Political Science because my company would pay for it. My husband has an assistantship that paid for the first year. The department shut it down his 2nd year and he took out a loan for the full amount to finish.
My PhD was paid for by a fellowship. Just reiterating the advice of others; don’t get a PhD if you have to pay for it. IIf you are asked to pay, it’s a sign that they don’t think you’ll be a competitive candidate for jobs at the end of the pipeline.
Personally I would not pay for an MA in an academic (i.e. non-professional) area either. I’ve noticed that the cargo-cultism surrounding the bachelor’s degree has started to creep upwards to the master’s. People vaguely talk about “getting a master’s” as if it’s always a surefire way to improve your prospects, no matter what it’s in or what the goal of the program is.
IMHO all graduate school is professional school. It is job training, not self-development time. I have a very different non-utilitarian attitude about undergrad, but I am extremely pragmatic about grad school. Even a PhD program in, say, Comparative Literature is basically “college professor school.” Only pay for a graduate degree if it has a reliable and quantifiable financial ROI related to a specific field of work.
What exactly do you want to know?
PhD paid for with traineeships and loans.
If you don’t know the difference between a Masters and. PhD then perhaps you should hold off on any graduate school until you figure out your ultimate goal.
PhD in STEM full paid for. 3-yr grad student fellowship, then 1 year research assistantships and 2 years teaching assistantship. Covered tuition + stipend. Stipend only enough to cover room in group house. But once H finished PhD and got a job, we were able to move out on our own. Summers I was doing workshops (like summer school, but PhD students and faculty come together to teach/work on a specialized topic), and then once I knew my PhD project I was doing field work. All research was paid for by writing for grants. Everyone I knew was fully paid like this. Those who had no fellowship had a hard time since they had to TA the whole time. That was tough for them. A few did contract work in the summer, but that cut into your research time.
In my department, it was/is uncommon for PhD students to come in on an established project and work as a RA mostly on that and do your PhD research on that. In other departments, this was/is the norm. For M.S. students in my department, it was about 50/50. So many did come in to work on a specific project and carved out a M.S. thesis related to that. Master’s students were/are also fully paid on RAs and TAs.
H was fully funded for graduate school–teaching and research assistantships provided a a monthly stipend (H also had a fellowship for one semester where he didn’t have any TA-type requirements). Tuition was fully covered as well. My H also had money from the GI Bill (he served in Vietnam). When he was in grad school, his department at Harvard wouldn’t accept a student that it wasn’t willing to fund.
My son-in-law is currently in a fully funded PhD program (UNC). He pays no tuition and gets a monthly stipend for working as a research assistant. The prof for whom he works will be his dissertation advisor.
I think anyone who is in liberal arts and sciences and headed for an academic career should think long and hard about paying for graduate school given the difficult job market in some fields. A friend’s D has a PhD in English lit–she has been looking for a tenure track job for two years–she supports herself by doing freelance editing and teaching expository writing at two colleges (she is only an adjunct and is paid very little for teaching a class–no benefits). If she had loans to repay for grad school, she couldnt make it–luckily she was in a fully funded doctoral program.
@Bromfield2 Brings up another point. Many departments in my field (Environmental Life Sciences) guaranteed funding for a certain number of years. If you came in with your own 3-year fellowship (maybe 1/4 did?), it was easier to get into grad school since the school only had to guarantee 3 years. Everyone entered a lab (the group of grad students and post-docs headed by a professor) and that professor provided the RA. Some professors were poor (didn’t have much grant money) and weren’t allowed to take grad students (because they couldn’t fund them).
I found out that I still had funds available under the GI Bill so I enrolled in an M. Ed. program part-time. Taught in a private school by day and took evening classes and summer courses. I’m not sure if educational benefits for veterans today will also cover grad school.
I worked, lived at home and paid cash for undergrad and then took out loans for my MA degree. I wish I had known enough to apply for my Phd and get it paid for.Ugh.
H worked, lived home and paid cash for undergrad and had his employer pay for his two masters degrees.
Son entered Phd program with all expenses paid by that program but left to go in a new direction. Son then had his employer pay for his MS degree.
D is now in a job that will pay 50% of her coursework. I hope she takes advantage.
Daughters bf in a job that will pay for advanced certifications. He has completed one at this point.
In many Ph.D. programs you will not be able to do any work on the side, just saying. Your PI will expect you to be in the lab at least 80 hours a week. Summers are not time for fun - summer quarters are also funded, so research continues.
Master’s degrees are terminal degrees in many professional (non-academic) fields, e.g., in business (MBA), in engineeering, and in public health related areas (MPH). In some fields, to get a Master’s, one need to get a doctorate first (to get a LLM, one needs to get a JD, a doctorate).
When evaluating job offers coming out of my undergraduate school I explicitly looked at companies that would provide tuition assistance for further studies. While working, I completed a Master’s part time while I paid off student loans. Once my undergraduate loans were paid off, I levered up again and went back full time for an MBA. Borrowing like that to increase human capital works while you are single with no other family/mortgage obligations, but it is not for everyone.
Fully funded by the school, MA and PhD. I appreciate that more now than ever as the costs for higher education have skyrocketed for our kids’ generation.
Fully funded for MS (admitted MS/PhD, but departmental funding faded out due to financial crisis-of-the-day) - teaching assistantship, research assistantship, full tuition/fees waiver. If I hadn’t needed an extra summer to finish writing the thesis, I could have graduated with cash in the bank. As it was, I graduated without any left-over money, but also without any debt for that degree.
MSEd - studied part-time and paid as I went.
D has a Mellon fellowship: tuition + stipend. TA responsibilities will kick in the third year.
I had a Mellon fellowship for grad school. I also worked for the university’s summer abroad program in Italy for extra cash. Lived frugally and saved some money every year. But my COL was reasonable in Ann Arbor.
My parents paid for my masters, I doubt I would’ve been able to otherwise. Well, I would’ve had to go to a public school and do it part time. Or take a year off and save.