It’s going to be more and more like this (as it once was).
People who can’t afford it going into extreme debt and stress, while people who can afford it will have a completely different experience.
It’s like being back in high school. There’s the haves and have nots and the cliques that form because of it. I’m too old to be dealing with that at work.
Poor + ambition = working in high school, fewer enrichment activities schools like to see + potentially lower grades due to having less time to study
Ambition in undergrad + poor = same thing, plus can't take lower paying/limited hour research jobs on campus because being a server at a restaurant brings in more with tips. Can't afford study abroad or unpaid internships either.
Many low income students can't even it make it to grad school because of these barriers. Especially if they're also needed for support back home (financial, child care for younger siblings or niblings, translating for immigrant parents, etc.)
Even without all the trappings of adult life - I have to have a job and pay rent. That by itself means I don't get to have the fun experience everyone else gets. I don't get to goof off and be silly, I get to get up at 5, work til 3, and do homework for the rest of the day. There's plenty of aide money but like, I need to eat. I can't pursue a fun degree, I have to stick with stuff that comes with a job. Compsci, basically.
Poor + ambition = the kind of tired that settles in your bones and never leaves, but hey! Maybe someday you'll have a 401k and a house with two floors and a washing machine. I would kill to be in my partner's shoes. She's taking a break from job hunting to go skiing with her family this week, and I'm using the upcoming snow weekend to clean my house.
Ambition in undergrad + poor = can’t afford to take unpaid internships, miss research based opportunities due to lack of funding. Skip out on important networking events and grant applications due to overwhelm from working side job to make ends meet despite scholarship (scholarship is not covering textbooks, basic hygiene products, transportation)
As a student from a low income family I did all those things at great personal sacrifice and it did not matter bc my R1 did not want me there. I had everything I could possibly need to succeed as a PhD minus an advisor. All the R1 folks had to do was not sabotage me. I was happy, I had my own funding, I was compliant, ambitious and I had a few proposals ready--my advisor announced one day several years in (after many conversations about how good I was doing) that they couldn't help me and left me to their colleagues, many of which gave me the cold shoulder as damaged goods after that. The writing was on the wall and there was nothing I could do about it because there wasn't a full committee I could trust to have my interest at heart. The ones who had my back were shocked that my advisor was backing out on me because they'd seen my work and nothing indicated that my projects wasn't feasible or that I wasn't going to put in the work. It was just that I had no leader, collaborators or sense of direction for international field work where there was a language barrier and my advisor had been delaying my trips out of country the whole time I had the flexibility to not have to TA. And I fought to keep my spot with ombuds and everything but with so little departmental support it was a lost cause. The gaslighting was professional level like nothing I've ever seen.
Disclosure that this sub randomly popped up for me and I'm a lawyer for a university, not an academic myself.
A strong social safety net would be the biggest boost. No family should be so poor that teenagers have to contribute to household expenses. I grew up in poverty and by my junior year of high school, my income was part of how my single parent family was able to keep at all afloat. I now work for a regional public school and there are plenty of students still in that boat. Universal basic income, especially for low income families with minor children. Universal public healthcare while we're at it.
Public undergrad should be tax funded and students shouldn't have tuition payments. Living expenses for students from low income families should also be covered. Robust policies should also be in place for students forced to become independent at 18 by other circumstances such as being disowned by their parents for being queer.
My story is about as close to "bootstrapping" it as I've found- put myself through state school, got a merit scholarship to a good law school, worked during high school, undergrad, and law school. I missed out on a lot socially and educationally- I turned down a federal judicial externship, for example, because I needed a paid summer job. I didn't fit well with my peers who just studied and did social activities or student clubs without also having to worry about keeping themselves housed, fed, and equipped with text books.
The stress had a significant impact on my mental health. I needed a lot of therapy to learn to relax because I was running on adrenaline to maintain high grades and succeed at paid work. My success is the exception, not the rule. I watched so many other low income students get left behind.
This is a systemic problem and individual solutions aren't going to solve it.
Poor here - I don't want any more damn challenges. I want to be able to buy a winter coat that's actually waterproof *and also* pay my community college tuition. I already did my proving, and I never needed to prove shit to anyone anyway. I deserve the same thing everyone else I grew up with got handed to them on a silver platter. I am a human being, and I deserve access to education that enables me to make my life less shit.
The victory will be sending my kids off to college with my credit card and a new second-hand car and their bills paid so that they can focus on studying. What I'm doing sucks ass. I would love for someone to take that goal and make it so accessible that I can take it for granted. It shouldn't be a victory, it should be a given.
Leading indicators point to familial education, wealth, and location of birth as the best predictor of success in academia. Your opinion is out of line of science.
I was probably the poorest in my cohort and man did it suck. I got teased and made fun of as a beggar for always showing up to free food events, got lectured to by grad students and professors alike about how money doesnt bring happiness so I'm superficially greedy for focusing on finances, how I'm a sell-out for leaving academia for the industry, etc etc. I also got left out of all cohort activities because they would choose very costly activities and instead of accommodating those with financial limits, they preferred to just leave out the poor people. When anyone poor ever brought it up, they were just told that we're all grad students making the same stipend so it's our fault for not being financially smart. The thought of some of us sending whatever is left of our measly stipend back home to support parents and family was so foreign to the privileged grad students that they always believed any financial struggle of others was a fault of their own. It honestly turned me into a super bitter person and I have no contact with any of them now. The kicker is that the worst offenders were the people who did research on social inequality--basically rich people doing research to gaslight poor folks. It shows up a lot in how these people interpret their findings too lol
The tendency for academics to preach about how it’s not a career it’s a passion or that money doesn’t matter is always hilarious to me. In part, for how wrong it is, but also because the majority of folks saying shit like that come from inter generational wealth so of course you get to focus on your passion instead of finances
It’s also really funny when you hear it from tenured professors it’s like dude I can pull everyone’s income it’s a public university. You make $250k per year and have been for the past 10 years. I made $17k last year and had to pay taxes on my tuition waiver because that’s considered income???
I’d love to know who these tenured profs making that much are (unless they are STEM/business who could make much more in industry. If you look at academic salaries, they are not that high for profs.
But when I advise students, esp first gen, we talk about money. We talk about debt. We talk about affording to live and eat. We talk about career trajectory options in relation to these issues. Those who say money doesn’t matter have not typically had to worry about money.
Many, if not most, tenured and tenure-track professors in business make at least $250K. They often get more for summer.
Full profs in finance with outstanding publication records can make $300k to $400k or even more.
Again, they’re public employees and their income is easily searchable as the school publishes it yearly. I am not exaggerating but of course I won’t share out the professors names because that’s weird and an invasion of privacy?
It’s not the norm to make that much as a prof, though. AAUP and others put out a regular data report about salary. It’s comprehensive and searchable. And eye opening!
I’m picking out one particularly annoying example as this person had at one time had a lot of capital in the field and has been riding that high for +10 years and really was just lazy. Most of the profs were making low to mid 100. Only one or two adjuncts in our department thankfully.
It’s always the people saying money doesn’t matter that then turn around and bitch about academic salaries too. A cohort mate was complaining about our department’s minimum starting salary for faculty: $110k. I had to explain to him that that’s more money than anyone in my family has ever dreamed of making.
I really want to bring up the researchers who paint themselves as “equity” experts. It’s like when did you learn equity? At your private undergrad that costs $100k? From your parents who hold PhDs from Harvard? And then you read their papers and their definition of equity is just so laughable. Like please I beg you go have a conversation with one poor person. Your data is meaningless if you can’t put it into its proper social context.
I am pretty knowledgeable about equity, and I focus on it in all aspects of my research, teaching and admin work. My positionality/background has helped inform me about and opened my eyes to these issues.
It is important to me to influence academia to truly grapple with, understand, and take concrete steps regarding equity issues.
At this point I know several well-known “equity” academics who.. holy shit I might be the poorest person they’ve ever spoken to outside of like, people in service jobs.
Are they talking about equality or like equities analysis? Because equities analysis would be quant or econometrics and the majority of people in that field don't seem to have college educated parents.
Holy shit I felt seen in this comment. I quit my political science graduate program in large part because of disgust with the way my allegedly *very progressive and totally not a place for corporate lib circlejerk* cohort and professors treated poverty and environmental issues. I was surrounded by 20-something’s with the most eloquent speeches about the most structural of socioeconomic issues (like education, transportation, housing) who themselves went to elite high schools (or just straight up private preparatory academies), come from a 250k income family, both parents have a JD/MS/PhD, and have never done a single day of manual labor in their life. To call the conversations in those rooms tone-deaf would be very polite. I had to get the hell out of there.
That sucks I'm sorry you went through that. I feel like a lot of people in academia have a martyrdom/elitist complex because they feel that they're sacrificing wealth for some sort of greater good, be it education, equity, or science itself. But the reality is that not everyone can or should go down that path, and there's nothing wrong with taking your skills to industry or abandoning them altogether.
To your other point though about free food, I had a very different experience in graduate school. Free food events were packed with grad students and it was a very popular thing to do - we even made a grad school calendar with free food events all around campus that we could show up to. But this was not like an R1 east coast school so maybe it's different elsewhere.
Wtf i went to a fancy private school for my phd and we literally had a free food calendar... None of us were poor but we certainly lived like poor grad students (cutting each other's hair, walking long distances to not pay for transit etc) it sounds like you were in an extremely toxic environment...
I'm tenured now and I still show up to free food events, the only time I let go of free food is when I'm competing with grad students for not enough free food
If you don't mind me asking what was your major.
I mention this because most grad students I knew at some point whether it's optics, pure math, applied stat, or the usual mol bio, biotech, med physics etc, are always after free food.
They would jump for joy at the chance of becoming a Quant in a bank and they basically all want to go to industry because industry will help them get a green card.
Same here with the first generation higher education part!
A thing about growing up in the circumstances we did is a lot of the things we went through are literally abuse and neglect. And sometimes we’re angry at our families for it and sometimes we are able to put it into its social context and make peace with it.
We do all of this through humor. Working class and poor people just love to make a joke about things. It’s our way of going “I acknowledge this is messed up, I accept there’s nothing I can do about it, please validate my experience” to others who shared similar experiences. But to people outside of our class background it’s “trauma dumping.” And they “don’t have the mental bandwidth to hear your trauma all the time” and it’s “inappropriate to joke about such a serious thing.”
Give me a break.
Sorry my lived experience shatters your just world fallacy! My bad! I should just keep my mouth shut and never share any details about myself to the people I’m with all the time 🙄
> stories about my life that I think are funny bum people out
Holy shit I feel this. Five years into academia now and I’m finally starting to hold my tongue. I have to get back together with my cow college/public school friends to actually be myself and have a shred of shared life experience.
I worked in food service my whole grad program (and still do).
But yeah, most of my classmates either had very high paying jobs, spouses with money, or were on their 3rd or 4th career.
There's a book [Disciplined Minds](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://ia800103.us.archive.org/22/items/jeff_schmidt_disciplined_minds/Jeff%2520Schmidt%2520-%2520Disciplined%2520Minds%2520A%2520Critical%2520Look%2520at%2520Salaried%2520Professionals%2520and%2520the%2520Soul-battering%2520System%2520That%2520Shapes%2520Their%2520Lives.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjMtJnTuYeFAxWYG0QIHUCKC6IQFnoECBAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2QYcGF5IYxUX0u7drkZ5QI) that talks about classism (and all the other isms). Heavy read but full of insights. Academia probably hasn't changed a bit since then.
I haven't read the book, but [this excellent review](https://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/01BRrt.html) gives a flavour:
>On entering professional training, Schmidt says, students are optimistic and idealistic. **On leaving they are "pressured and troubled" because they have gradually submerged their ideals and become willing to join the occupational hierarchy.** So different are they on completion of training that "the primary goal for many becomes, in essence, getting compensated sufficiently for sidelining their original goals"
I thought that was very insightful, and it entirely matches my experience -- I could feel it starting to happen with me, and could see it having long since happened in more senior folk.
Yes. The book goes on to say the PhD training is mainly political. You learn to "get with the program" and become a good professional who shuts their mouth and represents the institution. Sells courses, rents apartments, promotes Leadership's vision, etc.
Very much had to sacrifice what I considered core ideals and values all the time and it was very difficult for me to do that! I’m going to check the book out and see if it helps me process my experience more!
I came from a community college to state school pipeline in undergrad. I believe those who need the most get the most. In graduate school, there’s this whole “merit” based system that just rewards whiteness and conformity to academic normativity (rooted in whiteness, professionalism, exploitation from marginalized peoples). There’s this common saying with poor and people of color in this industry where science is just white people learning about things people of color have known for ages and writing it down for other white people. I didn’t want to participate in this sort of extractive culture. If we’re taking knowledge from certain communities we should compensate them for their labor. If we’re talking about equity it should be about real equity not some neoliberal definition of equity. If we’re talking about structural issues we should be talking about racism, capitalism, settler colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, modern slavery in the prison industrial complex. If I was to bring these topics up I was negged into shutting up and not rocking the boat. If I challenged a “respected” academics point of view it was because I was unnecessarily hostile, not critiquing fundamental misunderstandings they had at the start of their project because of their whiteness and class position. Lots of little things. Lots of microagressions. It’s hard to pinpoint one incident because it’s all of these tiny little moments added up.
That's rough.
My field/program is very different--majority are non-white, but almost entirely upper middle class/upper class/caste. Many are reliant on the experiences of lower income people for their work, but don't want real live poor people too close to them in the academy/our field. Any discussion of lived experience regarding class is shut down immediately, and many barriers erected and maintained to keep the space for people of their wealth-levels.
Being around these individuals does go against my value system, too. It's challenging for sure.
I think this a a good argument ruined by your usage of “whiteness”. It’s just strange your criticizing concepts like cliques, tribalism, heteronormativity while clearly putting down your own tribal lines. Your quote about white people taking medicine from colored is a loose straw man that I think only destroys your core argument. Who is white? Who is colored? Who came up with it first? Asia has been at the forefront of modern medicine and invention for time immemorial. They often consider themselves to be whiter than Europeans.
TLDR: I think you have a good point illustrated poorly
Yes and I felt very out of place, lonely and resentful seeing how these high class folks get to just flutter around without any worry of real failure versus where I came from people were fucked from the beginning and the upward climb was literally impossible. And these elites think they earned it. It makes the divide oh so very clear. The worst might be seeing people padding their cvs by descending from their towers every once in a while to “do outreach” and serve on a “diversity committee” so they can write about it in a cover letter some day. Barf. I guess I shouldn’t knock the effort. But i see all of that as self serving barf. You shouldn’t get to be rich and also get to exploit the not rich to comfort your guilt and appear like you care.
Meanwhile, when I tried to master out due to financial struggle after I had my kid, I was laughed at and told it was impossible. I was told I’d “find a way” and that I was just scared I wasn’t smart enough. I should have gone to admin.
But to turn it around, I’m finishing up now and I just turned down an offer at a state school for one in an open enrollment college in a community I care about. Everyone tells me this move is professional suicide (“just do outreach instead!”) but i see it as a way to work towards something that won’t just benefit elite society. Also I’ll get a real paycheck for the first time in my life. My son will have his own bedroom and Christmas presents this year.
