This Grad Student Advocates for Higher Stipends Using Cost of Living Data
In this episode, Emily interviews Alex Parry, a sixth-year graduate student at Johns Hopkins in the history of medicine. Alex is a strong advocate for increasing stipends both in his department and at Hopkins broadly and is deeply involved with the grad student unionization movement. Alex and some colleagues recently released the results of a study of stipends vs. the living wage for about a dozen peer institutions to Hopkins, and he explains in detail the methodology of the study and the patterns that they found, making a case for the urgency to increase stipends at virtually all US universities. Emily and Alex discuss the benefits of this approach vs. how PhDStipends.com collects data. Alex shares a powerful concluding message on the need for collective action among graduate students.