belledame222 and twf,
I did get a few comments throughout graduate school about people being surprised that I was there, but one of the interesting things was that my whiteness buffered me from much of that. People had to really know where I was from, and since I was from southern OH (which every Ohian knows is really poor) but going through my PhD program on the east coast, many people didn’t know. The default assumption was I must be middle class. Had a been brown or black, probably would have been a different story (even if I was middle class).

AleiraKieron,
I strongly agree about the internaitonal students; many of them are in a real bind, and if they lose funding the problem can be even worse. But I think that it is interesting to note that the poverty threshold for a single person under 65 was 9,827 in 2004. So by the time you add in the extra summer money, it would put someone above poverty. This certainly isn’t wealthy, but it is important to note this. The other point is that if a person in graduate school got really desparate and had to quit s/he could fall back on the undergrad degree.

I’m not saying that grad students are sitting pretty, but having just completed grad school myself, I got tired of hearing the complaints.

Leslie,
I took English classes both years I went, and I think nearly half of my classmates were Asian American, mostly Korean American. What perplexes me, is that we are talking about the middle of the US, where the Asian population is very small.

femilution said, “It is everyone’s choice to; perpetuate violence that they may have grown up with, to choose illegal ways of obtaining income(although this is loaded with what other equitable options are available), choice to be an ally or let a comment slide, choice to not let your circumstances destroy you and search for self empowerment, choice to ask for help, choice to…”

Certainly on some level pretty much all people have some choices, but my point is that ones position in the social structure impact the number of choices you have. For example, the person working for $5.15 an hour at Burger King really doesn’t have as many choices about where to shop, but also about whether or not to call out their boss on his sexist behavior. The risk of being fired in retaliation is much greater for the person in this position because s/he is much more likely to not have a savings or friends and family to fall back on in that event. I’m not saying poor people don’t have choices, but I am saying that the constraints and consequences of those choices are much greater.

kristen,
Just as a little side note here, I saw a recent study that found that students in more prestigous universities are not more likely to get a greater return on their degrees. But I feel for you on the loan tip. I know many folks who wouldn’t be able to get the degree without the loans. One possibility that you could look into, is trying to get outside scholarships from local organizations–most universities have a database of scholarships that may help some.

OriginalLee said, “I think it’s harder nowadays unless you’re dirt poor, because if you’re low-income or lower-middle-class, the student loan burden is tremendous (as kristen noted above).”
I hear this frequently, but I’m not sure if I believe it. I understand the logic behind it, but I think the major obstacle for the poorer kids is just getting into college in the first place. Plus, unless you are going to the cheapest of the schools, grants and loans don’t cover the full cost of tuition. Nevertheless, this is an empirical question, and I don’t know what the research actually says about this.

Now, I take out loans. A good chunk of them actually, so I’m doing alright. And when you get used to living on very little, the loan payments aren’t so scary compared to what (I desperately hope) I’ll be making.
International students aren’t so lucky. They can’t take out loans and are legally barred from working. Nor are students who don’t get funding, and at least one major department here (at a Big Ten U) only funds about half of their grads.

Now all that having been said, I chose this life knowing damn well what I was getting in to. It’s a trade off: I’m never gonna make much money, but I get to do exactly what I love doing, and I’ll get by. But for those grad students with 50 booze budgets there are grad students who decided whether or not to eat lunch.

That’s a useful distinction, thanks.

Yeah: -expectation- also plays a part, here.

of course, if one is a grad student who does -not- come from the middle-and-up, then other stuff gets added on as well, I imagine: feelings come up when classmates talk about “poverty” as though they were on the same page as oneself when in fact no such animal; maybe ambivalent feelings about “moving on up” if it means leaving parents, family, friends behind? I am speculating, and extrapolating from similarly expressed sentiments i have seen/heard from some folks at one point or another.

Most grad students are not poor. Not in any kind of an absolute sense. However, grad students are treated like they are members of the middle or upper middle class, expected to behave that way, and are relatively poor by those standards.

My current PhD stipend is probably about the same amount as my mother makes, and she raised two kids on that (plus some child support from my somewhat better-off father). I’m actually not doing so well living off that right now, since I’m living in a very expensive area and also supporting my husband who currently lives in another city. But in general, for a single person, this is lots of money. Once my husband moves down here, it should just cover our thrifty-but-middle-class lifestyle.

The problem is, most grad students have middle class and upper middle class backgrounds. To them, not being able to afford a car and such is poverty. However, to those of us with working class backgrounds, we’re living in unimaginable luxury. The food I eat, the places I travel (for academic conferences) and just the level of respect I get from other people is much different from that of my background.

My mom’s family was very poor until my grandfather was able to take advantage of his 4F draft status to move up into management while his peers were off fighting WWII. Unfortunately, most of this advantage was wiped out by the cost of his final illness, so that my grandmother has been at or below the poverty line for most of her life. My mom and her siblings were lucky that the period of relative prosperity coincided with their teenage years, so they have college degrees, which allowed them to move into a solid lower-middle-class lifestyle and still help my grandmother.

The thing is, until very recently, education was a relatively easy and painless way to achieve upward mobility. I think it’s harder nowadays unless you’re dirt poor, because if you’re low-income or lower-middle-class, the student loan burden is tremendous (as kristen noted above). That 10 years of postgraduate payback is getting harder and harder to sustain, I think, because fewer and fewer of the people entering the workforce have the funds for discretionary spending. If you bring home $800 every two weeks and only have $20 for mad money because one paycheck is for rent and half of the other paycheck is for student loans, I think more and more people are starting to say “why bother?” to higher education and to the jobs that require higher education but don’t pay well - teaching, nursing, etc.

anyway my point is is that college is a double edged sword-it can give you some really great opportunities, but also put your butt in some serious debt, and in my mind what’s the point of continuing on if i have to pay upwards of 1/3 or more of my income to student loan corporations?