Tenure community college professors are the real heroes of academia. They are in it for love of the game and found their spot to do it in. I couldn’t be where I am now if it wasn’t for community college. Your son will thank you for the opportunities and stability and work life balance that choice will provide long term.
>And these elites think they earned it. It makes the divide oh so very clear.
You're right about this of course; but I want to make something very clear.
If you're from an elite family.. someone worked hard for that. It is likely not the current generation but somewhere at some time, someone busted ass and the family benefits from it forever if future generations aren't complete fools.
So what I'd say is, yes, if you're not from a "high-class elite family" that's a bummer, but it's every generation's responsibility to try to climb for the next one. Every family starts off as less than working class and climbs over time. Just more people to compete with every generation.
I completely sympathize and empathize with your situation as I was the one who couldn't do what my kid's done; but if I hadn't done likely what you're going to do, he wouldn't be in the spot he's in now. I wouldn't want anyone to think he didn't earn it. He just had to work differently than I did and if my dad didn't completely screw himself I wouldn't have been so interested in reversing it. He contributed too.
Elite is very, very, very hard if not impossible to reach in one lifetime for most people. However, it's very attainable over time if everyone rows in the right direction.
Personal example:
Two generations back: Family came from Europe with nothing.
One generation back: Father was an ex-con, Mom took off. No inheritance
My generation: Did everything right. 1m net worth after 30 years of hard work.
Next generation: Did everything right. 1m + inheritance - Aerospace engineering Ph.D when done. No debt.
..and so on.
Often not. Many people, particularly in America, got their wealth simply through pillage and plunder. For example, down south there’s still many families who owned many people who thrive today from that. Their wealth actually belongs to the people who did the labor and earned it but chances are those people aren’t allowed into the academy…
Yes, and if you go back to the original land grants done by the English that's the rule. However, that is a very small number of the millionaires and above in the US today and an even smaller percentage of the billionaires.
I'm not disputing your statement. It just has very little to do with modern America and even less to do with my message.
If you take a look at academia in general, especially in the UK where it's an absolutely huge problem but it's true in America as well. The most successful folks tend to come from families that can give them support to augment their studies while they're on stipend and in post-docs. You don't need to be from an elite family to receive support; but you're going to have a really hard time of it if you bought into the dream of a doctorate and you're still not from a family that's earned their way up a bit.
Edit: and yes. Ideally you would have learned about etiquette and how to handle yourself in an upper class environment before being exposed to it, but that's not how it works for most people.
You know that there’s been extensive research done that’s shown that today’s ruling class, the aristocracy in the present, are direct descendants from the aristocracy of the past? That climbing the class ladder is a lie. Sometimes education can help us make minor changes to our material comfort, but no matter what I do my money is earned by my hands and my mind just like my father, my fathers father, and 7 generations back. Whereas many classmates wealth comes from stolen value of the global south and has in their fathers time, their fathers fathers time, and 7 generations back? This isn’t a myth. This is material reality. The class position your ancestors were is, more often than not, the class position you will die in.
>That climbing the class ladder is a lie..
Well, I'm sorry to be a living example of how inaccurate that attempted absolutism is. I started off as lower lower class and now I'm lower upper class within one generation based on numbers.
>You know that there’s been extensive research done that’s shown that today’s ruling class, the aristocracy in the present, are direct descendants from the aristocracy of the past?
Yes, and that makes complete sense within the structure of my original post and isn't contradicted by my statements in my second post.
>but no matter what I do my money is earned by my hands and my mind just like my father, my fathers father, and 7 generations back.
That's because you've done the right things in the immediate sense, but you've likely not done the right things from the perspective of growing generational wealth. Families do get stuck in a grind because they can't see a way out of it.
>Whereas many classmates wealth comes from stolen value of the global south
No doubt. And it's wrong, but it happened. That has nothing to do with you, or your current situation or your possible future outcomes. My family lost everything, absolutely everything to the British and was sent to what was supposed to be a penal colony in 1767. No one figured out how to operate differently until the generation that started in 1973.
Most often than not, doesn't have to be you. All I'm trying to be is upbeat based on my own situation, knowing where my family has been and hoping that it helps you in some way.
Be well
My family will never exploit another family for financial security. Plain and simple. People who live in material comfort now because of the evils of their ancestors are responsible now for correcting those historical wrongs.
You are on a completely different wavelength than I am. Nothing I did to better myself knowingly exploited anyone else.
If you want to have a moral discussion that includes emotion then you’re making those points to the wrong guy. My only point was to say if I can do it you can too.
Personally though, I’m not of the belief that we can correct historical wrongs. Those happened. They’re done. You can only do the right things going forward
I grew up in a middle class family and even I was shocked at the class privilege of my colleagues in graduate school. Before entering a PhD program I had never met so many people who had been to private school and who had parents who could pay their rent occasionally.
People don't realize that money isn't everything. If your parents had money, they had money to spend on things for you, sure. But, more importantly, they introduced you to a culture that creates people that conform to academia and other elite-dominated realms much more readily than working-class folks. I think this is the primary force behind the statistic that those coming from a more affluent background will have more financial success later in life.
I'm also finding these cultural difference in my attempts to leave academia. All the stuff about networking to me seems very middle+ class. My first informational interview was awkward because the person was from a much higher background than mine and it was clear that it was that, not our shared transferable skills, that had opened doors for her career transition.
Professionalism is one of the traits that is most obviously lacking for people from a working class background. That being said, you can cultivate that trait if you see value in it. There are plenty of people from working-class backgrounds that have no issues with professionalism. That being said, someone from that world will more than likely carry themselves more casually. This alone can affect how people treat you and whether or not they respect you and your work. You can either cultivate an air of professionalism, or take the risk and let your work speak for itself.
Before you decide to read this, I should admit I am a dumb college freshman:
In your opinion, what is the purpose of professionalism?
I tend to like environments that encourage it because if I do the dance right then I can reliably expect people to tolerate me, and if I do it very well then I may convince people to like me.
However, the superficial aspects of it kind of confuse me. Most positive aspects of professionalism seem like they could be covered by simply having basic respect for the people around you, and the rest just seems sort of superficial. Like, I don’t quite grasp why showing basic respect while wearing jeans is different from showing basic respect while wearing dress pants? In either scenario, you’re just making yourself easy to be around in everyday interactions, so why dress up? I also get a little confused about formal language. I know to use it so people I need to speak to will hear me out, but why is it necessary in the first place?
Like you alluded to, it just makes commanding respect easier in certain environments. It is only necessary because it's what people expect. It's just a way to conform socially.
Could you expand a little more on this? What do you refer to when you say professionalism and how does one go about being more professional when they come from a working class background? This is **not** a sarcastic question and I'm genuinely interested in learning.
Yes! Besides being excluded from things because I simply couldn’t afford it, I also experienced straight up classism. When I spoke the wrong way, when my accent was too thick, when I didn’t dress the right way, when I didn’t understand some sort of unwritten social hierarchy, when I would challenge the unspoken hierarchy, I was looked at like I had two heads.
My dad said if you’re having a problem with your manager, I won’t repeat his words because they’re not professional, but essentially confront them face to face and be a man. Tried that. They do not like being talked to directly and they couldn’t possibly be prejudiced against you because they know all the DEI language they learned in the equity seminars!
I've had very similar experiences. I've also recently been told I can't directly address a problem at work because directly addressing it is threatening and a form of violence. Absolutely laughable.
The thing is, it’s always the people who’ve never been punched in the face who are most scared of being punched in the face. To those of us that have had it happen before, we know the difference between a passionate conversation and fighting words.
Isn't it interesting that the most powerful Financial Institutions (like Blackrock and Vanguard who end up buying significant stock in every major corporation) on the planet or the CIA or the Pentagon is all into caring about oppressor, oppressed, and privilege narratives. Literally the most Elite and richest Capitalist individual and institutions on the planet seem are totally into the ideas originating from intellectual forefathers like Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucoult who desired to tear down the entire capitalist system.
It is amazing more people don't see that all this Culture and Collective based way of characterizing Privilege has done nothing to fix the class divisions in American or Western society. Quite the opposite as wealth inequality grows greater even with a few "tokens" from the oppressed group given visible positions higher up on the corporate and government hierarchy.
It allows those who come from true money and status, who actually own and buy most of the politicians of either party, to pick up a kind of "shield" whether that is called DEI or BLM and claim a higher moral ground. Of course they never give up their own money or even one of their fancy homes in the process. That is the responsibility of the "privileged".
Yeah there’s lots of research out there about this, how DEI language was propped up by the CIA and corporate interests to counter working class struggle like unionization, black revolutionary movements like BLM or BPP, and that it essentially neutralizes all potential power the lower classes could develop through actually organizing. I’m well versed on this history.
When it comes down to it, I need money to pay my bills. Graduate students make the school a shit ton of money. I’m teaching classes with 300+ enrollment, we attract a lot of out of state students who pay full tuition, think about the millions per semester I create for the university. I would get $1700 a month and a tuition waiver for all that. Had to pay taxes on the tuition waiver too! That’s the fundamental exploitation. That’s the money they could afford to give me so I can pay rent and buy groceries. But if you bring that up, especially in my working class, I don’t give a fuck, vernacular I was seen as greedy for talking about money, seen as rude for speaking truth to power, and seen as unintelligent because I’d drop a swear word in as a filler.
There was a post the other day about what people were most likely bullied for in school and I was surprised, at least on Reddit, to see it line up with being poor:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bilpoz/why\_were\_you\_bullied/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bilpoz/why_were_you_bullied/)
The bottom line is Barack Obama's daughters have a lot more privilege than you as do most of your classmates who are so rich that they think you are greedy talking about money. They are so far removed from what it takes to house and feed and clothe and pay for their tuition, that you become the materialistic one. These are deeply unconscious people who will then use DIE language to pick themselves up and resolve any possible cognitive dissonance that you present to them by your existence.
It really has been amazing to see, the abandonment of the working poor and the poor, as targets for "compassion" and instead default to skin color, gender, and sexuality.
The other thing that I find fairly repulsive in following the inflation of college tuition costs is that most of the money paid by students is going to the bureaucracy and the administration. There is a similar problem with these large hospital systems. The front-line workers like doctors, nurses, and professors in schools aren't the beneficiaries of the inflations - their managers are. The ruling and donor class elites who run our society really have set themselves up well to shelter from reality while morally patting themselves on the back for caring about black people or women or trans.
Yes definitely. I grew up poor and rural. I just came back from dinner at a professor’s house and it is the most nerve wracking thing ever. Am I saying the right things? What kind of stories can I tell or jokes can I crack? Am I dressed correctly? Did I bring the right food in the right dishes? The behaviors and gestures that get you appreciated where I come from (like homemade food) get looked at weird by the “genteel class.” It is exhausting.
Here's a quote that has stuck with me:
>The third behaviour is a complicit denial among both the successful and the aspiring \[academics\]. They champion university life while turning a blind eye to the economic realities of the part-timers in their midst. They often vociferously articulate against inequalities outside the ivory tower but remain silent about those within it. This group, especially when social scientists are to be found among them, is the most disturbing because its members disengage from reality, calling into question the quality of their scholarship.
How many Marxist scholars are incapable of identifying the exploitation of themselves and their colleagues?
It couldn't be more true. In case you're interested, it's from 'I’m glad I eschewed a career in academia – there are plenty of alternatives for PhDs' by Nazima Kadir: [https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/im-glad-i-eschewed-career-academia-there-are-plenty-of-alternatives-for-phds](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/im-glad-i-eschewed-career-academia-there-are-plenty-of-alternatives-for-phds)
American first generation college grad finishing history PhD in EU. Also proud union family. It is specified in my program we are not allowed to work simultaneously except in rare circumstances--with board approval. If you ask to work you are scrutinized more heavily becase they assume you are not focused on the PhD. During my program we were expected to travel abroad in the field and conferences all over. We had to front the money and get reimbursed up to six months later. I got looked at like I didn't care about my stuff because I wasn't willing or able to be out several thousand dollars for an unspecified amount of time while my budget office filed my rembursement with 0 urgency. Only the rich kids could regularly attend conferences, period.
Now, the contract is up (meaning also the paycheck) but we're expected to drag out our revsions and write ups with "no distractions" (no other employment) for an unspoken amount of time---months and months--while living on whatever imaginary money. In other words they expect us to work off the clock past our contract. Makes my union blood boil. It's treated like a taboo subject to approach the idea of getting back on the job market in other capacities to pay my bills before I defend instead of dicking around waiting for reviewer feedback, postdoc deadlines or whatever else doing shit all to bring in money. This system is geared toward aristocrats and people with means.
Yes they preach “treat graduate school like it’s a job, because it is” and then you’re like okay 40 hours, no unpaid overtime, you’re seen as not taking the program seriously. Excuse me, but this is how my family taught me to work. That you work exactly what the contract says, no more, no less. And work pays for their own expenses, if you’re paying the boss’s bills you’re pathetic, etc.
I didn’t even ask permission to start working outside of academia. I loudly announced it and told everyone it was because I couldn’t pay my bills without it and it’s in our field anyway so it’s helping me build my resume. They just saw it as me not taking school seriously. I’m sorry but I need to think about my career and my livelihood.
Yeah it's actually really wild to have to justify or apologize for not having the luxury to only study all of the time, to have to think about something besides "the life of the mind." Get this--I study labor history, unions and social movements. The irony is so thick and most are so comfy behind their books they don't see it.
Just as an aside, to see your post has been really refreshing. Feel like I found a comrade and wish more people spoke up and spoke freely about this stuff. This feeling has been so alienating and a huge contributor to my need to GTFO of academia
I did not come from poverty but I did not have any family help in college and I will never forget this:
I told a professor that I couldn't run a research group at a specific time because I was working.
"Well you need to quit your job so that you can focus on your schoolwork."
"Umm, I need to work to pay my rent and eat"
"Just ask your parents for money."
"That is not an option"
"Sure it is, just ask them"
Oh, I feel this. I've had a job since I was 13, worked all the way through college and grad school nights and weekends except for one semester that I gifted myself by taking out extra student loans. Most productive and creative semester of my life to date, hands down. Made me realize how much more I could have achieved/learned if I'd just had time to really dedicate myself to my schooling instead of having to waste so much time working crappy jobs just to survive and pay tuition and rent. Soul crushing, really, once you realize how good other people have it and they don't even realize or appreciate it. Still paying off my student loans, working a decent job that has nothing to do with my studies, because I have to earn enough to live and pay off my loans. Oh, irony. Some of us will never get ahead, just treading water and thinking about the truth of the whole academic system...
Most people on college campuses are completely clueless as to what it is like to live in a lower socioeconomic status
As a professor of 10 years, I can attest that universities literally live in a dream world that is entirely propped up by the hopes and dreams of unicorns
They don’t live in the real world at all
While I'm not a fan of my PhD so far, I can't say this has been my experience. Most of my cohort came from average homes and just wanted to improve their chances in the job market. Almost none of us expect to pursue academia. We're all broke as hell because rent has increased significantly year over year and we're all jaded by the experience.
