To become a teaching professor at a university or a research director in industry, a Bachelor’s degree is not enough – you need a Master’s or a PhD. Yet at UCSC, PhD students are still being asked to conduct full-time work for half-time pay – and that needs to change.
The growing demand for PhDs in industry is pushing more young people to pursue doctoral degrees, and yet the very unaffordability of PhD programs is forcing many of those same students out of academia and into industry. The result is a troubling cycle: industry fuels the demand for PhDs, while academia fails to make earning one financially sustainable. This push of graduate students out of academia and into industry has been observed over the past 30 years, as the proportion of PhD holders entering industry has more than doubled, from 20.9% in 1992 to 48.1% in 2022, according to federal data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates. The rising share of PhD holders flooding into industry is a sign that speaks less to the allure of corporate careers and more to the unaffordability of remaining in academia post-PhD. As more doctoral graduates are pushed into industry out of financial necessity, the growing supply of PhD holders in STEM positions has only driven demand for advanced degrees higher, perpetuating the cycle. As a result, a PhD has become less a mark of academic ambition and more a baseline requirement for financial stability.
Over the last decade, Santa Cruz’s cost of living has outpaced median salaries, and the gap keeps growing. Santa Cruz’s median rent rose 24% from $1,979 in 2019 to $2,452 in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Yet with PhD stipends growing only 3% per year and averaging just $2,995–$4,350 per month, according to UCSC’s Campus Climate office and the 2026-2027 Salary Scales, doctoral students are being left rent-burdened. The widening gap between Santa Cruz’s rising rents and lagging PhD stipends is unsustainable.
In 2022, the labor union representing UC graduate students, United Auto Workers (UAW), went on a 6-week strike, which resulted in a new contract with the 10-university UC system that increased minimum pay for UC academic student employees from about $23,250 to about $34,000 for nine months of part-time work, according to Lookout Santa Cruz. However, more than 80% of UCSC’s labor union (UAW Local 4811) members rejected this new contract with the intention of reaching a better deal. Many UCSC graduate student workers opposed the contract’s introduction of a first-ever tier system, in which UCLA, UC Berkeley, and UC San Francisco received a higher base pay starting at $36,500, which is a disparity the UC justified by citing higher costs of living in those areas and the need to compete for top talent, but one that UCSC members argued ignored Santa Cruz’s equally unaffordable housing market. Since the 2022 strike, UAW Local 4811 has continued pushing for higher PhD student stipends and is currently proposing a minimum of $54,000 per year to offset the high cost of living in Santa Cruz.
Critics argue that the UC system cannot afford higher stipends because raising pay would reduce funded positions, and that PhD students knowingly chose a low-paying path, but with the UC system reporting over $46 billion in revenue in 2022, the issue is not that the UC cannot pay its doctoral students a living wage; it is that it has chosen not to. Moreover, asking students to bear the financial burden of the UC’s own inaction, or to accept hardship they could not have anticipated when Santa Cruz rents have skyrocketed, is not a reasonable standard to hold anyone to.
To retain more PhD students in academia after graduation, we need to make the PhD student experience more appealing to the younger generation. Retaining PhD students in academia requires making the experience financially sustainable for the younger generation, and that starts with UAW Local 4811 renegotiating contracts that reflect Santa Cruz’s true cost of living. The stakes are high: nearly half of all PhD holders entered industry in 2022, up from just 20% in 1992, and without fair compensation, that number will only grow.
UAW Local 4811 must demand, and the university must deliver stipends that make staying in academia a viable choice, not a financial sacrifice. UAW Local 4811 must renegotiate contracts that reflect the true cost of living in Santa Cruz, not just for the benefit of today’s PhD students, but to preserve the future of academic research itself.
About the author: Kseniya Malukhina is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics at UC Santa Cruz, where she studies the molecular mechanisms of arsenite oxidation in arsenite-oxidizing microorganisms. Originally from Moscow, Russia, she has called the Bay Area home for over 20 years. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering from Santa Clara University and a Master’s degree in Bioengineering from UC San Diego. When she is not in the lab, Kseniya enjoys writing, reading, and playing soccer.
