Thursday, May 10, 2012

The Number of Ph.D.s on Public Aid Triples in U.S. [Obama's America!!!]


ABCNews ^ | May 10, 2012 | SUSANNA KIM



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 ...

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