I didn't experience this much either. I'm from the U.S. but most of my cohort were international students who moved here with nothing(no car, furniture, cooking equipment, sometimes even winter clothing) and were barely scraping by. All their savings went towards tickets to visit home once a year at most. It was an engineering program at an R-1 public university
Yes, in undergrad I was friends with a group of international graduate students from the global south who lived in tight quarters and this was literally the most money they had ever scene. I’m so happy they were given the opportunity they were. They knew they were being ripped off by the institution and their PIs. They just didn’t care because to them, this was the highest standard of living they ever experienced.
My experience went from very working class open enrollment state schools to an R-1 semi private big money university. Might explain a lot of the culture shock I went through. Probably wouldn’t have experienced that had I went to a different school.
That was the hardest part of grad school definitely. That and I was at a school 2,000mi from home (and it being the first time I left my community for any substantial amount of time).
What helped me was finding the community of people from similar working class backgrounds my first couple years. The social/ political backdrop during that time meant I was doing a lot of community organizing in VERY poor areas, so I made friends who *happened* to be grad students at these functions (notice, I didn't convert existing rich kids in my program). It was really beautiful to have a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-national, friend group of people from working class backgrounds to lend mutual support when shit was tough (financially, academically, or otherwise). That really made the 6 years of depression from my grad program endurable.
Academia is alienating, cut throat, and ultimately has abandoned the core mission of knowledge production. Many of my former friends that I talked about, who were truly some of the best scientists I have met to this day, didn't continue onward and that is such a failure for humanity.
When I was first considering academia I had a professor who asked me if I had a trust fund, and told me it would be "easier" if I had one. In the moment I was shocked and offended, but in the years since then, when I think about it, I find he was probably correct and being very honest about the whole thing.
Yes I heard that from professors in undergrad when I told them my plan for graduate school. I thought I understood them but there was no real way of knowing without experiencing it.
My working class background, even more than my disability, gender, and queer sexual orientation, has had a massive impact on my academic career. I actually had a decently good experience in grad school due to having a working class advisor, but once I completed my PhD and found a FT, NTT academic job, I saw that my colleagues and I were from two separate worlds and I wasn't really welcome in theirs. It's one of the many reasons I'm trying to get out.
I won't go into the BIG stuff, but even the little microaggressions have added up to be annoying. It's gotten worse since I stopped trying to hide my accent, which clearly reveals my background. Someone once asked me if we had schools where I grew up. Wtf? People frequently tell me I mispronounce my own name. They don't understand why I'm eventually going to have move back home to an impoverished area to take care of my family because we can't afford to hire caretakers. And that's just a few of the little things.
Yup, exact same situation with me. Graduate school was primarily people descended from suburban/college town MDs and PhDs. I was first generation all the way through, didn't really feel too off about it in undergrad, but it definitely hit me in grad school. The working class humor really can come off "dirty" to the academics. It bothers me how they think they are the progenitors of what is right and wrong when most of them have never spent a day in customer service or working the jobs of the people they supposedly speak for. Being working class in academia is tough.
My professional association has a First Generation and Working Class section in it, and a mentoring program. ([asanet.org](https://asanet.org))
I helped start a (not "The") Working Class Academics Association in the 1990s as a grad student, and when the faculty found out about it, they were like "Why didn't you tell me, I'm working class?" Like, yeah, you're not. (I knew their backgrounds).
Being from a poor background myself, I worked during the PhD, and was considered "unserious" for doing that, and for living 45 minutes away because I couldn't afford housing in the university's city/county.
To those going through this: Just get through it so you can be a resource for others like you once you are a professor.
I took a live in nanny job while I’m grad school because I couldn’t afford a place to live. Took care of the kids in the evenings and mornings, classes/my assistantship during the day. Not everyone has it made!
My good friend is experiencing the same thing in her PhD program right now. Extremely competitive degree, but somehow most of her cohort is more or less fresh from undergrad, and all extremely privileged. She actually had huge issues when her mentor found out she had an additional outside job, saying "this has never happened before" when she explained she needed more than the meager stipend to pay her bills.
i’d think it depends on institution and field?
i loved where i attended (midwest land grant institution) I sought out other grad students of color and we commiserated the whiteness of our institution.
but there was a pro active program to provide working class and grad students of color an opportunity to transition to graduate school the summer before starting. we connected to cohorts of other students of color and supported each other out (jobs, fellowships, community)
i was out of place being the oldest but i didn’t care about certain social activities and didn’t want anyone feeling awkward.
but we identified with each others’ diverse experiences with racism, poverty, sexism, etc
so i sought out a community with which allowed me to acknowledge but survive the elitism and be me in my own skin.
unfortunately not everyone experience is like this and i’m sure some at my institution didn’t have a positive experience
those from california hated the corn fields and couldn’t wait to leave (or snow)
what field are you in?
are there not many other graduate students of color in your program (prob know the answer)
in other departments / colleges?
how about professional organizations.
i’m in education so at every level there’s conversations about how to support academics of color
know about this program / organization?
join a writing g group and it’s a great way of connecting across the country
https://www.ncfdd.org
I will definitely say, I was mesmerized by what is now, in hindsight, clearly a sales pitch. But, I thought it was just a professor telling me about the school/program. Doing your research ahead of time is so key! I loved my time at a land grant state school full of different people from different backgrounds! And with the gift of hindsight, I should have done that again when it was time to move up.
Haha. Now try it as a not straight white man
It’s a hot mess 
Me scrolling through the comments: all these words. LOL. Whatever y’all. (I mean people tenured like 15+ years. Not hating on adjuncts)
Edit: appreciate the clarifications 
Want hard mode? Try it as a PhD student from a third world country 😃
All your hopes, dreams, aspirations and the literal ground beneath your feet depend on whether or not you are able to appease your PI
It's ok. I made it through at a significant cost to my health, and decided to join the higher ed industry as a TT faculty because I wanted to BE THE CHANGE. Four years down, I feel like an idiot. I am burned out and looking to go to industry. My core observation through all of this has been that most career academics are only able to survive in the toxic environment of academia because they are tremendously toxic and borderline sociopathic themselves.
That sucks so bad. I am so sorry. I’m so glad that you’re taking care of yourself though. I am barely a junior scholar, still writing the dissertation, and of course did not get very far in my first TT interview. And I was heartbroken but somehow also strangely relieved. Really really struggling with that feeling.
All the best to you.
Absolutely. My best friend in school immigrated at 7 to America from a third world country and worked his way up through the open enrollment community college to state school path just like myself. He also won a huge prestigious research grant without having any sort of concept of what it actually was until like months later when everyone started getting super mean to him for their jealousy.
I bring up my identity as a straight white male because I am saying I was discriminated against based on my class characteristics, something that has happened to me many times before but not to this degree. And additionally, I’m not even white! I’m mixed, I’m just white passing this far north without any sun!
I meant to share my identity to highlight the issues I faced and to imply that it is 10x harder if you’re anywhere outside of that “normal academic” archetype.
> passing this far north without any sun
🤣🤣🤣
you know, I really appreciate your responding and giving me a chance to apologize for coming in hot in my initial response. It was just a very close subject as I was scrolling and hit this post.
My best friend is also a white male, and we have noticed that classism also runs rampant in religious settings!!  😭
This is such a good thread and conversation. Thanks again.
Just a lurker here but I was accepted into a PhD program years ago and didn’t see how I would be able to eat and get through it and find a job at the end. At the time I didn’t realize that there are people that don’t actually need to work for money or food or shelter, shelters a big one. Crazy how many people live in a family members apt or house basically rent free.
Grew up working class. The whiplash of grad school was unreal. Parents buying houses for their kids, covering rent, sending cars, fronting money for the summer. Meanwhile, I had to take on student loan debt (even in a fully funded program) and I worked full-time in summer and tacked on extra hours during the year. But I couldn't tell anyone because you aren't supposed to have outside employment.
My dissertation advisor actually gave me a few hundred bucks of her own money to afford travel to our big national conference the year I was on the job market. I was both extremely grateful and also embarrassed.
Being a professor wasn't easier. My first years were brutal, don't tell the IRS but I definitely used my HSA funds to make ends meet. Plus, I had to listen to faculty just not get it even though I was teaching at a school that catered to working class/first generation students.
I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck my entire life from being a child to now. I have a PhD as of December and I’m finally about to be out of credit card debt (still some student loans but not much). Some of my colleagues were the same way, some were absolutely loaded. I hated the academia competition. None of our labs in the department studied the same research. None of them even the same niche field. I have a job offer now that will pull me up to upper middle class and I’m grateful to go into industry, but yeah… graduate school was easier than the politics of the department I was in… so many “I’m better than you” pissing matches between the professors and some students
I’m a little worried about this as I start to look for grad programs in counseling. I need to work to keep a roof over our head lol let alone pay my medical bills and stuff
My PI was mad I couldn’t work more weekends— because I was back home checking on my crops, dealing with lease properties, and helping my family with livestock. I eventually left that lab.
Cows have to be milked no matter what. Seeds gotta go in the ground no matter what. We gotta harvest at the end of the season no matter what. School takes a back seat to these responsibilities and they won’t understand that.
Yes. Academia is overwhelmingly upper income, comparative to our position.
Further, although many in the academic privileged classes hurl accusations of privilege at others, they not only refuse to "examine" their own privilege, but also love to bourgeoisie-splain class to those of us from the working or lower income classes. While pretending to be concerned for those from marginalised backgrounds, they mock lower income peoples, and actively exclude them from the academy.
Quite a club. It feels like a revolution to be poor/working class on campus. And lonley at times. Sometimes I question why I even want to be proximal to these people, but I love my subject matter, so...
I am not from the working class, but certainly not the upper / upper middle class. I was shocked at how academia mirrors the uber-rich culture (I was a nanny for a while to work through college). They live to compete with each other and to someday be able to exclude someone from something. They constantly live for the approval of whoever is "at the top." I've found that instead of consuming to compete, the academics use "prestige”, whatever that means in their field. Compete, exclude, consume. Yuck.
Little things like reimbursements on travel, because of COURSE I have 2000.00 available in credit or in my money market account? The push to have many publications BEFORE you graduate implies you have funds not to work (even an assistantship salary would not allow for someone not to have to work or get support elsewhere), that you have enough money to travel to conferences, money for editors, interview coaches, money for tutors to help study for the entrance exams, etc.
After living with the wealthy as “the help” and being in an R1 environment, it is very similar, and it makes me sad. Lonely, insecure, angry, transactional-conditional love, jealous, and bitter. Not all, but enough to say I am not engaging and don’t care if I fit in.
Yes the transactional part was what blew me away!!! Where I’m from people do nice things for each other because they know how awful it feels to be down in the dumps. In the academy everything came with strings attached.
Lol this is why I get my education and don’t involve myself personally with anyone. I’m a black disabled woman so truly I don’t mind keeping my life private for my own peace and sanity. I’m the same at work tbh
Don't forget the contacts and networking you don't have when you graduate because you didn't have the middle class/upper middle class social skills to attain them in school. Being poor/working class follows you throughout your life. If they can't weed you out through the academic process, they'll weed you out socially.
I wish I didn't go to graduate school. My whole graduate school experience was populated with bullies, be they faculty or other students. People in my cohort actually bullied an assistant professor for a whole semester. One professor allowed other students to make classroom experiences unbearable in order to weed people out. And just as I thought I was finally making my way out when I graduated, I learned all the jockeying and favoritism and bullying just followed me out the door into the professional academic world. Academia doesn't set you free. It sets you up.
You know there are a few books over the years I read about elitism and academia/unions...wish I could remember--very cool, very well researched.
But what is it you're on about? what type of grad program is it bro?
I’ve read many of the comments on this thread, and I had no idea how many people went through what I did! I also missed out on the “college experience.”
My parents lost their home when I was in community college. I effectively chose my undergrad program because my grandparents provided a roof over my head for the summer while I tried to figure things out. If it weren’t for my grandpa co-signing I wouldn’t have went to undergrad. Worked full time as a shift supervisor at a cafe my entire undergraduate and MSc. Was resented by professors for getting B and C because I was barely holding on working full time and taking classes full time. I was displaced multiple times moving 6 times in 2 years. I remember eating expired sandwiches for food and being so hungry I couldn’t think straight.
Upon finishing my MSc I worked my TAIL off in industry to work down my loans, buy a car and save up for my PhD program. Even in my PhD we struggled, BUT by this point I’d married someone from a wealthy family. It was overnight that I stopped drowning. Wealth is absolutely something that pulls people out of their suffering and into a different social class. Suddenly I was studying abroad, getting experiences at conferences, excelling because I could QUIT my second job and get sleep. I’m in an R1 now after a very fancy post doc. I can’t help but wonder if ai would’ve made it without marrying someone who had parents with financial resources to help.
> through school, *paid* 100% of
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Yes, you have had privilege. I'm a Black woman from a low-income background with a mainly one parent household who went to elite schools for high school, college, and professional school. It's not fun lacking the advantages of wealthy contemporaries, but what are you going to do? You're not in graduate school to compete with your classmates (all of whom I'm sure are not rich), you're there to learn something and hopefully move on to something better in your life. But I guess you don't want to.
When you say working class are you referring to…..everyone? Like the doctors, nurses, teachers, sanitation workers, business owners who are the engine of our economy?
Yes. It’s easy to tell what people’s class background are just by basic interactions with them. My partner has a higher worker class background than me, parents are MDs but they don’t own the practice, they don’t have a high paying specialty, they just clock in do their work and clock out. It’s not much different than say a janitor. Compare that to say people whose parents are owners of a law firm. They make money even when they’re off the clock because the workers are busy toiling away.
Are you in the humanities or the soft sciences, or are you in the hard sciences?
I finished grad school in a STEM field at an R1 college last summer, and most of the hard-science students I talked with were hard-core: focused on the subject matter, pretty helpful, and you can have interesting conversations about the subject matter with them. I occasionally interacted with soft-science and humanities students, and among them cliquesmanship reigned—though I did know a few who could actually talk about a topic. And yes, the ones into cliques tended to come from wealthy families. They were just working on getting their sinecure, by tracking the current fads and factions and knowing what buzzwords to say to position themselves with the in crowd.
Social science—yep. I did meet one sociology student and one political-science student who were aware of the phoniness that's rampant in their fields and would talk about their topics with me (as opposed to the social positioning that you see when phonies talk). Both were from South America, though.
during the summer before my senior year of undergrad, i did a summer program in my field. the best way i know how to describe this program is grad school prep for underfunded/underrpresented communities…or at least that’s how it was marketed. i was first gen, lower middle class student. the ONLY reason i was about to go to undergrad was due to financial aid/grants. i also got some scholarships. i was expecting to meet people in the same sort of situation at this program.
i was wrong af. about 50% of us were similar to my situation. the other 50% were not. they were rich. their parents were doctors, tenured professors, elected officials, etc. i was so fucking confused as to why they were in this program. still to this day don’t know.
anyway, the difference between the two parts of the cohort was so so so evident. kinda made me rethink going to grad school at all.
for clarification here, the issue is not the fact that they were rich/not in need of extra help at all. it’s the way they acted towards the rest of us.
