Earning grad school financial aid while teaching

By Chris Walker

Student loans and student debt are no joke. This is serious business. Many students are graduating from college and post college studies with too many financial obligations; a great deal of this financial burden is due to education costs. In fact, many students graduate with enough debt to finance their own homes. I know it sounds crazy but that’s the reality.

We’re talking about 6-figured debts here. Can you imagine the rising expenses if that same graduate gets married? We’re talking about a crippling debt. Given the soft economy and the shortage of high paying jobs available out there, many students are facing the demon of student debt. Thankfully, there are many ways to mitigate or outright eliminate your student debt when you graduate.

In the graduate school context, a lot of these can be achieved through financial aid packages that involve a lot of scholarships and grants. Unlike loans, scholarships and grants don’t have to be paid back. The downside to this financial aid option is that they are very competitive. There is really no assurance that you will get them. While there are some grants that are given as free money by the government, they are far too small to cover the amount that you need to pay for your studies.

In terms of scholarships, you have to compete with other graduate students who are applying for the same pool of money. In fact, the more lucrative ones involve competition not just with the students from your school but also from all over the country and worse, all over the world. So, what do you do? You have to seriously consider a work-study. 

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Graduate student aids are the bread and butter of most college campuses’ teaching staff. It’s an open secret that the more prestigious a university is, the more focused the professors are on research. Since research takes up so much of their time, they really can’t stretch themselves to cover the nitty-gritty of teaching. Lecturing is one thing but actually leading discussions and labs regarding the topics and the readings are other things entirely.

This is where the graduate student teaching assistant comes in. Not only can the TA lead the discussions, give out assignments, and monitor progress, they also help with grading term papers and finals. They are the backbone of any educational institution. The only thing that sucks is that most of them aren’t paid that well. Thankfully, this is changing since many are beginning to get more vocal about being paid decent enough wages so that they can not only pay for their living expenses but also their school expenses.

Work-study. This is where you should seriously get as much of your financial aid from. The great thing about work-study is that you can mold your graduate coursework and schedule around your teaching coursework. If you play your cards right, you can actually learn while on the job and also do your regular learning and research. And at the end of the process you will come out better prepared for either a career in academia or out in corporate America.

Regardless of what your overall goals and aspirations are, going through the teachers’ aid experience will help you get the vital skills that you need to succeed with other aspects of your life. We’re talking about punctuality, working under pressure, dealing with different types of personalities, dealing with bureaucracies, turning in work on time, double-checking your work, and so on and so forth.

This guest post was brought to you by Chris Walker, a writer for http://www.sampleessayaboutmyself.com. Chris writes model personal statement essays.

Why the cost of education should be marked to market

Image attribution: Lumaxart; CC BY SA-2.0

At the undergraduate level, a degree in accounting costs the same as a degree in journalism. Yet, according to the Daily Beast, a degree in Journalism is the most useless degree to have (wiping my forehead, good thing I have two degrees in philosophy!) Having said that, there is a real societal and economic issue underlying education costs. Basically, undergraduates are not getting an education marked to market, which basically means the value is not measured in terms of actual worth.

Skeptics would argue, if degree costs were measured in terms of worth, professors in low-valued fields would not work because the pay is so low. Really. Has that been proven or is that just speculation? From one perspective, life is more than just money, actually, much more than just money and some might just be passionate to share some things in life regardless of compensation. How do I know this? Quite simple, I've been writing for over five years and have a very low income.

What if education were marked to market, what then? For starters, the debt to income ratio of creative types who choose to learn about their fields would be more manageable. That isn't so bad is it? Oh, actually it is for those who only care about money. For those people, who I relate to at a substantial level, follow the smart money. Makes sense, following the arts is not typically being in the path of smart money, unless it's coming from George Lucas, Jean-Louis Gauthier, or William Shakespeare. So if you want to teach art and make a living, have a lot of faith in life. Otherwise, focus on the money ball.

There is another real economic problem to marking education to market however. Specifically, if all education costs were marked to market, only a handful of degrees would really be worth a great deal. In such case, and assuming many degrees would be valued at far less than their actual present costs, the economy would be affected significantly. For example, professors could be on food stamps, perceptions of education could lower enrollment causing the revenue of educational institutions, and the quality of educational programs to decline. If economics is the focal point, then yes, that is a big deal; but what if it isn't?

Economic models are not fool proof, and the field of economics is one of many that applies mathematical formulas to sociological constructs.  This is why economics is not considered a science, and what is not scientific is not absolute, therefore economics is not accurate. Also, measuring worth is not quite that simple as a survey of the career paths of thousands of former students would need to be tracked to create any sort of statistical significance to the valuations. It would also be challenging to isolate the exact influence education has on wealth apart from other variables such as luck, personality, motivation etc.

Even if economics were a science, which at basic levels it is, the scenario does not bode well materially. For example, Jeremy Grantham, a well known fund manager, thinks "grandchildren have no value" because of the unsustainable course of current economic practices according to John Elkington of the U.K. Guardian. Indeed, Grantham has clearly illustrated that constant growth is impossible with finite resources and demonstrates this using simple mathematics. This is reiterated by Henry Blodget of Business Insider who summarizes Grantham's reasoning as essentially this: "One cubic meter of possessions at a growth rate of 4.5 percent per year for 3000 years is equal to 10 to the 57th power."

The economy is a fragile mechanism that millions of people depend on to live and thrive. That's no small potato in an existential world where 'actual living' is a legitimate concern. In such case, humanity and common sense draw lines where economics might not. Specifically, minimum values of educational worth similar to minimum wage of labor. Makes sense doesn't it? No degree is worth nothing, and everybody is on Earth for a reason, so why stand in the way of life when it such a good thing? In other words, undervaluing education is just as bad as overvaluing it because it slows progress, and decreases the quality of education.