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>>GARTH FOWLER: Hello my name's Garth A. Fowler and I'm the associate executive director for
graduate and postgraduate education and training at the American Psychological Association.
Today we're going to talk about the cost of and paying for graduate school. Many people
have been asking me about getting into graduate school and the costs that come with going.
But not many people have asked how do you pay for graduate school. So, today I wanted
to talk about the actual costs of graduate study and how exactly do you pay for them.
So let's start with some of the costs of graduate school. Obviously everyone thinks of tuition.
And when you think of tuition you'll think of text books and fees. But, what are some
of the costs you might not have paid as an undergraduate that you would pay as a graduate
student? Chances are you won't live in student housing on campus, so you'll have to pay rent
and you'll also have to pay for transportation, such as owning a car or taking the bus. You
may be required to have health insure or maybe even insure your car. And then of course you'll
want to eat.
So, how would you pay for all this? That's the big question.
Many graduate programs will offer you funding opportunities while you study. Let's call
these opportunities financial assistance. The first is scholarships and they are exactly
as they sound. In recognition for your academic potential your department will provide you
money. The second is teaching assistantships. These too are exactly as they sound. In return
for your teaching services you will receive money. The last two are research grants and
research fellowships. Many graduate students receive support from these two types of assistance,
so we should spend more time understanding how they work.
Research grants and fellowships follow a similar pattern. A faculty member at your institution
will submit a research proposal to an outside organization. In this example we'll use NIH.
The NIH will send money to the university to pay for that research project. The faculty
member that wrote the proposal will then hire a research team. As a graduate student you
can be paid to be part of that research team.
Many federal agencies sponsor research grants and fellowships, like the Department of Defense,
the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Many private companies will also sponsor research grants and fellowships.
A final mechanism that helps to reduce the cost of graduate study is tuition remission.
Tuition remission occurs when the university does not charge you tuition to attend. Both
teaching assistantships and research grants and fellowships often come with tuition remission
and they can be partial or full.
Now we have a simple way to estimate your debt for attending graduate school. Your debt
will be equal to any finical assistance you receive plus tuition remission minus the cost
of attending and your costs of living.
You might still be asking yourself, how much debt did past graduate students have? The
most recent data from the APA shows that a large percentage, 32, will graduate without
any debt. The next largest percentage, 21 percent, will have over $100,000 in debt.
We've also found that the amount of debt varies depending on the subfield of psychology that
you study. Those in the clinical and child clinical fields carry the highest debt while
those in the cognitive fields will carry the lowest.
So what did we learn? We saw that the debt associated with graduate study is related
to the tuition, the cost of living and the subfield of psychology that you choose to
study. But we've also seen there are numerous mechanisms -types of financial assistance
that you can receive - to help to make sure that you graduate with as little or no debt
as possible. So it's important to remember that while you're researching graduate departments
you should always ask about the teaching assistantships and research grant and fellowship opportunities
that exist.