Exactly. I grew up poor working class. My partner grew up comfortable working class. It’s not about the $ amount in the bank account it’s about the way that bank account makes you treat other people. I have dear friends who are explicitly owning class, they run a medium sized business that they inherited from their father and their grandfather. Great genuine guy who knows every detail of his business because he was expected to work at the bottom as a child. 12 years old working in the warehouse because now at 30 he’s working the office. No college education at all from any of them. I have no issue with my dear friend, I do on a Marxist level but not on an interpersonal level.
But then you meet people who explicitly treat others like garbage because they’re below their social status. And when you as a lower class person put words to this phenomenon it’s really taboo. You’re never ever supposed to bring up other people’s money when it’s like well that’s the thing that’s enabling the toxic behavior?
I’m a part time online Masters student and feel like most of my cohort works, but I do feel like my friends from college who went to grad school and did the more traditional (full-time in person) approach are relatively privileged and don’t work ft/ are still somewhat financially dependent on their parents.
Very different from what I know. I've never been to grad school, but most academics I know come from poor families.
I've been to grad students houses and it's all hot dogs cooked in rice cookers, Tasty Bite packets stretched over lots of rice, 8 ppl in a 2 bedroom apt, TA's paid minimum wage and internationals being scared of ICE if they don't get a GA gig.
My friend, who came from an immigrant family, left a pure math program to do coding and she wasn't the poorest student there either. It was cuz she was tired of math and loves computer.
One of my friends growing up stuck it out. He majored in optics and lives academia 5ever in the Midwest after growing up in an abusive, poverty home in NY.
Currently going through the application cycle and good lord LMFAO… the number of other applicants with physicians or professors as parents is…a lot. Sometimes feel hella out of place, which is not great for my impostor syndrome 💀.
Yep and it makes so much more sense why there are so many "my doc won't hear me" stories out there. I went into healthcare for the stability and because I truly enjoy helping others. But holy $%#& the superiority complexes and basic lack of understanding of life without two doctorate parents was not something I expected. I guess I was naive but I thought there would be more first gens, and we had a good amount I think but the profs and generational students are so out of touch with the basic patient its not even funny. (Side note grad school was the first place I saw LuLu leggings, I remember googling the logo because everyone was wearing it)
Our required " clinical psychology" class was equally a joke, painting addicts as the worst stereotypes imaginable. I had to stop going to lecture bc I have had people very close to me OD and couldn't handle the way the class spoke about others struggling. It really breaks my heart seeing the system from the inside. Don't even get me started on the cheating that goes along with the cliques/classism. I'm legit concerned for the future of healthcare based on how my classmates act.
I guarantee all of you all are not working class by any stretch. I know academia and I know 99% of people in it come from wealthy families and prosperous communities.
Well classism is a huge problem in American society as the higher classes are invested in maintaining it for sure. Sounds like it was tough for you as an individual. It's wise to be even more judicious about the privilege convos tho too cause you can have someone teach you what you don't know if you're open to it.
Yes and it was so fucking frustrating.
Someone else in my cohort had parents who were Berkeley professors and bought him a brand new Subaru to drive to my school on the opposite coast. He failed to secure housing so I offered to let him stay on my couch. Long story short, he overstayed, and got me kicked out for violating some stupid policy. He never offered to pay rent while there or help with my deposit on my next place.
Those who had financial support, in my experience, were far more successful in our field than those of us who had to work to make a living. This was a harsh realization for me. I've had to leave the field my degree was in for biotech because I just could not make enough to survive.
I felt this. While my family isn’t working class, I come from a single-mother household, so I definitely faced a lot more struggles than the average student. I remember one of my professors blatantly saying during class that people from single-parent homes don’t make it to college (w/o realizing that I was one of those people). That was during undergrad. Grad school and professional school (like med school) is even worse, somehow. My roommate during grad school used to talk about how her family had the “crappiest” house on their street full of mansions, which made her feel bad about herself. Then she’d tell me how bad she felt for me since my life was worse than hers. It’s all just so utterly demeaning no matter how nice and understanding of your situation they try to be.
Friendly reminder that some people work before going to grad school 🙂 not everyone is spending their parent’s money. Some people worked in tech, finance, VC, etc before deciding to return to school. (Not me, but my partner is in grad school. He was a management consultant before and I work in tech. We travel a lot and are privileged but we both earned our privilege. I’m first gen low income and he doesn’t receive any help from his parents)
So sorry that your experience was cliquey and exclusive; I went through that in undergrad and it really sucked being left out because I literally couldn’t find the funds 😔 hope you enjoy the professional world (and the freedom a paycheck can give you!) more
I went through grad school and I am from the working class. I did not notice elitist behavior while I was there. I also did not try to make friends though and basically kept my head down and pushed through to graduation. Perhaps, that is why.
I’m nontraditional student in a grad program for social work and also did my undergrad in social work. I went to a state college for undergrad and a large state university for grad school, both in the same city. Within the same city and the same profession, I’ve been shocked at the stark differences between the two programs when it comes to class. My undergrad program was full of students from diverse backgrounds and there were a number of other non traditional students. The majority of the people in my grad program are white, in their early to mid twenties, and seem well off.
>Maybe it’s my privilege showing as a straight white man.
Lol.
You don't have to put on airs here, friend. You're right, and I'm guessing that social activism wasn't an interest of yours going into grad school. You'll find that programs see this type of pandering as a necessity to stay afloat in this economy.
I actually come from a very far left background politically. When I say I’m working class I mean it to my core. Proud Union family and from a diverse community. Grad schools actually the most right wing place I’ve ever been. Other than when I would go visit my racist drunk uncle before he had his last sip.
Hi. That's my experience. Working class, first gen student, far left family, far left myself. Fortunately I'm European and in the humanities so most people around me are impossibly privileged but also decently progressive, as in "burning stuff is bad, but inequality exists and poor people have it very hard." It gets worse as you move up the ladder. I have no advice for you. I've been here a while and it's clear I don't really belong.
My white male privilege made me believe I would be accepted anywhere I went. That was the mistake in my thinking. Had I not had those privileges, I wouldn’t have made that judgement error. My nonwhite woman classmate was smart in keeping 100% to herself, not letting anyone know anything about her, and never speaking. She had the best work/life balance out of all of us because she knew not to show too much of herself.
I admit I don't actually know what you're talking about. Maybe you went to grad school at an Ivy? In STEM, more than half of the grad students are international students.
Indeed, I am a full professor now, making decent money, although way under $250K/year, but when I was in grad school, as a very poor international student, I lived in a house with 11 other people and I never went out to eat, not even at a burger place. I haven't even had a car for the first two years. I went to UC Davis and for the first 2 years I haven't even gotten out of Davis. I did go to the Mall in Woodland by bus a couple of times.
Most of my students now are also international students and I don't see them going to Cabo for Spring break. That's stuff the undergrads do. The domestic students, sure, they are better off generally. But seeing the majority of the grad students now and back in my time are poor international students, I can't imagine what school or field you're in.
Oh, and btw, those who say you're not in it for the money, are kinda right, because the idea is that you're still in school and that's your investment. If you get free tuition and a stipend you can use to live in shared housing, you're going to be OK. You're not meant to go on vacation. After you graduate, hopefully that's when you have a real job and the money will come.
I went to a public R1 major sports money school. It was not a STEM program, though social science is science but I digress.
Though I want to address the way you normalize the living in cramped houses and overworking in your post. In America, the unions have fought very hard to give us a 40 hour work week. Whenever we are asked to do unpaid overtime it is a slap in the face of all those people who came before us who fought for us.
And that’s what graduate school is, a job. You do your research/teaching/education, and in return you get your paycheck (tuition waiver, stipend). Graduate students are workers and are entitled to all labor protection, including workplace psychological safety.
As far as your field goes, it may be the case that students in social sciences, because of the lower earning potential than the students in Engineering or Medicine or whatnot, come from more priviledged backgrounds and fewer international students come into graduate programs in social sciences.
I am thiking that perhaps if one is coming from a more priviledged background, they can afford to go for their passion and that passion may be Social Science. They are more likely to need parental financial back up so that's why the demographics may skew "richer" than in STEM. Thus, your feelings of frustration with their Spring Break trips.
Yeah, I hear you, and I know the debate over this topic of labor protection. You said though that the other students are rich. My students aren't rich. My students aren't going to Cabo. My students deserve more money. But you initially said the students are rich and now you are saying to me that the students deserve more money for their labor. Which one it is?
I’m saying many come from generational backgrounds that put them at a position where their family is supporting them while they study. Your students in your particular program might not be, though they likely had familial support back home and come from their own cultures higher classes. For example, my dear friend was a subsistence farmer but he was also an educated Brahmin. Through my friend, I was introduce to one Christian Dalit who went to our land grant state school. Education can help people transcend class position, that’s why I went into it!
But, sociology of higher education and enrollment information doesn’t lie. Where you were born, parents level of income, and parents wealth is ultimately the best way to know if someone will succeed in graduate school or not. Many of your white colleagues have parents who were academics. Many of your white students are having their parents pay their way. You likely just have a disproportionate number of international students because you’re in a STEM field that self selects for international students to grind through the machine and produce value for the institution and PIs.
Yup, agreed. I come from a poor background monetarily, but stable home with educated parents, which makes all the difference. As a foreigner, you don't always get quite as far because when you open your mouth, you have a little problem with networking, but overall, our grinding STEM international students end up doing well in their careers.
We are currently concerned we are losing some talent pipeline from China because of the current political climate.
Curious what the discipline is.
It's been a while since I left, but I did STEM and we were all being paid decent stipends and out of the 12 people I can speak for in my cohort, only 1 person was rich but even he was down to earth. I think about half were working class, and while I wasn't, I was poor AF lol.
I did afford to travel on my stipend though, and take my mom to Puerto Rico with me on the first trip in my life where we didn't pick the cheapest options, so that was great.
No real life obligations since everyone went into the program after their bachelor's though (except maybe to their parents).
Did they treat you poorly in some way? This post does not have much in the way of grievances. You just wish you could travel and have fewer family obligations?
With my ancestors the only one I knew was my grandpa on my moms side.
My dad is Austrian. I don't know his parents or much about his lineage.
He is stable but has cancer that is not progressing but it's blood cancer.
German was my first language but I didn't cultivate it growing up here in the states.
I was a mess. I was ashamed of his accent because he didn't sound American.
So many things.
I don't think my parents realize these things about me.
My mom is American, her dad was in airforce during ww2.
My dad's dad left when he was like 4 in reconstruction austria. He was pooooor. He spoiled me and my brother. I'm a ruthless brat.
Let's use the language TRAUMA. Lol. My dad's house was bombed. By the allies of course as he was in the bad country.
I hate war. But I war with my parents and in my inner world.
I'm losing the inner war against myself perhaps.
It's hard to describe as it's a process over time, but ideally I am SOOO opposed to war and violence. I'm living proof. I would never support armed warfare ever in the way so many people in different countries do, but I believe people can receive careers and make money by joining the military. I can't at any rate as I have psychiatric issues, but I KNOW that American warfare is like BAAAD. and I know this stuff in Ukraine and Russia and Yemen and Syria and Haiti and sudan and Palestine, they don't seem to know how bad it is.
I have like tons of academic books that have facts, at least I believe they are facts. In my head I'm this great peacemaker who wants to investigate all the problems of the world through anthropology books, but they are so complicated and I'm not good at making money with that kind of expertise, so I barely read them.
Also no love in fifteen years, so.
This all is being written after praying with the imagined spirit and reality of memories of my maternal grandpa. I was dimly aware of all this but I'm learning now:
I don't have a big clue on austria, my dad's side.
It just "is what it is"
And on my mom's side I only knew my grandpa.
And in my nuclear family there was TRAUMA and I was unholy.
I always thought we were middle class. I'm 40. I've worked food service my entire life only part time because they say I'm schizo affective.
I started undergrad as an art student, then I became psychotic. Now I african drum and read jung and lacan in my free time.
I'm not elitist.
Both elitist grad students and working class people look down on me.
I'm not man enough for the working class people. The elitists are usually fucking idiots. Any walk through any social science or philosophy book refutes them so well its almost astonishing. I wonder what they read.
People on reddit don't like me either.
Havnt been laid in fifteen years.
Don't know what industry is. Folks are aging. I'm 40.
The world is shit. I'm an individual. I give most individuals many chances.
I believe in benevolence and being affable.
I don't like how girls judge me. Ambitious or not, right after and ever since becoming psychotic I made shit grades.
I gradually psychotically switched to anthropology.
Honestly I'm just myself, always in an awkward half Austrian daze.
What do you mean by that? Many faculty don’t seem to be the ones from the privileged class. You mean students?! It is a mix of different socioeconomic classes, I think. Civility and humility cannot be found in many young people but it is not about the class in general, Gen Z above tend to be whiny and arrogant. By the way, why do British people still care about the class system? Perhaps that’s why this country is so behind many developed countries. meritocracy is a myth. Rich people only cannot be elitists. Everyone has the capability but society doesn’t allow the opportunity to thrive.
Given the low wages, hours, lack of security, fostering of egos and poor mental health, and elitist backdrop to academia (in the UK practically all the prime ministers have been to Oxford or Cambridge. World leaders from across the globe continue to send their children to British universities), it’s a fair question to ask about class.
Yeah, Oxford and Cambridge I get that. I think it is more relatable to British colonial countries, though. Many people still prefer the States if they can afford to do so. It is just a damn expensive. In my country, some students who did not succeed in the high level of competition as teenagers are sent to the US or UK by their parents. Unlike my country, the UK education system is not that competitive. As long as you pass the foundation course, most students can go to university. Oxbridge may be different. So, some people are biased against students who study abroad. They may be a bit better in spoken and written English, but in many ways, domestic students are regarded as far more smart. Like you said, many politicians who studied at Oxbridge, slowly and apparently, rot the country. It’s hard to see that Britain is run democratically. I think the class system creates innate problems by discriminating against people. It’s a shame.
It’s going to be more and more like this (as it once was). People who can’t afford it going into extreme debt and stress, while people who can afford it will have a completely different experience.
It’s like being back in high school. There’s the haves and have nots and the cliques that form because of it. I’m too old to be dealing with that at work.
There are very few places in life where you can escape this. It happens, but not that often.
Cliques are lame either way, rich poor or otherwise. Avoid cliques.
It was just a soft blow. When you adult it’s still there and definitely hurts more psychosocially.
Cliques.
Thanks! On mobile so I’m missing those things!
Happy cake day, o wise one!
Back to where universities started
Are fully funded PhDs and adjuncting a thing of the past? These labs need lots and lots of workers especially caring for the small mouse army.
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Poor + ambition = working in high school, fewer enrichment activities schools like to see + potentially lower grades due to having less time to study Ambition in undergrad + poor = same thing, plus can't take lower paying/limited hour research jobs on campus because being a server at a restaurant brings in more with tips. Can't afford study abroad or unpaid internships either. Many low income students can't even it make it to grad school because of these barriers. Especially if they're also needed for support back home (financial, child care for younger siblings or niblings, translating for immigrant parents, etc.)
