People typically get paid to earn a PhD, so this person's debt likely came from elsewhere, unless they grossly overpaid for their undergraduate education.
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
251 points (84.4% liked)
Lemmy Shitpost
33136 readers
2654 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
Rules:
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
thats probably it, undergrad in a expensive college is way more likely., or if hes did a MS as well, which is tuition only as well.
I became a homeowner recently and a bunch of people I know just reacted with absolute jealousy and negativity. People suck
Give it 5-10 years and every college age person being funneled into the trades, then they will be oversaturated again and we will go back to overpacking STEM
My wife graduated law school in 2010, Summa Cum Laude, and just barely got a job at a low rent firm.
Five years later, she's earning twice the money at a much nicer place for not much more work, because the glut of students from '08-'10 caused grads in '11-'14 to look elsewhere. Suddenly there was a huge supply gap and you could write your own ticket.
Moral of the Story: Get good at something and stick with it. Markets go up, markets go down, but skills pay the bills in the end.
It’s almost as if the real problem is opportunity. Hmm.
The boomer energy is strong with this one.
"I graduated high school, got a good job at the Mill, married my high school sweetheart, had five kids, bought a second house with a boat, retired at 60, went insane reading Facebook memes and watching FOX News, then decided to shoot up the Harvest Music Festival in 2017. Why can't you young people do that?"
If they were boomers then the phd one should've paid off more of that student debt
The Boomer term has shifted to being about state of mind.
This started after "ok, boomer" caused all these people to out themselves.
Hell yeah it is a state of mind
Or education could be free. Just a thought.
free? people should be paid to get an education
Not sure if it's still a thing but I knew a girl from Norway who basically went to college from age 18-30 getting like four different degrees because as long as she remained in higher education, the government would keep paying for her education + living expenses.
Not sure if that was the original intent but it sure does result in a highly educated populace.
Norway here: This is kind of how it works, but not quite.
While studying, you get a student loan. 40 % of that loan is automatically "forgiven" (turned into a stipend) as you complete your courses. In order to remain eligible for the loan, you need to maintain a certain progression in your studies, and there's also a limit to how many years you can receive the stipend for (I think it's eight years now). As long as you're studying, the loan doesn't accrue interest, and you don't need to make down payments.
Throughout five years, I received very roughly 200k NOK (≈20k USD) in stipend, and 300k NOK in loans.
Also, a PhD is treated as an ordinary job here. I'm paid about 600k NOK (≈60k USD) per year, which is a bit less than my peers from engineering studies in industry jobs (they get around 700-800), but it's by no means a bad pay. I've been able to afford a small apartment together with my SO on that pay. Hearing about places where people have to take up loans in order to finance taking a phd makes my head spin.
In America you usually do get paid for the PhD, you however get little other support snd the pay is bad
What do you mean by "little other support"? I don't get any other "support" from my job as a phd than my salary?
Little other support as in it's common to take on more phd candidates than there are resources for leading to issues like needing to fight to get lab time. At least according to some people I know who've been in phd programs here.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Have a friend who was a sort-of perpetual grad student - bouncing from Sweden to Italy to Australia - over about ten years, pursuing a degree in marine biology. Along the way, she contributed thousands of hours of labor to various research teams. Eventually, she got burned out, married a neurologist, and moved to a small house in Queensland. Now she mostly just gardens and raises bunnies, which she is extraordinarily good at thanks to her education.
Was this money wasted or did the universities get exactly what they paid her for? Idk. But it seems a far better way to employ people than what we've done with The Pentagon or ICE.
load more comments
(2 replies)
It is in first world countries, if we define first world as having good educational system, healthcare system, public transportation…
The best universities in Brazil, the ones everyone wants to study at and the ones producing cutting edge research... Are all free, they're public universities. The private ones can't compete on most metrics.
So yeah, maybe americans should drop the whole "first world" tag to pretend they're special and rebalance their priorities.
American public universities used to be free. But a lot of students protested things like racism and the Vietnam War so Ronald Reagan as governor of California and later as president worked hard to ensure that American students had to pay lest they have the time and financial freedom to exercise their rights
load more comments
(3 replies)
Probably a lot of missing context with this one
He did the plumbing for the brother's place.
Set up the toilet to pipe to the kitchen sink. "eat shit" as they say.
shrug
anti intellectual propaganda
Oh. I hadn't read it like that. I thought the brother was a hypocrite because if he has a PhD he SHOULD be able to pay his debts and get a hose (I'm not from the us so I'm guessing that part) but I stead seems to not ba able to manage his own money while criticizing OP
College graduates (PhD or otherwise) drowning in debt and not being financially able to pay it off is common enough here in the US that it's a trope, and likely the basis for this "joke".
I see. Thanks. Lately I've started to realize just how expensive health and education are in the us.
I went to see a neurologist and paid 0 cents My brother is considering a biology PhD and he's broke. A 3 bedroom house costs like 60k usd
That same house in my area costs at least 10 times that amount. I was lucky in that I had "only" $80,000 of debt from my bachelor's, a housing situation via marriage, and a career path with solid pay (after going back for an associate's while working in a low-paying job post-graduation for 7 years). I only finally paid off that debt 2 years ago and I graduated in 2008. I don't know how a lot of people manage.
Oh no PhDs here are like the worst financial choice.
I haven’t been to 9gag in forever, not sure if this is a really bad meme or a great shitpost
Ph.D. in what?
view more: next ›