The Rising Cost of Knowledge: Academia is Failing Non-STEM PhD Students

Passion alone can’t pay rent — humanities and arts scholars face growing hardship as universities slash funding.

Several universities recently announced a suspension of doctoral admissions in response to the halt of federal funding to research institutions by roughly $4 million.

This is not new - the effect of underpayment first ripples outwards with students in non-science disciplines. Last fall, a student received an email from Boston University saying the university decided to halt doctoral applications in Humanities for the 2025-2026 admission cycle after the unionized strike to raise annual salary. The English Department at the University of Chicago now only opens the admission to those with a specialized interest in media aesthetics while other tracks of interest are shut down.

Among all doctoral students, those in Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences have long endured the lowest stipends, barely enough to cover basic living expenses.

While the stipend gap grows even bigger, the baseline of a hard-core science major's monthly stipend was unreachable for students in Humanities. From 2015 to 2019, STEM candidates out-earned Humanities candidates by about $5000.

The pandemic imposed more difficulties, doubling the financial pressure for PhD students. Most had to deal with an inflated workload with everything turned online, and students in non-traditional science majors even observed a drop in the rate.

A PhD student’s income partly relies on teaching assistantships, but TAships come with hidden pressures. Unlike seasoned professors, doctoral students must quickly master course material while learning to teach. “Everything was new, and I was just another student figuring it out,” said Isa Li, a final-year Anthropology PhD at New York University.

Li was lucky enough to receive compensation from teacher assistantship (TA) given that it is separated from the annual financial package. “But for other schools, compensation was not guaranteed if TAships were a part of the regular stipend,” she said.

PhD students in Social Science, while some technically qualified as STEM majors, are similarly underpaid. With an escalation post-covid, however, the rate for Social Science candidates can hardly catch up with candidates in hard-core Science majors.

For most PhD students, saving money is impossible if their stipend is their only income. Except for Business PhDs, stipends in other disciplines fall below the 2024 U.S. median cost of living ($3,851/month) and are quickly drained by basic expenses. Li sustains herself with savings from a previous job and her partner’s support. “But if you’re single or came straight from undergrad, the financial burden doubles,” she said.

Almost every PhD student has to work during breaks in order to finish their dissertation in five to six years. For students who only have a 9-month financial package, they earn none during the summer.

Humanities scholars often miss out on additional funding opportunities that are more common in STEM fields. “In disciplines without lab research or substantial external grants, the work is harder to quantify and visibility is limited,” explained Professor Weiskott. Unlike STEM fields, where tangible results like experiments are more measurable, much of the impact in the Humanities is often considered as abstract and long-term, making it harder to secure funding.

“But so much work is happening. It has value not just to grads' career development but to the university's overall intellectual profile,” as Professor Weiskott commented.

The insecurity only aggravates towards the end of the program. The university may halt one’s stipend if one’s research exceeds seven or eight years, said Li, “but seven-year is quite common.”

The level of funding a department receives is closely tied to the financial strength of its field in the broader economy. “Majors like Chemistry benefit from substantial support from lucrative industries such as the pharmaceutical sector, whereas humanities programs rely on donations or grants from nonprofit organizations,” said Li. Technology firms are more willing to invest in STEM fields, further widening the funding gap between disciplines.

The number of PhD students slightly increased after the pandemic but with no intent to bounce back entirely. The doctoral student body was roughly 48 students per institution for each new admission cycle before 2020, and has shrunk to 40 students post-covid, surveys from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) reveals.

A decline in enrollment is more revealing in Humanities and Arts departments. “Our department has unfortunately seen a decrease in applicants within the last 5-8 years,” according to the graduate advisor Hunter Morelos-Clark from the History of Arts Department at University of California, Santa Barbara. This year the department received 38 applications compared to 54 applications in 2019.

Doctoral candidates in public universities located in states with higher cost of living may face extra financial burden. In 2022, the median stipend for English PhD candidates at private universities barely reached $30,000, while public universities offered nearly $10,000 less.

These fields remain a significant part of the academic landscape, with PhD students in Social Science, Humanities, and Arts making up over one-third of all PhD enrollments in the U.S., even in the face of financial hardships.

Almost every PhD candidate in those disciplines has foreseen the financial strain before committing more than half of a decade to their academic pursuit. “Many of us knew the challenges before we applied, but we still chose this path because we love what we do,” Li said.

Numbers and statistics are more desirable than thousands of lines of text analysis when it comes to the evaluation of one’s contribution to academia. Inevitably, “a choice of discipline translates, in effect, into a choice of salary during the Ph.D.,” said Professor Weiskott.

Yet, just because they did not do their research for the money does not mean their work isn’t worth investing in. History students unearth the past, looking for patterns that could prevent today from repeating the past mistakes; English scholars untangle how language fosters communication; and Anthropology candidates decode complex social phenomena into illuminating insights. Their work enriches the way we see, think, and connect.

They deserve more, and universities can’t afford to ignore it any longer.