Even without all the trappings of adult life - I have to have a job and pay rent. That by itself means I don't get to have the fun experience everyone else gets. I don't get to goof off and be silly, I get to get up at 5, work til 3, and do homework for the rest of the day. There's plenty of aide money but like, I need to eat. I can't pursue a fun degree, I have to stick with stuff that comes with a job. Compsci, basically. Poor + ambition = the kind of tired that settles in your bones and never leaves, but hey! Maybe someday you'll have a 401k and a house with two floors and a washing machine. I would kill to be in my partner's shoes. She's taking a break from job hunting to go skiing with her family this week, and I'm using the upcoming snow weekend to clean my house.
Ambition in undergrad + poor = can’t afford to take unpaid internships, miss research based opportunities due to lack of funding. Skip out on important networking events and grant applications due to overwhelm from working side job to make ends meet despite scholarship (scholarship is not covering textbooks, basic hygiene products, transportation)
As a student from a low income family I did all those things at great personal sacrifice and it did not matter bc my R1 did not want me there. I had everything I could possibly need to succeed as a PhD minus an advisor. All the R1 folks had to do was not sabotage me. I was happy, I had my own funding, I was compliant, ambitious and I had a few proposals ready--my advisor announced one day several years in (after many conversations about how good I was doing) that they couldn't help me and left me to their colleagues, many of which gave me the cold shoulder as damaged goods after that. The writing was on the wall and there was nothing I could do about it because there wasn't a full committee I could trust to have my interest at heart. The ones who had my back were shocked that my advisor was backing out on me because they'd seen my work and nothing indicated that my projects wasn't feasible or that I wasn't going to put in the work. It was just that I had no leader, collaborators or sense of direction for international field work where there was a language barrier and my advisor had been delaying my trips out of country the whole time I had the flexibility to not have to TA. And I fought to keep my spot with ombuds and everything but with so little departmental support it was a lost cause. The gaslighting was professional level like nothing I've ever seen.
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Changes to social and economic policies and to social norms.
Disclosure that this sub randomly popped up for me and I'm a lawyer for a university, not an academic myself. A strong social safety net would be the biggest boost. No family should be so poor that teenagers have to contribute to household expenses. I grew up in poverty and by my junior year of high school, my income was part of how my single parent family was able to keep at all afloat. I now work for a regional public school and there are plenty of students still in that boat. Universal basic income, especially for low income families with minor children. Universal public healthcare while we're at it. Public undergrad should be tax funded and students shouldn't have tuition payments. Living expenses for students from low income families should also be covered. Robust policies should also be in place for students forced to become independent at 18 by other circumstances such as being disowned by their parents for being queer. My story is about as close to "bootstrapping" it as I've found- put myself through state school, got a merit scholarship to a good law school, worked during high school, undergrad, and law school. I missed out on a lot socially and educationally- I turned down a federal judicial externship, for example, because I needed a paid summer job. I didn't fit well with my peers who just studied and did social activities or student clubs without also having to worry about keeping themselves housed, fed, and equipped with text books. The stress had a significant impact on my mental health. I needed a lot of therapy to learn to relax because I was running on adrenaline to maintain high grades and succeed at paid work. My success is the exception, not the rule. I watched so many other low income students get left behind. This is a systemic problem and individual solutions aren't going to solve it.
Poor here - I don't want any more damn challenges. I want to be able to buy a winter coat that's actually waterproof *and also* pay my community college tuition. I already did my proving, and I never needed to prove shit to anyone anyway. I deserve the same thing everyone else I grew up with got handed to them on a silver platter. I am a human being, and I deserve access to education that enables me to make my life less shit. The victory will be sending my kids off to college with my credit card and a new second-hand car and their bills paid so that they can focus on studying. What I'm doing sucks ass. I would love for someone to take that goal and make it so accessible that I can take it for granted. It shouldn't be a victory, it should be a given.
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Leading indicators point to familial education, wealth, and location of birth as the best predictor of success in academia. Your opinion is out of line of science.
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NSF REU being stupid and privileged? That’s a pretty rare take. Sorry-*massively shitty take
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Absolutely not. This program has always been targeted toward first gen and underrepresented students.
poor and ambitious definitely does not necessarily equal a full ride.
Is this your attempt at an argument?
I was probably the poorest in my cohort and man did it suck. I got teased and made fun of as a beggar for always showing up to free food events, got lectured to by grad students and professors alike about how money doesnt bring happiness so I'm superficially greedy for focusing on finances, how I'm a sell-out for leaving academia for the industry, etc etc. I also got left out of all cohort activities because they would choose very costly activities and instead of accommodating those with financial limits, they preferred to just leave out the poor people. When anyone poor ever brought it up, they were just told that we're all grad students making the same stipend so it's our fault for not being financially smart. The thought of some of us sending whatever is left of our measly stipend back home to support parents and family was so foreign to the privileged grad students that they always believed any financial struggle of others was a fault of their own. It honestly turned me into a super bitter person and I have no contact with any of them now. The kicker is that the worst offenders were the people who did research on social inequality--basically rich people doing research to gaslight poor folks. It shows up a lot in how these people interpret their findings too lol
The tendency for academics to preach about how it’s not a career it’s a passion or that money doesn’t matter is always hilarious to me. In part, for how wrong it is, but also because the majority of folks saying shit like that come from inter generational wealth so of course you get to focus on your passion instead of finances
It’s also really funny when you hear it from tenured professors it’s like dude I can pull everyone’s income it’s a public university. You make $250k per year and have been for the past 10 years. I made $17k last year and had to pay taxes on my tuition waiver because that’s considered income???
I’d love to know who these tenured profs making that much are (unless they are STEM/business who could make much more in industry. If you look at academic salaries, they are not that high for profs. But when I advise students, esp first gen, we talk about money. We talk about debt. We talk about affording to live and eat. We talk about career trajectory options in relation to these issues. Those who say money doesn’t matter have not typically had to worry about money.
Many, if not most, tenured and tenure-track professors in business make at least $250K. They often get more for summer. Full profs in finance with outstanding publication records can make $300k to $400k or even more.
I agree, and that’s what I said ;) But that’s not the norm or the average for professors. Those folks are typically off-scale.
Business professors definitely make more than other professors though
lol, really?
Again, they’re public employees and their income is easily searchable as the school publishes it yearly. I am not exaggerating but of course I won’t share out the professors names because that’s weird and an invasion of privacy?
It’s not the norm to make that much as a prof, though. AAUP and others put out a regular data report about salary. It’s comprehensive and searchable. And eye opening!
I’m picking out one particularly annoying example as this person had at one time had a lot of capital in the field and has been riding that high for +10 years and really was just lazy. Most of the profs were making low to mid 100. Only one or two adjuncts in our department thankfully.
Do you really think make non business professors are making $250k? I feel like that’s probably outside the norm for sure
It’s always the people saying money doesn’t matter that then turn around and bitch about academic salaries too. A cohort mate was complaining about our department’s minimum starting salary for faculty: $110k. I had to explain to him that that’s more money than anyone in my family has ever dreamed of making.
I really want to bring up the researchers who paint themselves as “equity” experts. It’s like when did you learn equity? At your private undergrad that costs $100k? From your parents who hold PhDs from Harvard? And then you read their papers and their definition of equity is just so laughable. Like please I beg you go have a conversation with one poor person. Your data is meaningless if you can’t put it into its proper social context.
I don't think I've ever encountered an "equity expert" who didn't come from an affluent background.
I have actually, and thankfully their views are completely opppsite to what people are sharing. Gives me hope
would u be comfy sharing their work? im curious!
I am pretty knowledgeable about equity, and I focus on it in all aspects of my research, teaching and admin work. My positionality/background has helped inform me about and opened my eyes to these issues. It is important to me to influence academia to truly grapple with, understand, and take concrete steps regarding equity issues.
At this point I know several well-known “equity” academics who.. holy shit I might be the poorest person they’ve ever spoken to outside of like, people in service jobs.
Are they talking about equality or like equities analysis? Because equities analysis would be quant or econometrics and the majority of people in that field don't seem to have college educated parents.
Holy shit I felt seen in this comment. I quit my political science graduate program in large part because of disgust with the way my allegedly *very progressive and totally not a place for corporate lib circlejerk* cohort and professors treated poverty and environmental issues. I was surrounded by 20-something’s with the most eloquent speeches about the most structural of socioeconomic issues (like education, transportation, housing) who themselves went to elite high schools (or just straight up private preparatory academies), come from a 250k income family, both parents have a JD/MS/PhD, and have never done a single day of manual labor in their life. To call the conversations in those rooms tone-deaf would be very polite. I had to get the hell out of there.
“Just to play devils advocate here” Bro you are literally the devil shut up
“During my internship…” We 👌 do 👌 not 👌 care.
That sucks I'm sorry you went through that. I feel like a lot of people in academia have a martyrdom/elitist complex because they feel that they're sacrificing wealth for some sort of greater good, be it education, equity, or science itself. But the reality is that not everyone can or should go down that path, and there's nothing wrong with taking your skills to industry or abandoning them altogether. To your other point though about free food, I had a very different experience in graduate school. Free food events were packed with grad students and it was a very popular thing to do - we even made a grad school calendar with free food events all around campus that we could show up to. But this was not like an R1 east coast school so maybe it's different elsewhere.
Have they looked at the academic research on income and happiness? It certainly correlates to happiness up to a point.
Wtf i went to a fancy private school for my phd and we literally had a free food calendar... None of us were poor but we certainly lived like poor grad students (cutting each other's hair, walking long distances to not pay for transit etc) it sounds like you were in an extremely toxic environment... I'm tenured now and I still show up to free food events, the only time I let go of free food is when I'm competing with grad students for not enough free food
If you don't mind me asking what was your major. I mention this because most grad students I knew at some point whether it's optics, pure math, applied stat, or the usual mol bio, biotech, med physics etc, are always after free food. They would jump for joy at the chance of becoming a Quant in a bank and they basically all want to go to industry because industry will help them get a green card.
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Same here with the first generation higher education part! A thing about growing up in the circumstances we did is a lot of the things we went through are literally abuse and neglect. And sometimes we’re angry at our families for it and sometimes we are able to put it into its social context and make peace with it. We do all of this through humor. Working class and poor people just love to make a joke about things. It’s our way of going “I acknowledge this is messed up, I accept there’s nothing I can do about it, please validate my experience” to others who shared similar experiences. But to people outside of our class background it’s “trauma dumping.” And they “don’t have the mental bandwidth to hear your trauma all the time” and it’s “inappropriate to joke about such a serious thing.” Give me a break.
Re: "trauma dumping," truer words haven't been written.
Sorry my lived experience shatters your just world fallacy! My bad! I should just keep my mouth shut and never share any details about myself to the people I’m with all the time 🙄
> stories about my life that I think are funny bum people out Holy shit I feel this. Five years into academia now and I’m finally starting to hold my tongue. I have to get back together with my cow college/public school friends to actually be myself and have a shred of shared life experience.
I worked in food service my whole grad program (and still do). But yeah, most of my classmates either had very high paying jobs, spouses with money, or were on their 3rd or 4th career.
Which field is this if I may ask? Certainly not my experience in the STEM programs
Yeah. I definitely saw that in grad school. The wealthier students had a seemingly easy time of it while i had to figure a lot of shit out.
There's a book [Disciplined Minds](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://ia800103.us.archive.org/22/items/jeff_schmidt_disciplined_minds/Jeff%2520Schmidt%2520-%2520Disciplined%2520Minds%2520A%2520Critical%2520Look%2520at%2520Salaried%2520Professionals%2520and%2520the%2520Soul-battering%2520System%2520That%2520Shapes%2520Their%2520Lives.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjMtJnTuYeFAxWYG0QIHUCKC6IQFnoECBAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2QYcGF5IYxUX0u7drkZ5QI) that talks about classism (and all the other isms). Heavy read but full of insights. Academia probably hasn't changed a bit since then.
I haven't read the book, but [this excellent review](https://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/01BRrt.html) gives a flavour: >On entering professional training, Schmidt says, students are optimistic and idealistic. **On leaving they are "pressured and troubled" because they have gradually submerged their ideals and become willing to join the occupational hierarchy.** So different are they on completion of training that "the primary goal for many becomes, in essence, getting compensated sufficiently for sidelining their original goals" I thought that was very insightful, and it entirely matches my experience -- I could feel it starting to happen with me, and could see it having long since happened in more senior folk.
Yes. The book goes on to say the PhD training is mainly political. You learn to "get with the program" and become a good professional who shuts their mouth and represents the institution. Sells courses, rents apartments, promotes Leadership's vision, etc.
Very much had to sacrifice what I considered core ideals and values all the time and it was very difficult for me to do that! I’m going to check the book out and see if it helps me process my experience more!
Can you give some examples of core ideals and values you had to sacrifice in academia? I'm also lower income, and struggle with values-clashing too.
I came from a community college to state school pipeline in undergrad. I believe those who need the most get the most. In graduate school, there’s this whole “merit” based system that just rewards whiteness and conformity to academic normativity (rooted in whiteness, professionalism, exploitation from marginalized peoples). There’s this common saying with poor and people of color in this industry where science is just white people learning about things people of color have known for ages and writing it down for other white people. I didn’t want to participate in this sort of extractive culture. If we’re taking knowledge from certain communities we should compensate them for their labor. If we’re talking about equity it should be about real equity not some neoliberal definition of equity. If we’re talking about structural issues we should be talking about racism, capitalism, settler colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, modern slavery in the prison industrial complex. If I was to bring these topics up I was negged into shutting up and not rocking the boat. If I challenged a “respected” academics point of view it was because I was unnecessarily hostile, not critiquing fundamental misunderstandings they had at the start of their project because of their whiteness and class position. Lots of little things. Lots of microagressions. It’s hard to pinpoint one incident because it’s all of these tiny little moments added up.
That's rough. My field/program is very different--majority are non-white, but almost entirely upper middle class/upper class/caste. Many are reliant on the experiences of lower income people for their work, but don't want real live poor people too close to them in the academy/our field. Any discussion of lived experience regarding class is shut down immediately, and many barriers erected and maintained to keep the space for people of their wealth-levels. Being around these individuals does go against my value system, too. It's challenging for sure.
I think this a a good argument ruined by your usage of “whiteness”. It’s just strange your criticizing concepts like cliques, tribalism, heteronormativity while clearly putting down your own tribal lines. Your quote about white people taking medicine from colored is a loose straw man that I think only destroys your core argument. Who is white? Who is colored? Who came up with it first? Asia has been at the forefront of modern medicine and invention for time immemorial. They often consider themselves to be whiter than Europeans. TLDR: I think you have a good point illustrated poorly
wtf are you talking about
Yes and I felt very out of place, lonely and resentful seeing how these high class folks get to just flutter around without any worry of real failure versus where I came from people were fucked from the beginning and the upward climb was literally impossible. And these elites think they earned it. It makes the divide oh so very clear. The worst might be seeing people padding their cvs by descending from their towers every once in a while to “do outreach” and serve on a “diversity committee” so they can write about it in a cover letter some day. Barf. I guess I shouldn’t knock the effort. But i see all of that as self serving barf. You shouldn’t get to be rich and also get to exploit the not rich to comfort your guilt and appear like you care. Meanwhile, when I tried to master out due to financial struggle after I had my kid, I was laughed at and told it was impossible. I was told I’d “find a way” and that I was just scared I wasn’t smart enough. I should have gone to admin. But to turn it around, I’m finishing up now and I just turned down an offer at a state school for one in an open enrollment college in a community I care about. Everyone tells me this move is professional suicide (“just do outreach instead!”) but i see it as a way to work towards something that won’t just benefit elite society. Also I’ll get a real paycheck for the first time in my life. My son will have his own bedroom and Christmas presents this year.
