Starving Scholars

For the last few years, I have been cautioning# my students about going to graduate school in philosophy or the humanities.* After reading this, I think I will have to change 'cautioning' to 'urge against'.+

Nevertheless, the percentage of graduate-degree holders who receive food stamps or some other aid more than doubled between 2007 and 2010.
During that three-year period, the number of people with master's degrees who received food stamps and other aid climbed from 101,682 to 293,029, and the number of people with Ph.D.'s who received assistance rose from 9,776 to 33,655, according to tabulations of microdata done by Austin Nichols, a senior researcher with the Urban Institute. He drew on figures from the 2008 and 2011 Current Population Surveys done by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor.

#(I advise them against considering graduate school unless they get a fellowship or assistantship fully covering their costs, and also advise them to develop a non-academic career path while in grad school).
*(I've also been cautioning them against law school particularly if it involves taking on student debt).
+(Not that they listen to me).