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Comment by adw

2 days ago

The living-costs stipend for an EPSRC PhD student is around £20k so it's about ten percent of that... big commitment for a student to make!

Which is why the school should be covering it.

  • They’re skint too. It’s something you would really like the research council to take on.

  • It would be better to just give the students the money and let them spend it as they need.

    If I were a student living on a measly $1600/month I would be livid if the school gave me a $200 raise in AI credits, instead of money to buy groceries or pay rent.

    • Cash might count as taxable income whereas this might just be part of your student account that there’s a deal on. In other words this isn’t fungible for a cash benefit - it’s either this or nothing not this or $200 in your pocket.

      And while agency in finances is important, if this helps you finish your schooling faster, I suspect you might not care how you get access to a frontier AI model and having 10% of a theoretical $1800/mo carved out isn’t a huge deal.