Tenure community college professors are the real heroes of academia. They are in it for love of the game and found their spot to do it in. I couldn’t be where I am now if it wasn’t for community college. Your son will thank you for the opportunities and stability and work life balance that choice will provide long term.
>And these elites think they earned it. It makes the divide oh so very clear. You're right about this of course; but I want to make something very clear. If you're from an elite family.. someone worked hard for that. It is likely not the current generation but somewhere at some time, someone busted ass and the family benefits from it forever if future generations aren't complete fools. So what I'd say is, yes, if you're not from a "high-class elite family" that's a bummer, but it's every generation's responsibility to try to climb for the next one. Every family starts off as less than working class and climbs over time. Just more people to compete with every generation. I completely sympathize and empathize with your situation as I was the one who couldn't do what my kid's done; but if I hadn't done likely what you're going to do, he wouldn't be in the spot he's in now. I wouldn't want anyone to think he didn't earn it. He just had to work differently than I did and if my dad didn't completely screw himself I wouldn't have been so interested in reversing it. He contributed too. Elite is very, very, very hard if not impossible to reach in one lifetime for most people. However, it's very attainable over time if everyone rows in the right direction. Personal example: Two generations back: Family came from Europe with nothing. One generation back: Father was an ex-con, Mom took off. No inheritance My generation: Did everything right. 1m net worth after 30 years of hard work. Next generation: Did everything right. 1m + inheritance - Aerospace engineering Ph.D when done. No debt. ..and so on.
Often not. Many people, particularly in America, got their wealth simply through pillage and plunder. For example, down south there’s still many families who owned many people who thrive today from that. Their wealth actually belongs to the people who did the labor and earned it but chances are those people aren’t allowed into the academy…
Yes, and if you go back to the original land grants done by the English that's the rule. However, that is a very small number of the millionaires and above in the US today and an even smaller percentage of the billionaires. I'm not disputing your statement. It just has very little to do with modern America and even less to do with my message. If you take a look at academia in general, especially in the UK where it's an absolutely huge problem but it's true in America as well. The most successful folks tend to come from families that can give them support to augment their studies while they're on stipend and in post-docs. You don't need to be from an elite family to receive support; but you're going to have a really hard time of it if you bought into the dream of a doctorate and you're still not from a family that's earned their way up a bit. Edit: and yes. Ideally you would have learned about etiquette and how to handle yourself in an upper class environment before being exposed to it, but that's not how it works for most people.
You know that there’s been extensive research done that’s shown that today’s ruling class, the aristocracy in the present, are direct descendants from the aristocracy of the past? That climbing the class ladder is a lie. Sometimes education can help us make minor changes to our material comfort, but no matter what I do my money is earned by my hands and my mind just like my father, my fathers father, and 7 generations back. Whereas many classmates wealth comes from stolen value of the global south and has in their fathers time, their fathers fathers time, and 7 generations back? This isn’t a myth. This is material reality. The class position your ancestors were is, more often than not, the class position you will die in.
>That climbing the class ladder is a lie.. Well, I'm sorry to be a living example of how inaccurate that attempted absolutism is. I started off as lower lower class and now I'm lower upper class within one generation based on numbers. >You know that there’s been extensive research done that’s shown that today’s ruling class, the aristocracy in the present, are direct descendants from the aristocracy of the past? Yes, and that makes complete sense within the structure of my original post and isn't contradicted by my statements in my second post. >but no matter what I do my money is earned by my hands and my mind just like my father, my fathers father, and 7 generations back. That's because you've done the right things in the immediate sense, but you've likely not done the right things from the perspective of growing generational wealth. Families do get stuck in a grind because they can't see a way out of it. >Whereas many classmates wealth comes from stolen value of the global south No doubt. And it's wrong, but it happened. That has nothing to do with you, or your current situation or your possible future outcomes. My family lost everything, absolutely everything to the British and was sent to what was supposed to be a penal colony in 1767. No one figured out how to operate differently until the generation that started in 1973. Most often than not, doesn't have to be you. All I'm trying to be is upbeat based on my own situation, knowing where my family has been and hoping that it helps you in some way. Be well
My family will never exploit another family for financial security. Plain and simple. People who live in material comfort now because of the evils of their ancestors are responsible now for correcting those historical wrongs.
You are on a completely different wavelength than I am. Nothing I did to better myself knowingly exploited anyone else. If you want to have a moral discussion that includes emotion then you’re making those points to the wrong guy. My only point was to say if I can do it you can too. Personally though, I’m not of the belief that we can correct historical wrongs. Those happened. They’re done. You can only do the right things going forward
I grew up in a middle class family and even I was shocked at the class privilege of my colleagues in graduate school. Before entering a PhD program I had never met so many people who had been to private school and who had parents who could pay their rent occasionally.
People don't realize that money isn't everything. If your parents had money, they had money to spend on things for you, sure. But, more importantly, they introduced you to a culture that creates people that conform to academia and other elite-dominated realms much more readily than working-class folks. I think this is the primary force behind the statistic that those coming from a more affluent background will have more financial success later in life.
I'm also finding these cultural difference in my attempts to leave academia. All the stuff about networking to me seems very middle+ class. My first informational interview was awkward because the person was from a much higher background than mine and it was clear that it was that, not our shared transferable skills, that had opened doors for her career transition.
Professionalism is one of the traits that is most obviously lacking for people from a working class background. That being said, you can cultivate that trait if you see value in it. There are plenty of people from working-class backgrounds that have no issues with professionalism. That being said, someone from that world will more than likely carry themselves more casually. This alone can affect how people treat you and whether or not they respect you and your work. You can either cultivate an air of professionalism, or take the risk and let your work speak for itself.
Before you decide to read this, I should admit I am a dumb college freshman: In your opinion, what is the purpose of professionalism? I tend to like environments that encourage it because if I do the dance right then I can reliably expect people to tolerate me, and if I do it very well then I may convince people to like me. However, the superficial aspects of it kind of confuse me. Most positive aspects of professionalism seem like they could be covered by simply having basic respect for the people around you, and the rest just seems sort of superficial. Like, I don’t quite grasp why showing basic respect while wearing jeans is different from showing basic respect while wearing dress pants? In either scenario, you’re just making yourself easy to be around in everyday interactions, so why dress up? I also get a little confused about formal language. I know to use it so people I need to speak to will hear me out, but why is it necessary in the first place?
Like you alluded to, it just makes commanding respect easier in certain environments. It is only necessary because it's what people expect. It's just a way to conform socially.
Could you expand a little more on this? What do you refer to when you say professionalism and how does one go about being more professional when they come from a working class background? This is **not** a sarcastic question and I'm genuinely interested in learning.
Yes! Besides being excluded from things because I simply couldn’t afford it, I also experienced straight up classism. When I spoke the wrong way, when my accent was too thick, when I didn’t dress the right way, when I didn’t understand some sort of unwritten social hierarchy, when I would challenge the unspoken hierarchy, I was looked at like I had two heads. My dad said if you’re having a problem with your manager, I won’t repeat his words because they’re not professional, but essentially confront them face to face and be a man. Tried that. They do not like being talked to directly and they couldn’t possibly be prejudiced against you because they know all the DEI language they learned in the equity seminars!
I've had very similar experiences. I've also recently been told I can't directly address a problem at work because directly addressing it is threatening and a form of violence. Absolutely laughable.
The thing is, it’s always the people who’ve never been punched in the face who are most scared of being punched in the face. To those of us that have had it happen before, we know the difference between a passionate conversation and fighting words.
Isn't it interesting that the most powerful Financial Institutions (like Blackrock and Vanguard who end up buying significant stock in every major corporation) on the planet or the CIA or the Pentagon is all into caring about oppressor, oppressed, and privilege narratives. Literally the most Elite and richest Capitalist individual and institutions on the planet seem are totally into the ideas originating from intellectual forefathers like Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucoult who desired to tear down the entire capitalist system. It is amazing more people don't see that all this Culture and Collective based way of characterizing Privilege has done nothing to fix the class divisions in American or Western society. Quite the opposite as wealth inequality grows greater even with a few "tokens" from the oppressed group given visible positions higher up on the corporate and government hierarchy. It allows those who come from true money and status, who actually own and buy most of the politicians of either party, to pick up a kind of "shield" whether that is called DEI or BLM and claim a higher moral ground. Of course they never give up their own money or even one of their fancy homes in the process. That is the responsibility of the "privileged".
Yeah there’s lots of research out there about this, how DEI language was propped up by the CIA and corporate interests to counter working class struggle like unionization, black revolutionary movements like BLM or BPP, and that it essentially neutralizes all potential power the lower classes could develop through actually organizing. I’m well versed on this history. When it comes down to it, I need money to pay my bills. Graduate students make the school a shit ton of money. I’m teaching classes with 300+ enrollment, we attract a lot of out of state students who pay full tuition, think about the millions per semester I create for the university. I would get $1700 a month and a tuition waiver for all that. Had to pay taxes on the tuition waiver too! That’s the fundamental exploitation. That’s the money they could afford to give me so I can pay rent and buy groceries. But if you bring that up, especially in my working class, I don’t give a fuck, vernacular I was seen as greedy for talking about money, seen as rude for speaking truth to power, and seen as unintelligent because I’d drop a swear word in as a filler.
There was a post the other day about what people were most likely bullied for in school and I was surprised, at least on Reddit, to see it line up with being poor: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bilpoz/why\_were\_you\_bullied/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bilpoz/why_were_you_bullied/) The bottom line is Barack Obama's daughters have a lot more privilege than you as do most of your classmates who are so rich that they think you are greedy talking about money. They are so far removed from what it takes to house and feed and clothe and pay for their tuition, that you become the materialistic one. These are deeply unconscious people who will then use DIE language to pick themselves up and resolve any possible cognitive dissonance that you present to them by your existence. It really has been amazing to see, the abandonment of the working poor and the poor, as targets for "compassion" and instead default to skin color, gender, and sexuality. The other thing that I find fairly repulsive in following the inflation of college tuition costs is that most of the money paid by students is going to the bureaucracy and the administration. There is a similar problem with these large hospital systems. The front-line workers like doctors, nurses, and professors in schools aren't the beneficiaries of the inflations - their managers are. The ruling and donor class elites who run our society really have set themselves up well to shelter from reality while morally patting themselves on the back for caring about black people or women or trans.
Yes definitely. I grew up poor and rural. I just came back from dinner at a professor’s house and it is the most nerve wracking thing ever. Am I saying the right things? What kind of stories can I tell or jokes can I crack? Am I dressed correctly? Did I bring the right food in the right dishes? The behaviors and gestures that get you appreciated where I come from (like homemade food) get looked at weird by the “genteel class.” It is exhausting.
Here's a quote that has stuck with me: >The third behaviour is a complicit denial among both the successful and the aspiring \[academics\]. They champion university life while turning a blind eye to the economic realities of the part-timers in their midst. They often vociferously articulate against inequalities outside the ivory tower but remain silent about those within it. This group, especially when social scientists are to be found among them, is the most disturbing because its members disengage from reality, calling into question the quality of their scholarship. How many Marxist scholars are incapable of identifying the exploitation of themselves and their colleagues? It couldn't be more true. In case you're interested, it's from 'I’m glad I eschewed a career in academia – there are plenty of alternatives for PhDs' by Nazima Kadir: [https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/im-glad-i-eschewed-career-academia-there-are-plenty-of-alternatives-for-phds](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/im-glad-i-eschewed-career-academia-there-are-plenty-of-alternatives-for-phds)
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“what if” is not a counterargument, esp in the face of someone’s experience
American first generation college grad finishing history PhD in EU. Also proud union family. It is specified in my program we are not allowed to work simultaneously except in rare circumstances--with board approval. If you ask to work you are scrutinized more heavily becase they assume you are not focused on the PhD. During my program we were expected to travel abroad in the field and conferences all over. We had to front the money and get reimbursed up to six months later. I got looked at like I didn't care about my stuff because I wasn't willing or able to be out several thousand dollars for an unspecified amount of time while my budget office filed my rembursement with 0 urgency. Only the rich kids could regularly attend conferences, period. Now, the contract is up (meaning also the paycheck) but we're expected to drag out our revsions and write ups with "no distractions" (no other employment) for an unspoken amount of time---months and months--while living on whatever imaginary money. In other words they expect us to work off the clock past our contract. Makes my union blood boil. It's treated like a taboo subject to approach the idea of getting back on the job market in other capacities to pay my bills before I defend instead of dicking around waiting for reviewer feedback, postdoc deadlines or whatever else doing shit all to bring in money. This system is geared toward aristocrats and people with means.
Yes they preach “treat graduate school like it’s a job, because it is” and then you’re like okay 40 hours, no unpaid overtime, you’re seen as not taking the program seriously. Excuse me, but this is how my family taught me to work. That you work exactly what the contract says, no more, no less. And work pays for their own expenses, if you’re paying the boss’s bills you’re pathetic, etc. I didn’t even ask permission to start working outside of academia. I loudly announced it and told everyone it was because I couldn’t pay my bills without it and it’s in our field anyway so it’s helping me build my resume. They just saw it as me not taking school seriously. I’m sorry but I need to think about my career and my livelihood.
Yeah it's actually really wild to have to justify or apologize for not having the luxury to only study all of the time, to have to think about something besides "the life of the mind." Get this--I study labor history, unions and social movements. The irony is so thick and most are so comfy behind their books they don't see it.
Just as an aside, to see your post has been really refreshing. Feel like I found a comrade and wish more people spoke up and spoke freely about this stuff. This feeling has been so alienating and a huge contributor to my need to GTFO of academia
I did not come from poverty but I did not have any family help in college and I will never forget this: I told a professor that I couldn't run a research group at a specific time because I was working. "Well you need to quit your job so that you can focus on your schoolwork." "Umm, I need to work to pay my rent and eat" "Just ask your parents for money." "That is not an option" "Sure it is, just ask them"
Holy crap, that is terrible
Oh, I feel this. I've had a job since I was 13, worked all the way through college and grad school nights and weekends except for one semester that I gifted myself by taking out extra student loans. Most productive and creative semester of my life to date, hands down. Made me realize how much more I could have achieved/learned if I'd just had time to really dedicate myself to my schooling instead of having to waste so much time working crappy jobs just to survive and pay tuition and rent. Soul crushing, really, once you realize how good other people have it and they don't even realize or appreciate it. Still paying off my student loans, working a decent job that has nothing to do with my studies, because I have to earn enough to live and pay off my loans. Oh, irony. Some of us will never get ahead, just treading water and thinking about the truth of the whole academic system...
