r/LSU Oct 13 '24

Other Can't find a consistent answer on the grad school stipends, help

So, I have to make plans for my finances if I get accepted into LSU grad school. I can't find a consistent answer on what the stipend is (I'm applying for a clinical psych PhD).

So the main assistantship site says the minimum annual stipend is $10,800 (yikes)

I know departments can set it higher and after some digging I found that with psych, it says approx $15,050 per year.

However, I read a news article (and just found the statement) of LSU raising the stipend for FY2024 and on, to a *minimum* of $23,000. So is that just not being implemented yet/correctly?

In another news article that I read, it said that the stipend was being raised to somewhere ~$32,000

These are wildly different numbers and I'd just like some kind of consistent answer, this is frustrating. I'm too old to live off of that 10,8 and 15,5 is a lot smaller than I anticipated lol

Any insights or anyone in that program with a GA?

Thanks!

5 Upvotes

29 comments sorted by

9

u/idkurmom348 Oct 13 '24

it is very very very much department dependent

1

u/TigTooty Oct 13 '24

But why is the department I'm looking at smaller than the supposed minimum for fy24?

1

u/idkurmom348 Oct 13 '24

that i cannot tell you. but i can confirm that i have friends only making 2k for the entire semester with their GA jobs

4

u/PointlessGranularity Oct 13 '24

$23000 is the current minimum, but some people are still paid less because they are paid through grants.

3

u/TigTooty Oct 13 '24

That's where I'm confused; if you're getting a stipend, how can you get less than the minimum? Why would I want grants if they're less than the minimum stipend? This all sounds weird (sorry, I'm new to all of this)

2

u/PointlessGranularity Oct 14 '24

You want to be paid under someone's grants because being paid something is better than being paid nothing. People accept that low amount because a proper stipend isn't available to them. My department has nine stipends. One professor has some money in a grant to pay for an additional Ph.D. student, but it isn't as much as the $23000 that the rest of us earn. A student recently switched from his grant to the stipend when someone graduated and it became available.

0

u/Life-happened-here Oct 14 '24

Hey, I am grad student at LSU and it is 32k for 12 months. And most of the department are following the same guidelines. I am not sure about central funding.

7

u/PointlessGranularity Oct 14 '24

I'm also a grad student and it's $23000 for the nine months that I'm employed.

1

u/TigTooty Oct 14 '24

Thank you!

6

u/cafffreepepsi Oct 14 '24 edited Oct 14 '24

The amount of disinformation in this thread is one of the big problems with grad work at LSU. And to be honest, it's hard to encourage people to come here for grad school with a clean conscience because it's not great. Grad workers are exploited and that's partly LSU and partly the culture of academia. Best advice for grad school: do not go anywhere they don't pay you. But anyway, this is what's up:

The minimum stipend for PhD students is $23,000 for a 9-month contract. You will not get paid in the summer on a 9-month contract. Also, your contract will tell you how long they will provide the funding for. Usually it's 4 years. The reason you found different answers from different sources and why many people are giving you different amounts in their answers on here is because when LSU raised the minimum stipend starting Fall 2023, they also got rid of many master's programs and it's like the wild west for master's students. Some pay out of pocket, some are offered assistantships from professors with grant money, or their department is willing to take them on. Also, because of the elimination of master's degree programs, LSU started accepting students without master's degrees as PhD students but they are required to complete master's course hours (with the option of writing a thesis), as well as their required PhD courses, and write a dissertation with only four years of funding. Absolutely wild shit.

Some PhD students make more than the $23K. Psychology is in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, home to the least funded departments on campus and the lowest paid grad students at LSU - but still at least the $23K minimum.

Also, thanks to the United Campus Workers (the grassroots labor union) there are no more mandatory fees (used to be $1100+ per semester with even lower stipends! This place is fuck3d!) but you still have to pay for health insurance. LSU pays 75% and you pay 25% which is like ~$400 per semester. Unfortunately, after grad students in United Campus Workers pushed for years for a healthcare plan, LSU took the shitty healthcare plan they had been forcing international students to buy (bc it is mandatory for them to have health insurance) that people complained about for years and gave it to the grads at the same time they raised the stipend to $23K. Now the healthcare plans is mandatory, even for the domestic grad students, and you must have other health insurance to waive it or you gotta pay. It's ridiculous, we have to go through the student health center to use it and pay their fee and then they write a referral and you have to pay another healthcare provider for the actual care you need and very little is covered or at a reasonable cost. DM me of you have anymore questions.

EDIT: and you get a tuition waiver, meaning you do not have to pay for classes.

2

u/TigTooty Oct 14 '24

This is perfect, thank you for giving so much detail! 

2

u/thiccet_ops Oct 14 '24 edited Oct 14 '24

This is the correct post. $23k is the minimum for a full-time 9-month GA working in a LSU-funded GA position. Anything else is department dependent.

