Bret Devereaux

This post was raw and difficult to write, but I get this question every year and I think honesty is important. Does our country (and the world more generally) need humanistic scholars? I'd argue the answer is yes!

But we can't ask students to spend the next 7 years living within shouting range of the poverty line in high costs towns while delaying life milestones working 80 hour weeks under conditions that induce anxiety/depression at 6 times the rate of the general population...

I just saw the financial stress report for grad students at my university. If we're in shouting distance of the poverty line, it's from the wrong side of that line.

So my stipend never put me below the federal poverty line for a single individual (which is just $12,880 a year), which is why I hedge my terms.

Oh right, I wasn't even thinking of the official federal guidelines, because of how poorly that captures actual poverty. I was thinking of the definitions used in that financial stress survey, which evaluated stuff like food bank usage, medical expenditure difficulties, etc.