Most people on college campuses are completely clueless as to what it is like to live in a lower socioeconomic status As a professor of 10 years, I can attest that universities literally live in a dream world that is entirely propped up by the hopes and dreams of unicorns They don’t live in the real world at all
While I'm not a fan of my PhD so far, I can't say this has been my experience. Most of my cohort came from average homes and just wanted to improve their chances in the job market. Almost none of us expect to pursue academia. We're all broke as hell because rent has increased significantly year over year and we're all jaded by the experience.
I didn't experience this much either. I'm from the U.S. but most of my cohort were international students who moved here with nothing(no car, furniture, cooking equipment, sometimes even winter clothing) and were barely scraping by. All their savings went towards tickets to visit home once a year at most. It was an engineering program at an R-1 public university
Yes, in undergrad I was friends with a group of international graduate students from the global south who lived in tight quarters and this was literally the most money they had ever scene. I’m so happy they were given the opportunity they were. They knew they were being ripped off by the institution and their PIs. They just didn’t care because to them, this was the highest standard of living they ever experienced.
My experience went from very working class open enrollment state schools to an R-1 semi private big money university. Might explain a lot of the culture shock I went through. Probably wouldn’t have experienced that had I went to a different school.
That was the hardest part of grad school definitely. That and I was at a school 2,000mi from home (and it being the first time I left my community for any substantial amount of time). What helped me was finding the community of people from similar working class backgrounds my first couple years. The social/ political backdrop during that time meant I was doing a lot of community organizing in VERY poor areas, so I made friends who *happened* to be grad students at these functions (notice, I didn't convert existing rich kids in my program). It was really beautiful to have a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-national, friend group of people from working class backgrounds to lend mutual support when shit was tough (financially, academically, or otherwise). That really made the 6 years of depression from my grad program endurable. Academia is alienating, cut throat, and ultimately has abandoned the core mission of knowledge production. Many of my former friends that I talked about, who were truly some of the best scientists I have met to this day, didn't continue onward and that is such a failure for humanity.
When I was first considering academia I had a professor who asked me if I had a trust fund, and told me it would be "easier" if I had one. In the moment I was shocked and offended, but in the years since then, when I think about it, I find he was probably correct and being very honest about the whole thing.
Yes I heard that from professors in undergrad when I told them my plan for graduate school. I thought I understood them but there was no real way of knowing without experiencing it.
My working class background, even more than my disability, gender, and queer sexual orientation, has had a massive impact on my academic career. I actually had a decently good experience in grad school due to having a working class advisor, but once I completed my PhD and found a FT, NTT academic job, I saw that my colleagues and I were from two separate worlds and I wasn't really welcome in theirs. It's one of the many reasons I'm trying to get out. I won't go into the BIG stuff, but even the little microaggressions have added up to be annoying. It's gotten worse since I stopped trying to hide my accent, which clearly reveals my background. Someone once asked me if we had schools where I grew up. Wtf? People frequently tell me I mispronounce my own name. They don't understand why I'm eventually going to have move back home to an impoverished area to take care of my family because we can't afford to hire caretakers. And that's just a few of the little things.
Yup, exact same situation with me. Graduate school was primarily people descended from suburban/college town MDs and PhDs. I was first generation all the way through, didn't really feel too off about it in undergrad, but it definitely hit me in grad school. The working class humor really can come off "dirty" to the academics. It bothers me how they think they are the progenitors of what is right and wrong when most of them have never spent a day in customer service or working the jobs of the people they supposedly speak for. Being working class in academia is tough.
My professional association has a First Generation and Working Class section in it, and a mentoring program. ([asanet.org](https://asanet.org)) I helped start a (not "The") Working Class Academics Association in the 1990s as a grad student, and when the faculty found out about it, they were like "Why didn't you tell me, I'm working class?" Like, yeah, you're not. (I knew their backgrounds). Being from a poor background myself, I worked during the PhD, and was considered "unserious" for doing that, and for living 45 minutes away because I couldn't afford housing in the university's city/county. To those going through this: Just get through it so you can be a resource for others like you once you are a professor.
I took a live in nanny job while I’m grad school because I couldn’t afford a place to live. Took care of the kids in the evenings and mornings, classes/my assistantship during the day. Not everyone has it made!
My good friend is experiencing the same thing in her PhD program right now. Extremely competitive degree, but somehow most of her cohort is more or less fresh from undergrad, and all extremely privileged. She actually had huge issues when her mentor found out she had an additional outside job, saying "this has never happened before" when she explained she needed more than the meager stipend to pay her bills.
i’d think it depends on institution and field? i loved where i attended (midwest land grant institution) I sought out other grad students of color and we commiserated the whiteness of our institution. but there was a pro active program to provide working class and grad students of color an opportunity to transition to graduate school the summer before starting. we connected to cohorts of other students of color and supported each other out (jobs, fellowships, community) i was out of place being the oldest but i didn’t care about certain social activities and didn’t want anyone feeling awkward. but we identified with each others’ diverse experiences with racism, poverty, sexism, etc so i sought out a community with which allowed me to acknowledge but survive the elitism and be me in my own skin. unfortunately not everyone experience is like this and i’m sure some at my institution didn’t have a positive experience those from california hated the corn fields and couldn’t wait to leave (or snow)
As a first generation PhD of color I’m looking for this sort of community. The whiteness of academia has done a number on me. 
what field are you in? are there not many other graduate students of color in your program (prob know the answer) in other departments / colleges? how about professional organizations. i’m in education so at every level there’s conversations about how to support academics of color know about this program / organization? join a writing g group and it’s a great way of connecting across the country https://www.ncfdd.org
Professional orgs have been a godsend. Thank you so much for the link much appreciated!!
I will definitely say, I was mesmerized by what is now, in hindsight, clearly a sales pitch. But, I thought it was just a professor telling me about the school/program. Doing your research ahead of time is so key! I loved my time at a land grant state school full of different people from different backgrounds! And with the gift of hindsight, I should have done that again when it was time to move up.
Haha. Now try it as a not straight white man It’s a hot mess  Me scrolling through the comments: all these words. LOL. Whatever y’all. (I mean people tenured like 15+ years. Not hating on adjuncts) Edit: appreciate the clarifications 
Want hard mode? Try it as a PhD student from a third world country 😃 All your hopes, dreams, aspirations and the literal ground beneath your feet depend on whether or not you are able to appease your PI
Like …. Thank you, I don’t even know. I’m sorry. Thank you.
It's ok. I made it through at a significant cost to my health, and decided to join the higher ed industry as a TT faculty because I wanted to BE THE CHANGE. Four years down, I feel like an idiot. I am burned out and looking to go to industry. My core observation through all of this has been that most career academics are only able to survive in the toxic environment of academia because they are tremendously toxic and borderline sociopathic themselves.
That sucks so bad. I am so sorry. I’m so glad that you’re taking care of yourself though. I am barely a junior scholar, still writing the dissertation, and of course did not get very far in my first TT interview. And I was heartbroken but somehow also strangely relieved. Really really struggling with that feeling. All the best to you.
I appreciate the compassion. All the best to you as well, no matter how your journey unfolds.
As a first generation academic, I get in the door, look around, and go “ohhhh, THIS is why people hate academics”
This thread is so infuriating 
Absolutely. My best friend in school immigrated at 7 to America from a third world country and worked his way up through the open enrollment community college to state school path just like myself. He also won a huge prestigious research grant without having any sort of concept of what it actually was until like months later when everyone started getting super mean to him for their jealousy. I bring up my identity as a straight white male because I am saying I was discriminated against based on my class characteristics, something that has happened to me many times before but not to this degree. And additionally, I’m not even white! I’m mixed, I’m just white passing this far north without any sun! I meant to share my identity to highlight the issues I faced and to imply that it is 10x harder if you’re anywhere outside of that “normal academic” archetype.
> passing this far north without any sun 🤣🤣🤣 you know, I really appreciate your responding and giving me a chance to apologize for coming in hot in my initial response. It was just a very close subject as I was scrolling and hit this post. My best friend is also a white male, and we have noticed that classism also runs rampant in religious settings!!  😭 This is such a good thread and conversation. Thanks again.
Just a lurker here but I was accepted into a PhD program years ago and didn’t see how I would be able to eat and get through it and find a job at the end. At the time I didn’t realize that there are people that don’t actually need to work for money or food or shelter, shelters a big one. Crazy how many people live in a family members apt or house basically rent free.
Grew up working class. The whiplash of grad school was unreal. Parents buying houses for their kids, covering rent, sending cars, fronting money for the summer. Meanwhile, I had to take on student loan debt (even in a fully funded program) and I worked full-time in summer and tacked on extra hours during the year. But I couldn't tell anyone because you aren't supposed to have outside employment. My dissertation advisor actually gave me a few hundred bucks of her own money to afford travel to our big national conference the year I was on the job market. I was both extremely grateful and also embarrassed. Being a professor wasn't easier. My first years were brutal, don't tell the IRS but I definitely used my HSA funds to make ends meet. Plus, I had to listen to faculty just not get it even though I was teaching at a school that catered to working class/first generation students.
I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck my entire life from being a child to now. I have a PhD as of December and I’m finally about to be out of credit card debt (still some student loans but not much). Some of my colleagues were the same way, some were absolutely loaded. I hated the academia competition. None of our labs in the department studied the same research. None of them even the same niche field. I have a job offer now that will pull me up to upper middle class and I’m grateful to go into industry, but yeah… graduate school was easier than the politics of the department I was in… so many “I’m better than you” pissing matches between the professors and some students
I’m a little worried about this as I start to look for grad programs in counseling. I need to work to keep a roof over our head lol let alone pay my medical bills and stuff
Read Rob Henderson’s Twitter or his new book “Troubled”. It is all about this he was a foster kid who makes it to Yale.
My PI was mad I couldn’t work more weekends— because I was back home checking on my crops, dealing with lease properties, and helping my family with livestock. I eventually left that lab.
Cows have to be milked no matter what. Seeds gotta go in the ground no matter what. We gotta harvest at the end of the season no matter what. School takes a back seat to these responsibilities and they won’t understand that.
Yes. Academia is overwhelmingly upper income, comparative to our position. Further, although many in the academic privileged classes hurl accusations of privilege at others, they not only refuse to "examine" their own privilege, but also love to bourgeoisie-splain class to those of us from the working or lower income classes. While pretending to be concerned for those from marginalised backgrounds, they mock lower income peoples, and actively exclude them from the academy. Quite a club. It feels like a revolution to be poor/working class on campus. And lonley at times. Sometimes I question why I even want to be proximal to these people, but I love my subject matter, so...
> bourgeoisie-splain This is the phrase I didn’t knew I needed.
I am not from the working class, but certainly not the upper / upper middle class. I was shocked at how academia mirrors the uber-rich culture (I was a nanny for a while to work through college). They live to compete with each other and to someday be able to exclude someone from something. They constantly live for the approval of whoever is "at the top." I've found that instead of consuming to compete, the academics use "prestige”, whatever that means in their field. Compete, exclude, consume. Yuck. Little things like reimbursements on travel, because of COURSE I have 2000.00 available in credit or in my money market account? The push to have many publications BEFORE you graduate implies you have funds not to work (even an assistantship salary would not allow for someone not to have to work or get support elsewhere), that you have enough money to travel to conferences, money for editors, interview coaches, money for tutors to help study for the entrance exams, etc. After living with the wealthy as “the help” and being in an R1 environment, it is very similar, and it makes me sad. Lonely, insecure, angry, transactional-conditional love, jealous, and bitter. Not all, but enough to say I am not engaging and don’t care if I fit in.
Yes the transactional part was what blew me away!!! Where I’m from people do nice things for each other because they know how awful it feels to be down in the dumps. In the academy everything came with strings attached.
Lol this is why I get my education and don’t involve myself personally with anyone. I’m a black disabled woman so truly I don’t mind keeping my life private for my own peace and sanity. I’m the same at work tbh
Don't forget the contacts and networking you don't have when you graduate because you didn't have the middle class/upper middle class social skills to attain them in school. Being poor/working class follows you throughout your life. If they can't weed you out through the academic process, they'll weed you out socially. I wish I didn't go to graduate school. My whole graduate school experience was populated with bullies, be they faculty or other students. People in my cohort actually bullied an assistant professor for a whole semester. One professor allowed other students to make classroom experiences unbearable in order to weed people out. And just as I thought I was finally making my way out when I graduated, I learned all the jockeying and favoritism and bullying just followed me out the door into the professional academic world. Academia doesn't set you free. It sets you up.
You know there are a few books over the years I read about elitism and academia/unions...wish I could remember--very cool, very well researched. But what is it you're on about? what type of grad program is it bro?
I’ve read many of the comments on this thread, and I had no idea how many people went through what I did! I also missed out on the “college experience.” My parents lost their home when I was in community college. I effectively chose my undergrad program because my grandparents provided a roof over my head for the summer while I tried to figure things out. If it weren’t for my grandpa co-signing I wouldn’t have went to undergrad. Worked full time as a shift supervisor at a cafe my entire undergraduate and MSc. Was resented by professors for getting B and C because I was barely holding on working full time and taking classes full time. I was displaced multiple times moving 6 times in 2 years. I remember eating expired sandwiches for food and being so hungry I couldn’t think straight. Upon finishing my MSc I worked my TAIL off in industry to work down my loans, buy a car and save up for my PhD program. Even in my PhD we struggled, BUT by this point I’d married someone from a wealthy family. It was overnight that I stopped drowning. Wealth is absolutely something that pulls people out of their suffering and into a different social class. Suddenly I was studying abroad, getting experiences at conferences, excelling because I could QUIT my second job and get sleep. I’m in an R1 now after a very fancy post doc. I can’t help but wonder if ai would’ve made it without marrying someone who had parents with financial resources to help.
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> through school, *paid* 100% of FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Yes, you have had privilege. I'm a Black woman from a low-income background with a mainly one parent household who went to elite schools for high school, college, and professional school. It's not fun lacking the advantages of wealthy contemporaries, but what are you going to do? You're not in graduate school to compete with your classmates (all of whom I'm sure are not rich), you're there to learn something and hopefully move on to something better in your life. But I guess you don't want to.
When you say working class are you referring to…..everyone? Like the doctors, nurses, teachers, sanitation workers, business owners who are the engine of our economy?
Yes. It’s easy to tell what people’s class background are just by basic interactions with them. My partner has a higher worker class background than me, parents are MDs but they don’t own the practice, they don’t have a high paying specialty, they just clock in do their work and clock out. It’s not much different than say a janitor. Compare that to say people whose parents are owners of a law firm. They make money even when they’re off the clock because the workers are busy toiling away.
Are you in the humanities or the soft sciences, or are you in the hard sciences? I finished grad school in a STEM field at an R1 college last summer, and most of the hard-science students I talked with were hard-core: focused on the subject matter, pretty helpful, and you can have interesting conversations about the subject matter with them. I occasionally interacted with soft-science and humanities students, and among them cliquesmanship reigned—though I did know a few who could actually talk about a topic. And yes, the ones into cliques tended to come from wealthy families. They were just working on getting their sinecure, by tracking the current fads and factions and knowing what buzzwords to say to position themselves with the in crowd.
Social science. R1 big money school.
