by Erica Szkody, Ph.D.* & Steven Hobaica, Ph.D.**
* Stony Brook University; ** The Trevor Project
Graduate student debt loads are steadily rising, and financial stress remains a significant stressor for many graduate students.
In our recent study (Szkody et al., 2022; (N = 912), the average clinical psychology doctoral student loan debt was $76,000 by the end of their program. This debt load varies widely, with some debt loads over $500,000. Although most doctoral clinical psychology programs offer tuition remission, stipends, or other financial support to help students pay for expenses, about a third of students still struggle to make ends meet. Stipends are frequently offered for less than a full year of service (e.g., only half of the sample indicated that they had 12 months of stipend support) and many students are unable or not permitted to get a part-time job or accrue any supplemental income. Furthermore, stipends are being outpaced by the rising inflation rate, leaving many students without any expendable income. Instead, students rely on their savings, student loans, and financial support from family and friends to bridge the gap between their income and expenditures. To survive, students now, more than ever, are renting their housing or having a roommate. They also describe having to delay important life milestones, such as buying a car or a house, getting married, or starting a family, partly due to financial stress and debt in graduate school.
Unfortunately, we found that these students only have, on average, $1,500 of annual expendable income to cover costs related to health care, education, internship applications, relocation interviews, and childcare. Thus, many students have little to no expendable income. Our sample also endorsed significant financial stress, which can have long term implications for their mental health. Financial stress was associated with increased time spent worrying about finances and an increased number of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and poor sleep. Moreover, these high rates of depression and anxiety symptoms far exceeded those found in the general population and are often worse for members of underrepresented groups (e.g., LGBTQ+, people of color). However, we found no significant differences in financial stress or financial burden among members of underrepresented groups. Even more concerning, almost a fifth of the sample endorsed experiencing a health crisis they could not afford while in graduate school.
We encourage programs to consider the following to limit financial stress and burden among their graduate students.
- Programs can increase transparency about programmatic costs, tuition remission opportunities, the average amount of debt accrued by their graduate students, and program and institutional resources for attaining additional funding.
- Programs can continuously evaluate the current financial needs of their graduate students in their geographic area to identify areas for improvement.
- Programs should raise stipends in line with inflation rates or advocate for their institution to increase stipends to help relieve financial stress and debt.
- Programs can reevaluate their restrictions of external employment to help students make ends meet.
- Programs can provide financial education resources within their department and openly discuss how to manage debt and one’s budget or how to prioritize saving when possible.
- Programs should improve access and quality of healthcare for their graduate students. Specifically, programs can develop partnerships with community mental health clinics and larger healthcare institutions that serve their geographic area, provide adequate information about resources to their students, and offer seminars on how to access these support services.
More information about our findings and suggestions for programmatic recommendations can be found in the full publication (see Szkody et al., 2022).________________________________________________________________
Reference
Szkody, E., Hobaica, S., Owens, S., Boland, J., Washburn, J., & Bell, D. (2022). Financial stress and debt in clinical psychology doctoral programs. Journal of Clinical Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23451
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS).