It varies by cost of living more than school. When I was a PhD student in the Midwest I was making mid 20s (this is back in the oughts.) Not a lot, but comfortable in a midwestern college town. I came to Philly after graduation and I remember some of the Penn students I was around were in the 30s.

I did my PhD at UD. We were at 30k when I left. Philly is more expensive than delaware so paying 2/3s the rate is laughable

The average hard science PhD stipend has floated around $25-30,000 per year, but hard sciences essentially always include tuition coverage. Not all fields cover the tuition for PhD candidates.

The stipend available is also largely dependent on the grants the lab is able to acquire and Covid supply chain issues utterly wrecked the grants organizations were willing to give out.

I’m not surprised at all by this because the university only foots so much of the stipend. Without grants increasing with inflation, and they’re absolutely not, PhD stipends can’t without shorting staff

We’re talking pay PhD student $4000 more per year by using your funds normally allocated for an undergraduate. So you’re getting higher pay but you now have to convince an undergrad to volunteer for 40 hours a week during their summer or you’re doing a lot of extra menial work without an undergrad around

I don’t remember what mine was way back when (20 years ago?). It wasn’t so much that I could afford to not work during the summer.

Not all grad students get offered summer work, especially in the first stretch, so until I was getting summer classes, I was definitely scrambling for odd jobs come May, and had to set aside some of my school year pay to cover basics May- September.

But I was making enough to comfortably afford my own apartment. It was in a weird building in an unfashionable neighborhood of a low-tier city, but it was safe, and I didn’t have to find a roommate, and about a 15-minute drive to campus.

There were no vacations, and I had to budget, and if something big came up, like my car dying, or one of my summer jobs or classes falling through, I’d have to supplement with a student loan. But on like, a week to week basis, I was doing ok.

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The article mentions a few recent new stipends. Not sure about averages though.