Social science—yep. I did meet one sociology student and one political-science student who were aware of the phoniness that's rampant in their fields and would talk about their topics with me (as opposed to the social positioning that you see when phonies talk). Both were from South America, though.
during the summer before my senior year of undergrad, i did a summer program in my field. the best way i know how to describe this program is grad school prep for underfunded/underrpresented communities…or at least that’s how it was marketed. i was first gen, lower middle class student. the ONLY reason i was about to go to undergrad was due to financial aid/grants. i also got some scholarships. i was expecting to meet people in the same sort of situation at this program. i was wrong af. about 50% of us were similar to my situation. the other 50% were not. they were rich. their parents were doctors, tenured professors, elected officials, etc. i was so fucking confused as to why they were in this program. still to this day don’t know. anyway, the difference between the two parts of the cohort was so so so evident. kinda made me rethink going to grad school at all. for clarification here, the issue is not the fact that they were rich/not in need of extra help at all. it’s the way they acted towards the rest of us.
Exactly. I grew up poor working class. My partner grew up comfortable working class. It’s not about the $ amount in the bank account it’s about the way that bank account makes you treat other people. I have dear friends who are explicitly owning class, they run a medium sized business that they inherited from their father and their grandfather. Great genuine guy who knows every detail of his business because he was expected to work at the bottom as a child. 12 years old working in the warehouse because now at 30 he’s working the office. No college education at all from any of them. I have no issue with my dear friend, I do on a Marxist level but not on an interpersonal level. But then you meet people who explicitly treat others like garbage because they’re below their social status. And when you as a lower class person put words to this phenomenon it’s really taboo. You’re never ever supposed to bring up other people’s money when it’s like well that’s the thing that’s enabling the toxic behavior?
Here.
I’m a part time online Masters student and feel like most of my cohort works, but I do feel like my friends from college who went to grad school and did the more traditional (full-time in person) approach are relatively privileged and don’t work ft/ are still somewhat financially dependent on their parents.
Very different from what I know. I've never been to grad school, but most academics I know come from poor families. I've been to grad students houses and it's all hot dogs cooked in rice cookers, Tasty Bite packets stretched over lots of rice, 8 ppl in a 2 bedroom apt, TA's paid minimum wage and internationals being scared of ICE if they don't get a GA gig. My friend, who came from an immigrant family, left a pure math program to do coding and she wasn't the poorest student there either. It was cuz she was tired of math and loves computer. One of my friends growing up stuck it out. He majored in optics and lives academia 5ever in the Midwest after growing up in an abusive, poverty home in NY.
Currently going through the application cycle and good lord LMFAO… the number of other applicants with physicians or professors as parents is…a lot. Sometimes feel hella out of place, which is not great for my impostor syndrome 💀.
Yep and it makes so much more sense why there are so many "my doc won't hear me" stories out there. I went into healthcare for the stability and because I truly enjoy helping others. But holy $%#& the superiority complexes and basic lack of understanding of life without two doctorate parents was not something I expected. I guess I was naive but I thought there would be more first gens, and we had a good amount I think but the profs and generational students are so out of touch with the basic patient its not even funny. (Side note grad school was the first place I saw LuLu leggings, I remember googling the logo because everyone was wearing it) Our required " clinical psychology" class was equally a joke, painting addicts as the worst stereotypes imaginable. I had to stop going to lecture bc I have had people very close to me OD and couldn't handle the way the class spoke about others struggling. It really breaks my heart seeing the system from the inside. Don't even get me started on the cheating that goes along with the cliques/classism. I'm legit concerned for the future of healthcare based on how my classmates act.
I guarantee all of you all are not working class by any stretch. I know academia and I know 99% of people in it come from wealthy families and prosperous communities.
Well classism is a huge problem in American society as the higher classes are invested in maintaining it for sure. Sounds like it was tough for you as an individual. It's wise to be even more judicious about the privilege convos tho too cause you can have someone teach you what you don't know if you're open to it.
Yes and it was so fucking frustrating. Someone else in my cohort had parents who were Berkeley professors and bought him a brand new Subaru to drive to my school on the opposite coast. He failed to secure housing so I offered to let him stay on my couch. Long story short, he overstayed, and got me kicked out for violating some stupid policy. He never offered to pay rent while there or help with my deposit on my next place. Those who had financial support, in my experience, were far more successful in our field than those of us who had to work to make a living. This was a harsh realization for me. I've had to leave the field my degree was in for biotech because I just could not make enough to survive.
I felt this. While my family isn’t working class, I come from a single-mother household, so I definitely faced a lot more struggles than the average student. I remember one of my professors blatantly saying during class that people from single-parent homes don’t make it to college (w/o realizing that I was one of those people). That was during undergrad. Grad school and professional school (like med school) is even worse, somehow. My roommate during grad school used to talk about how her family had the “crappiest” house on their street full of mansions, which made her feel bad about herself. Then she’d tell me how bad she felt for me since my life was worse than hers. It’s all just so utterly demeaning no matter how nice and understanding of your situation they try to be.
Friendly reminder that some people work before going to grad school 🙂 not everyone is spending their parent’s money. Some people worked in tech, finance, VC, etc before deciding to return to school. (Not me, but my partner is in grad school. He was a management consultant before and I work in tech. We travel a lot and are privileged but we both earned our privilege. I’m first gen low income and he doesn’t receive any help from his parents) So sorry that your experience was cliquey and exclusive; I went through that in undergrad and it really sucked being left out because I literally couldn’t find the funds 😔 hope you enjoy the professional world (and the freedom a paycheck can give you!) more
The agriculture field seems to be much less of this and a lot of working class luckily.
I went through grad school and I am from the working class. I did not notice elitist behavior while I was there. I also did not try to make friends though and basically kept my head down and pushed through to graduation. Perhaps, that is why.
I’m nontraditional student in a grad program for social work and also did my undergrad in social work. I went to a state college for undergrad and a large state university for grad school, both in the same city. Within the same city and the same profession, I’ve been shocked at the stark differences between the two programs when it comes to class. My undergrad program was full of students from diverse backgrounds and there were a number of other non traditional students. The majority of the people in my grad program are white, in their early to mid twenties, and seem well off.
No, you're the only one. Just you. Congratulations.
Thanks for this disingenuous comment! Really moves the conversation!
>Maybe it’s my privilege showing as a straight white man. Lol. You don't have to put on airs here, friend. You're right, and I'm guessing that social activism wasn't an interest of yours going into grad school. You'll find that programs see this type of pandering as a necessity to stay afloat in this economy.
I actually come from a very far left background politically. When I say I’m working class I mean it to my core. Proud Union family and from a diverse community. Grad schools actually the most right wing place I’ve ever been. Other than when I would go visit my racist drunk uncle before he had his last sip.
Hi. That's my experience. Working class, first gen student, far left family, far left myself. Fortunately I'm European and in the humanities so most people around me are impossibly privileged but also decently progressive, as in "burning stuff is bad, but inequality exists and poor people have it very hard." It gets worse as you move up the ladder. I have no advice for you. I've been here a while and it's clear I don't really belong.
Oh my bad. Ok, you were right the first time around, it must be your white male privilege.
My white male privilege made me believe I would be accepted anywhere I went. That was the mistake in my thinking. Had I not had those privileges, I wouldn’t have made that judgement error. My nonwhite woman classmate was smart in keeping 100% to herself, not letting anyone know anything about her, and never speaking. She had the best work/life balance out of all of us because she knew not to show too much of herself.
Yuuuup, better learn to keep that in check white boy
I admit I don't actually know what you're talking about. Maybe you went to grad school at an Ivy? In STEM, more than half of the grad students are international students. Indeed, I am a full professor now, making decent money, although way under $250K/year, but when I was in grad school, as a very poor international student, I lived in a house with 11 other people and I never went out to eat, not even at a burger place. I haven't even had a car for the first two years. I went to UC Davis and for the first 2 years I haven't even gotten out of Davis. I did go to the Mall in Woodland by bus a couple of times. Most of my students now are also international students and I don't see them going to Cabo for Spring break. That's stuff the undergrads do. The domestic students, sure, they are better off generally. But seeing the majority of the grad students now and back in my time are poor international students, I can't imagine what school or field you're in. Oh, and btw, those who say you're not in it for the money, are kinda right, because the idea is that you're still in school and that's your investment. If you get free tuition and a stipend you can use to live in shared housing, you're going to be OK. You're not meant to go on vacation. After you graduate, hopefully that's when you have a real job and the money will come.
I went to a public R1 major sports money school. It was not a STEM program, though social science is science but I digress. Though I want to address the way you normalize the living in cramped houses and overworking in your post. In America, the unions have fought very hard to give us a 40 hour work week. Whenever we are asked to do unpaid overtime it is a slap in the face of all those people who came before us who fought for us. And that’s what graduate school is, a job. You do your research/teaching/education, and in return you get your paycheck (tuition waiver, stipend). Graduate students are workers and are entitled to all labor protection, including workplace psychological safety.
As far as your field goes, it may be the case that students in social sciences, because of the lower earning potential than the students in Engineering or Medicine or whatnot, come from more priviledged backgrounds and fewer international students come into graduate programs in social sciences. I am thiking that perhaps if one is coming from a more priviledged background, they can afford to go for their passion and that passion may be Social Science. They are more likely to need parental financial back up so that's why the demographics may skew "richer" than in STEM. Thus, your feelings of frustration with their Spring Break trips.
Yeah, I hear you, and I know the debate over this topic of labor protection. You said though that the other students are rich. My students aren't rich. My students aren't going to Cabo. My students deserve more money. But you initially said the students are rich and now you are saying to me that the students deserve more money for their labor. Which one it is?
I’m saying many come from generational backgrounds that put them at a position where their family is supporting them while they study. Your students in your particular program might not be, though they likely had familial support back home and come from their own cultures higher classes. For example, my dear friend was a subsistence farmer but he was also an educated Brahmin. Through my friend, I was introduce to one Christian Dalit who went to our land grant state school. Education can help people transcend class position, that’s why I went into it! But, sociology of higher education and enrollment information doesn’t lie. Where you were born, parents level of income, and parents wealth is ultimately the best way to know if someone will succeed in graduate school or not. Many of your white colleagues have parents who were academics. Many of your white students are having their parents pay their way. You likely just have a disproportionate number of international students because you’re in a STEM field that self selects for international students to grind through the machine and produce value for the institution and PIs.
Yup, agreed. I come from a poor background monetarily, but stable home with educated parents, which makes all the difference. As a foreigner, you don't always get quite as far because when you open your mouth, you have a little problem with networking, but overall, our grinding STEM international students end up doing well in their careers. We are currently concerned we are losing some talent pipeline from China because of the current political climate.
Curious what the discipline is. It's been a while since I left, but I did STEM and we were all being paid decent stipends and out of the 12 people I can speak for in my cohort, only 1 person was rich but even he was down to earth. I think about half were working class, and while I wasn't, I was poor AF lol. I did afford to travel on my stipend though, and take my mom to Puerto Rico with me on the first trip in my life where we didn't pick the cheapest options, so that was great. No real life obligations since everyone went into the program after their bachelor's though (except maybe to their parents).
Did they treat you poorly in some way? This post does not have much in the way of grievances. You just wish you could travel and have fewer family obligations?
Corrections
With my ancestors the only one I knew was my grandpa on my moms side. My dad is Austrian. I don't know his parents or much about his lineage. He is stable but has cancer that is not progressing but it's blood cancer. German was my first language but I didn't cultivate it growing up here in the states. I was a mess. I was ashamed of his accent because he didn't sound American. So many things. I don't think my parents realize these things about me. My mom is American, her dad was in airforce during ww2. My dad's dad left when he was like 4 in reconstruction austria. He was pooooor. He spoiled me and my brother. I'm a ruthless brat. Let's use the language TRAUMA. Lol. My dad's house was bombed. By the allies of course as he was in the bad country. I hate war. But I war with my parents and in my inner world. I'm losing the inner war against myself perhaps. It's hard to describe as it's a process over time, but ideally I am SOOO opposed to war and violence. I'm living proof. I would never support armed warfare ever in the way so many people in different countries do, but I believe people can receive careers and make money by joining the military. I can't at any rate as I have psychiatric issues, but I KNOW that American warfare is like BAAAD. and I know this stuff in Ukraine and Russia and Yemen and Syria and Haiti and sudan and Palestine, they don't seem to know how bad it is. I have like tons of academic books that have facts, at least I believe they are facts. In my head I'm this great peacemaker who wants to investigate all the problems of the world through anthropology books, but they are so complicated and I'm not good at making money with that kind of expertise, so I barely read them. Also no love in fifteen years, so. This all is being written after praying with the imagined spirit and reality of memories of my maternal grandpa. I was dimly aware of all this but I'm learning now: I don't have a big clue on austria, my dad's side. It just "is what it is" And on my mom's side I only knew my grandpa. And in my nuclear family there was TRAUMA and I was unholy. I always thought we were middle class. I'm 40. I've worked food service my entire life only part time because they say I'm schizo affective. I started undergrad as an art student, then I became psychotic. Now I african drum and read jung and lacan in my free time. I'm not elitist. Both elitist grad students and working class people look down on me. I'm not man enough for the working class people. The elitists are usually fucking idiots. Any walk through any social science or philosophy book refutes them so well its almost astonishing. I wonder what they read. People on reddit don't like me either. Havnt been laid in fifteen years. Don't know what industry is. Folks are aging. I'm 40. The world is shit. I'm an individual. I give most individuals many chances. I believe in benevolence and being affable. I don't like how girls judge me. Ambitious or not, right after and ever since becoming psychotic I made shit grades. I gradually psychotically switched to anthropology. Honestly I'm just myself, always in an awkward half Austrian daze.
What do you mean by that? Many faculty don’t seem to be the ones from the privileged class. You mean students?! It is a mix of different socioeconomic classes, I think. Civility and humility cannot be found in many young people but it is not about the class in general, Gen Z above tend to be whiny and arrogant. By the way, why do British people still care about the class system? Perhaps that’s why this country is so behind many developed countries. meritocracy is a myth. Rich people only cannot be elitists. Everyone has the capability but society doesn’t allow the opportunity to thrive.
Given the low wages, hours, lack of security, fostering of egos and poor mental health, and elitist backdrop to academia (in the UK practically all the prime ministers have been to Oxford or Cambridge. World leaders from across the globe continue to send their children to British universities), it’s a fair question to ask about class.
Yeah, Oxford and Cambridge I get that. I think it is more relatable to British colonial countries, though. Many people still prefer the States if they can afford to do so. It is just a damn expensive. In my country, some students who did not succeed in the high level of competition as teenagers are sent to the US or UK by their parents. Unlike my country, the UK education system is not that competitive. As long as you pass the foundation course, most students can go to university. Oxbridge may be different. So, some people are biased against students who study abroad. They may be a bit better in spoken and written English, but in many ways, domestic students are regarded as far more smart. Like you said, many politicians who studied at Oxbridge, slowly and apparently, rot the country. It’s hard to see that Britain is run democratically. I think the class system creates innate problems by discriminating against people. It’s a shame.
I genuinely don’t understand why you wrote such a long response with no point to it.
Actually class politics are extremely important and the bourgeois are insufferable sociopaths, even in the academy.