Posted on 05/09/2012 9:32:57 PM PDT by Steelfish
The Number of Ph.D.s on Public Aid Triples in U.S.
Elliott Stegall, 51 and father of two, has been pressed financially as he pursues his graduate degree and teaches two English college courses a semester. By SUSANNA KIM May 9, 2012 The life of an academic who pays hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition and lives off stipends and scholarhips is becoming more financially treacherous. A skyrocketing number of Americans with Ph.D.s say they are facing a reality in which they are turning to food stamps to survive.
One in six Americans received food stamps or other public assistance last year, but the number of people with a Ph.D. or Masters degree who receive that aid has tripled in the past two years, according to government data.
In a story published by The Chronicle of Higher Education this week Ph.D. holders and students who are teaching on the non-tenure track in community colleges and universities bemoaned their prospects.
Elliott Stegall, 51, is pursuing a Ph.D. in film studies at Florida State University while he teaches two English courses at Northwest Florida State College in Niceville, Fla.
To help support their two young children, he and his wife rely, in part, on food stamps, Medicaid and aid from the USDA program, Women, and Infants and Children (WIC).
"I tend to look at my experience as a humanist, as someone who is fascinated by human culture," he told the Chronicle. "Maybe it was a way of hiding from the reality in which I found myself. I never thought I'd be among the poor."
He and his wife also have worked part-time jobs as house painters and cleaners and food caterers.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Elliott Stegall, 51, is pursuing a Ph.D. in film studies at Florida State University while he teaches two English courses at Northwest Florida State College in Niceville, Fla.
LMAO. Maybe Elliott should have taken a tech class on welding instead of “film studies”
Elliott Stegall, 51, is pursuing a Ph.D. in film studies at Florida State University while he teaches two English courses at Northwest Florida State College in Niceville, Fla.
LMAO. Maybe Elliott should have taken a tech class on welding instead of “film studies”
Put down the bong.... and step away slowly!
ie) something useful that other people will pay for. In fact, these ARE their jobs.
The film-studies and sociology stuff are just very expensive hobbies.
Double posting is NOT a sin, But being a Major League Loser as a Provider/Dad
is a whole other issue!
Well, at least it isn't one of the Grievance Studies programs.
Does he have a minor concentration in concessions consumption?
I hate to say I, but many of the PHD’s I have known couldn’t make them selves a grilled cheese sandwich if they were starving.
I actually had one ask me last week how he should vote in the local elections.
Exasperated, I said “just vote straight R”
Film studies?
LOL!!
I think I have spotted his problem. :)
I know a number of Ph.D's none which are on food stamps but they have degrees in something that is actually useful.
I have sympathy for the unemployed, but there are some who won’t take jobs that are out there because they dont pay big bucks.
People have to realize that you can’t always get the job you want and sitting around idle for months and years doesn’t look good on a resume.
And I'm willing to bet they did a halfa**ed job at that.
What losers.
Bump
And if there weren’t endless unemployment and welfare checks they’d be forced to do something useful or go hungry.
Instead they get their bellies filled and they get to pursue a useless “education” on the taxpayers dime endlessly.
And then we wonder why we are broke as a country...
An educted begger, too smart to get his hands dirty and to stupid to wear a rubber.
PROTIP: the former usually leads to the latter
It is my opinion that it is wise to learn a trade or two.
Then you can pursue your passion at your leisure.
But he gets to see a LOT of movies and observe the "human culture" as portrayed on celluloid.
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