[barry-cotter]

> It’s arguably an artifact of an increasingly competitive society. The base “cost” of existing keeps rising, it’s simply becoming impractical to not be career focused.

The cost of practically every manufactured good and of food have been dropping for decades if not centuries. Average living space per person has likewise been getting for decades. Healthspan likewise.

In what sense has it become impractical not to be career focused? The average salary for a public high school teacher in NJ is $69K and the top $129K[1] while the average salary for a full professor in the NJ public university system is under $100K and the top is $174K[2] for the overwhelmingly dominant 9 month contracts. If you just want to get paid and you’re capable of doing a PhD you can just do a Master’s instead, in a much, much easier field and then do another job to get paid more.

[1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Master-Teacher-Salary-...

[2] https://www.univstats.com/salary/average-professor-salary-at...

[lumost]

The median rent in New Jersey is 2500/month. Meaning our hypothetical teacher will drop 55% of their take-home on a median rental at entry level, and 32% of their salary when maxed out. Presuming that rent does not change relative to salary over the next 30 years - our teacher will be either struggle to afford housing or be rent burdened their entire lives. Most services and goods purchased locally have fees proportional to the local rental costs meaning that the remaining 2k per month buys fewer goods and services then you might expect depending on your local cost basis.

Meanwhile, the median rent in NJ rose 14% in 2022 and have risen 4.1% YTD. To make a meaningful dent in our teachers housing costs, our teacher will need to make a 20% raise every year to get ahead of housing.

A grad student can sometimes avoid housing exposure due to institutional housing, but once they are out of institutional housing - they’ll be exposed to these price dynamics.

[elashri]

My experience as a graduate student tends to disagree that the university housing will be morr affordable. They tend to be more expensive that the median off campus options.