Exploration of the Cost of Living and Graduate Student Wages

This repository contains an analysis of the cost of living (COL) and self-reported PhD student salaries across various universities in the United States.

Data Overview

• Source: PhD Stipends
• Collected by: Kendall Branham & Connor S. Murray
• Date: November 8, 2022

Project Description

The goal of this project is to explore the relationship between the cost of living and the wages of PhD students. By analyzing self-reported salary data from PhD students across different universities, we aim to provide insights into the financial challenges faced by graduate students.

Data Collection

The data used in this project was sourced from PhD Stipends, a platform where PhD students can anonymously report their stipends. The dataset includes information on stipends, cost of living, and other relevant details from various institutions across the US.

How to Use

1. Open an anaconda environment:

   module load anaconda/2020.11-py3.8
   python3

2. Run the code to download data:

   # Modules
   import requests
   import json
   import os
   import pandas as pd
   
   # Working directory
   os.chdir("/project/berglandlab/connor/")
   
   # Empty object
   full_stipends = []
   reqlimit = 1000
   
   # Go through each page
   for i in range(0, reqlimit):
       data = requests.get(f'https://www.phdstipends.com/data/{i}').json()['data']
       for entry in data:
           full_stipends.append(entry)
   
       # Gather data from phdstipends pages until the pages no longer return data
       if len(data) < 1:
           break
   
   # Write to CSV file
   pd.DataFrame(full_stipends).to_csv("stipends.csv")

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you have any suggestions or improvements, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us!