In Computer Science, PhD students at any reasonable institution are invariably funded (stipend + tuition &amp; some fees). Most who are in non-theoretical fields get research assistantships, which pay for them to do their PhD without any teaching responsibilities. The pay is in no way comparable to industrial salaries (OK, it&#x27;s comparable; it&#x27;s WAY less). The University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I am a faculty member, pays our PhD students more than $2,500 per month, plus benefits.  This is a pretty competitive figure. However, many PhD students do summer research internships at places like Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Facebook, and Google, and these pay pretty handsomely.