Funding for graduate school: a primer

Some valuable info from takchek:

Clearing the air about Grad School Funding.

Point 3 is quite interesting because I know graduate students (Arts and Letters) who voluntarily plot their higher education along this trajectory. I.e. being unable to pay for a Masters degree — and with Teaching Assistantships and Research Assistant positions unavailable to non-PhD candidates — they obtain funding for a doctorate, do 2 years, and then drop out with a terminal Masters.