By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi The questions that my last week’s write-up on American education provoked f...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
The questions that my last week’s write-up on American education provoked from readers can be thematized into two: questions
that sought information on how to finance one’s education in America and
questions about whether holders of the Juris Doctor (JD) degree can prefix the
title “Dr.” to their names. I will respond to the first set of questions this
week and the second set next week.
Let me start with how to finance undergraduate
education in America. American citizens
and legal permanent residents (“Green Card” holders are classified as “legal
permanent residents”) have a variety of options to fund their education. But I
will talk about three here.
People from well-heeled homes, of course, directly
pay their tuition fees. That's the first option. But such people are in the minority. University
education in the United States is inordinately pricey. For example, it costs $$39,849 (that is, about 6.3 million naira) a year
to attend Harvard University. (Yale University, another Ivy League university
in the league of Harvard, costs over $40,000).
Good public universities (that
is, universities owned by state governments; there are no federal universities
in America) charge between $27,000 and $30,000 (that is, between 4.4 million
naira and 4.7 million naira) in tuition per year. Low-end public universities
could charge as low as $10,902(about 1.7 million) in tuition per annum. Note that these figures exclude accommodation
and living expenses.
As you can probably guess, more than 70 percent of
Americans who attend private and public universities don’t pay tuition fees directly
from their pockets. Many fund their education through financial aid and student
loans from their government. No application is turned down. The loans are
repaid piecemeal once students graduate and have a job.
Another popular source of funding for undergraduate
education is merit- and need-based scholarships. In the state of Georgia, for
instance, they have what’s called HOPE Scholarship
(HOPE stands for “Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) that pays most of
the tuition fees for students who have a B average in their high school GPA and
maintain same throughout their undergraduate education. Students who drop below
a B average will be excluded from benefiting from the scholarship. Unlike
financial aid or student loans, it is free and not repayable upon graduation.
Almost every state in the United States has the
equivalent of this program. Of course, to be a beneficiary, you not only have
to be an American citizen or a legal permanent resident, you also have to be a
state “resident,” which means you or your parents have to have lived and paid
taxes in the state for at least one year prior to enrolling in a university
located in the state.
As it should be obvious by now, non-Americans have
few, if any, options to finance their education outside of paying directly from
their pockets. But that’s for undergraduate education. Graduate education is an
entirely different ball game.
In America, very few people use their personal funds
to finance their graduate education. This fact is as true for American citizens
and legal permanent residents as it is for non-Americans. Graduate education is
funded, for the most part, by universities. The exceptions are professional
degrees like MBA, JD, MD (Doctor of Medicine), etc.; students enrolled in these
degrees must either pay their way or get student loans. (President Obama finished
paying off his student loans for his JD and bachelor’s degrees only in 2007, that is, 24 years after his bachelor’s degree, 16
years after his law degree, and one year before he became president!)
Most universities here hardly admit students into
their academic master’s and Ph.D. programs if they have no resources to finance
them. That’s why admission to graduate studies is very competitive and why not
every qualified applicant gets accepted. Compare that to the UK where almost
anyone with a bachelor’s degree, any bachelor’s degree, AND the capacity to pay
steep tuition fees is admitted to graduate programs. I am not saying this to
disparage UK graduate education. I only want to point out that private and
public universities in America (NOT for-profit American universities, mind you)
don’t expect people to fund their graduate education. This used to be the case
even in the UK until the 1970s. (Note that it is harder to get funded for a master's program than it is for PhD program).
OK, there are basically three sources of funding for
graduate education here. The first is graduate teaching assistantship. It is awarded
to applicants who have high GRE scores, an impressive undergraduate GPA, relevant
work history, and capacity to teach. People awarded graduate assistantships
often teach lower-level undergraduate courses under the supervision of a senior
professor. For their work, their tuition fee (which runs into thousands of
dollars, that is, millions of naira) is waived. In addition, they get a monthly
stipend (which adds up to a decent amount when converted into naira) to help
with living expenses. (Monthly stipends for teaching and other kinds of assistantships are often sufficient to support just one person. If you want to bring your family, you have to look for additional support.)
Most Ph.D. programs, in fact, require that doctoral
students teach undergraduate students in the course of their studies.
People who have no capacity to teach but who have
great potential to succeed in graduate studies are granted research
assistantships--if they qualify. This requires the beneficiaries to assist professors with their
research in exchange for a full or partial tuition waiver and a monthly
stipend. The funding for the research assistantship can either come directly
from the department where a student is enrolled or from a generous research
grant won by a professor. Research assistantships are more common in the
physical sciences than they are in the social sciences and the humanities.
The third source of funding for graduate education,
especially for doctoral studies, is fellowships. A fellowship is money granted
by a university or a foundation or other agency to support advanced study or
research. (Note that not all universities have fellowships). Prospective
graduate students competitively apply for a limited number of fellowships each
year, and they are often awarded to applicants with high GRE scores, excellent
undergraduate or graduate GPA, compelling research proposals, etc.
Fellowships pay for the entire cost of students’
graduate education plus a generous monthly stipend. Best of all: beneficiaries
are not required to do anything in exchange for the tuition waiver and
stipend—unlike teaching and research assistantships. They only need to be “in
good standing,” which means they must never fall below a B average in the
course of their doctoral coursework. (This is true, by the way, for all
graduate students in all American universities, whether or not they receive
financial support from their schools).
How do you know which type of funding to apply for?
Well, the answer is simple: check the websites of the universities you are
applying to. They usually list the kinds of funding they have available for
students, including non-American students. Applicants wishing to be considered
for financial support are usually required to apply early. So check the
deadlines and send inquiries to graduate program coordinators.
I hope my readers find this helpful.
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Very useful Dr, a good place to start researching. Thanks
ReplyDeleteNice work
ReplyDeleteFantastically elaborated!
ReplyDeleteThank You Prof.
Quite incisive and helpful. Thanks
ReplyDelete