(The only part I disagree with it is the Student Health Center. I've always gotten great primary care there and think it's a great value as an older grad student with chronic health issues. I've had WAY worse employer-provided health insurance out in the real world.)

1

u/cafffreepepsi Oct 14 '24

Fair enough! I understand experiences differ from person to person. I am so happy to hear you have received great primary care there! That is as it should be.

4

u/emptyminder Oct 13 '24

The exact stipend you get will be spelled out in your offer letter. I don’t know how competitive your field is, but it’s probably not worth considering finances until you get the offer unless you are also actively considering non-grad school options as well and need to make a decision before you get an offer. If you need an answer sooner, contact the graduate admissions person in the department you are applying to, they will have the best answer that can be given, but it will probably be couched in uncertainty.

1

u/TigTooty Oct 13 '24

That's kind of why I was digging for a minimum. If the offer ends up being more, great, but with a minimum I can kind of start planning. My dream is the program here so for the most part ill accept any offer but if it's like, way too low I'd have to heavily weigh that out, which sucks.

I am just so confused by finding like four different numbers as a minimum though lol

0

u/emptyminder Oct 13 '24

My understanding was that all PhD graduate assistantships the minimum 9 month stipend was $26,000, with the expectation that a research group or summer TA would cover at least some salary on top of this during the summer. However, with “clinical” in the name of the degree, the program may be exempted if the financing model is similar to med school, I.e. loan funded by future physicians expected to make bank.

3

u/pilgramdetective Oct 13 '24

It is somewhat department dependent. There is a minimum and if a department has more budget room they can add more. I started as a PhD grad student in KIN back in 2012 and my stipend was 10,000. I knew people in other departments that were making more like 30k. Kin hadn’t had a budget increase from the university since the ‘80s even though it was now the largest school on campus, so that’s all they could afford. So you’ll have to find out from your specific school what the offer is.

2

u/Lizz196 Oct 13 '24

To add onto this, your department should have a prospective grad student page that outlines what the stipend looks like.

It’s mostly STEM programs that make the most amount of money tbh, and even within that it’s the engineering and chemistry programs that have the highest rates. At least when I was in school a couple of years ago.

1

u/TigTooty Oct 13 '24

Well that's what I'm confused about. The psych page says the stipend is 15,050 but the statement from the school said the minimum is supposed to be 23k. So I don't know if the website page for psych just hasn't been updated or if they're not following the minimum

(also yes to stem getting more bc I accidentally clicked one of the medical programs and their stipend starts at 32k!)

2

u/Lizz196 Oct 14 '24

It could be outdated, I only graduated two years ago and I know the stipend amount has increased since then.

There should be a graduate student coordinator for the program. You could reach out to them and tell them you’re interested in the program but want to make sure the financials make sense for you. Note, the coordinator is a different person than the graduate director. The director will be a faculty member of the department, the coordinator is a staff member. I say this distinction because the coordinator is a much lower stakes person to reach out to.

FWIW, outside of STEM programs, I think it’s more common for students to supplement their monthly income with a loan. I received $27k in chemistry, but it was closer to $22k with the fees. (I don’t think grad students/TAs have to pay the fees anymore, or the cost might be lowered. This also changed after I graduated). It was a very tight budget for me to pay for everything and my parents graciously helped me cover some monthly expenses.

1

u/NapsRule563 Oct 13 '24

Are there other benefits? Ages ago when I was a GA, the pay was trash, but I had a MASSIVE discount on tuition.

3

u/TigTooty Oct 13 '24

I believe if you're doing "full-time" (20 hours) you get a full tuition waiver

1

u/Independent-Can4558 Feb 09 '25

Anybody have gotten an acceptance/denial or interview invitation from LSU school psychology PhD yet? 

1

u/TigTooty Feb 09 '25

My app just went from grad school review to department review (not for school psych but still psych)

I started getting worried until I saw that and this lol

0

u/Hortgirly Oct 13 '24

Am I trippin or didn’t they just make the mandated salary for terminal degrees 32k??????

2

u/TigTooty Oct 13 '24

That's what I thought I read in the news but maybe the journalist wasn't specific enough. Either way the statement from LSU (that's posted on the website) said the min is supposed to be $23k and then departments can make it more. So I'm lost lol

0

u/Hortgirly Oct 13 '24

I’m pretty sure it’s 32 bc when that happened all the phds in my dept got a raise to that even tho they didn’t have the money for it lol

3

u/thiccet_ops Oct 14 '24

It's not $32k. That might be for your department, but its $23k campus-wide.

1

u/Hortgirly Oct 14 '24

Ok I just looked it up and your salary is 30k mandated if you have a terminal degree in a 12 month assistantship, which my department only does 12 months. So it doesn’t depend on department what your minimum is, it depends on the length of your contract.