"I am churning out profit for a university that’s not willing to re-invest in me."
Isa Stahrfisher had run out of savings.
Purchases piled up on her credit card last summer, and to get her wisdom teeth out, she had to scrape together $3,000 out of pocket. When her dentist found cavities and encouraged her to finance the procedure, Stahrfisher couldn’t. Even with debt payments, she told them she was at her max.
She sat on the kitchen floor of the Tampa apartment she shares with her roommate, Olivia Lavin. Stahrfisher scrolled through TikToks about cheap meals, trying to make the $20 she’d budgeted for food stretch the week.
Stahrfisher, 27, and Lavin, 28, are doctoral students studying communication at the University of South Florida. They hope to work in academia and be college professors. For them and so many other graduate students, that dream means pushing their budgets to the limit.
Graduate students across the country often say their school-provided stipends aren’t enough to get by. Rising costs of living, uncertainty in research funding and a quickly evolving job market are hitting students hard, USF faculty senate president David Simmons said. Meanwhile at USF, fewer grad students enroll each year. It’s tricky to pinpoint a single reason, but graduate assistants say their low stipends certainly play a role.
Read more at the Tampa Bay Times