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