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Our department is a STEM department in the college of arts and sciences at a very large R1 university. We recently learned from the incoming PhD students that the stipend they were offered is about 11% higher than ours. When we asked the department head about this, he just said they "petitioned" the college for more funding so they can increase our stipends to match those of the new students, but they are "waiting" for approval and the college sometimes "takes months to approve" these sorts of things.
Is this BS or does this sound normal? We are in a state where public university employees are not allowed to unionize or organize work stoppages.
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Also the world changes. I started my PhD program in 2018. Since then the cost of almost everything has gone up, dramatically in ways that I couldn't have predicted. PhD stipends tend to keep folks right on the edge of poverty. When the prices for things go up, students don't really have much disposable income to absorb those costs. They could leave, but that would likely mean abandoning the years of work they put into the program.