Being a PhD student who is thoroughly pissed off with the
state of the HE sector at present I “enjoy” collecting little snippets that
remind just how terrible it all is.
Today a vacancy for a “fully funded” PhD in the social sciences advertised
a stipend at just under £7k.
I have blogged before about the rates of pay for PhD
students here
in receipt of a full research council stipend rate. Some suggested the 42 hour rate wasn't right,
I still maintain that it is (based on my own experiences), but for the sake of
argument I will accept a lower rate in this post of 37 hours per week.
At £7k per year the “lucky” PhD student will earn a rather
derisory £3.42 per hour for their time.
To put that into context, it is 74 pence more than an apprentice (on the
government’s apprentice scheme) will get, but 30 pence less than an under 18
year old can expect from the national minimum wage. I can’t find a reliable source as to the
average age of a PhD student; most blogs and questions I've seen on Google
suggest around 26 years old. I would
guess intuitively that that is probably about right.
To take up a £7k per year full time PhD studentship, the student
will then be earning £2.89 per hour less than any other employee in any other (legitimate)
employment sector. What a wonderful
valuation of this potential student’s contribution to knowledge!
Now some may point to the fact the student also has the fees
paid to the university. Is that really
something anyone in the HE sector should be pointing out however? I can’t think of many jobs (make no mistake a
PhD is a job and should be treated as such) that require an entry fee each year? I think BA charge an attendance fee to their pilot’s
course, but don’t require pilots to pay for retraining each year!
I for one cannot understand how this situation comes about
in the HE sector. Based on my own
experiences, most academics in my field tend to be on the left politically,
either liberal left, or some of the more rabble rousing ones, on the far left. How can such a situation occur, academics who
criticise strongly the austerity policies of this government, have a real concern
for the plight of marginalised and poor, support a situation in which a vacancy
is advertised that just doesn't pay below the living wage, it pays
significantly below the minimum wage. It
isn't right and quite frankly is incredibly depressing.
And just as a post script to the previous piece regarding
Research Funding for Studentships, in the last 8 years there has been a real
terms decrease of £1,800 in the value of a full studentship. It is all quite sad, less than noble, and
frankly depressing.
