Steve Tippins Ph.D.Helping doctoral students get their dissertation accepted, succeed in their careers, & change the world | Academic Career Advisor | Dissertation Chair & Founder, Beyond PhD Coaching | 35 + years of experience.

How to Make Money as a PhD and Still Graduate

26 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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0:57

In this segment of his YouTube video, Dr. Steve Tippins advises doctoral students on using consulting projects to generate income while studying. He suggests leveraging relationships with faculty to discover short‑term consulting opportunities that may pay a few thousand dollars—significant for a student. He cautions against over‑committing to paid work at the expense of dissertation progress, emphasizing the need for a balance between earning enough to cover living expenses and staying on track academically. He concludes by inviting viewers to join a free dissertation‑help community for additional support.

Chapters

Another way to come up with funds while you're in a doctoral program, I found, is consulting projects of some kind. Getting to know your faculty members can be a great way to find this because they may be offered opportunities which they say, "Well, I can't afford to do that," or, "I don't have time to do that one. Why don't you take this on?" And it could be something that only pays a few thousand dollars, but to you, a few thousand dollars may be huge amounts of money. So being open to opportunity. Now, that said, please don't follow money too too much to the point where you're not able to actually do your work and it slows you down. Don't say, "Oh, I'll take on this project and I'll do this project and I'll do this project," but now you're not doing your schoolwork and you're spending more time in school and it's costing you more money. So you have to come up with a balance— being able to eat but also being able to complete. Join our free dissertation help community and we'll provide as much support as possible.