Hi. What do students spend the stipend money on? Is it used to pay living expenses or buy lab supplies? Is stipends like a job pay and you do whatever you like with the money?
Stipends
- Thread starter globy321
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What kind of job will you be doing?
When I was a graduate assistant this past semester, I received a stipend. It was like a job where I could spend the money on whatever I wanted. In my case, it went to living expenses. Granted, I wasn't working in a lab, so the rules might be different. However, I DID work in a lab (as a paid student employee) once upon a time and nobody, not even those receiving a stipend, bought their own lab supplies. So I'd assume that no matter what you're doing, the stipend is yours to do whatever you want with.
When I was a graduate assistant this past semester, I received a stipend. It was like a job where I could spend the money on whatever I wanted. In my case, it went to living expenses. Granted, I wasn't working in a lab, so the rules might be different. However, I DID work in a lab (as a paid student employee) once upon a time and nobody, not even those receiving a stipend, bought their own lab supplies. So I'd assume that no matter what you're doing, the stipend is yours to do whatever you want with.
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"Stipend" is a fancy term in the world of academe for "money to live on." Lots of MD/PhD students that I know paid for a fair amount of beer with their stipend. The rest of us used federally-guaranteed loan money. Such funds, stipends or loan proceeds, also come in handy for things like rent, light, and heat.
It's kinda similar to the medical profession's insistence on using the Latin "Curriculum Vitae" for the far easier and better-understood French word, "resume."
It's kinda similar to the medical profession's insistence on using the Latin "Curriculum Vitae" for the far easier and better-understood French word, "resume."
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LOL. But there's another reason they insist on this word: academic institutions don't want to say "salary," because they don't want to be legally regarded as employers. If they were, they'd have comply with wage/hour/overtime laws, and (even worse from their point of view) allow the student-employees to unionize.
There was a huge court case over this at Yale a couple of years ago. The TAs wanted to unionize, because their pay and benefits were rock-bottom low. But when the matter went to court, the ruling said that the TAs were not employees but students, and the "pay" they received for teaching was really just an allowance given at the university's discretion.
In fact, if you look on the AAMC website, you'll see that medical resident pay is also called a "stipend." That's the biggest joke on earth.