[HN Gopher] PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don't ...
___________________________________________________________________
PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don't cover living
costs
Author : Thebroser
Score : 202 points
Date : 2022-05-23 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| sbarbarian wrote:
| I deferred joining a Bio lab out of undergrad after being pulled
| aside during my acceptance visit and given an 'academia life 101'
| from a postdoc. There were too many bio PhDs, too few academic
| positions, and too few opportunities in the business sector to
| have a lucrative and fulfilling career. Unless I was very lucky -
| according to this postdoc - I was making a poor decision. He
| advised me to go to industry a few years then reconsider.
|
| I never looked back, and I often reflect on his intervention.
|
| It saddens me greatly that many of my friends still in Bio have
| lived this prediction, while meanwhile academica's administrative
| staff counts (and salaries) balloon. For all the promise to human
| economy, bio is still astoundingly complex, difficult to
| monetize, and hard to justify increased budgets for. On the flip
| side, as essential to our planet and culture as understanding
| esoteric biological knowledge is (e.g. deep-sea fish behavior),
| nobody is willing to fund it at the scale needed before much of
| it disappears forever thanks to climate change.
|
| Not sure how the wage issue can be solved, but more sources of
| funding towards hard research for research's sake (i.e. fact-
| finding in-vivo science) seems like it could help. So too, could
| forcing schools to obviously pay more by reducing the amount of
| admitted students. Less labor supply could give some leverage to
| often powerless grad students.
| boldlybold wrote:
| This led to me consulting during my PhD to supplement the stipend
| up to a reasonable salary. A lot of PhD students, especially if
| your work touches on computational sciences, are a lot more
| valuable than the university would like you to believe.
|
| After moving to industry, I'm starting to realize how valuable
| the consulting experience was. The project management and scoping
| skills, and wearing multiple hats, were big benefits.
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| > than the university would like you to believe.
|
| You may not know it, but the truth is more like "than the
| university is able to pay". These are non-profit institutions,
| typically. Consulting is a great idea for many reasons, not the
| least of which is building your network.
| boldlybold wrote:
| Non-profit institutions with billion-dollar endowments,
| massive overhead costs, and "tuition" charges that make no
| sense. I have a really hard time believing this for the
| larger institutions.
| lupire wrote:
| > are a lot more valuable than the university would like you to
| believe.
|
| Category error. Correction: You have the ability to do outside
| work that pays more than anything the University needs.
|
| It's not the university's fault if you want to do a low value
| research job at the university.
| seoaeu wrote:
| The rate universities charge external funding agencies for
| one hour or one year of grad student research work is
| substantially higher than what the student gets paid for that
| amount of work
| throwaway956373 wrote:
| I'm a CS PhD student in a place where rents are really high, but
| I pay no rent because I have an RA position in an undergrad dorm.
| It's not very much additional work, and saves me a lot of money.
| If you're a cash-strapped PhD student and your university allows
| grad student RAs, you owe it to yourself to apply.
| IMTDb wrote:
| Note that this applies to biology PhD. Isn't a solution to reduce
| the amount of fellowship offered and increase the stipend. This
| would reduce the amount of publications, but potentially increase
| the average "quality" if more money means that students won't
| have to look for money on the side, and also if there is a more
| careful selection of the candidates.
| hwbehrens wrote:
| > _Note that this applies to biology PhD._
|
| While the article specifically calls out biology programs, at
| my university the CS department is similarly affected.
| (Stipends are set at a standard rate for all engineering
| depts.)
|
| If your stipend is $19K, a single student's take-home pay is
| $16,734, less ~$1,600 in required departmental fees. So, you've
| got about $1261/mo to pay for everything. If you split a
| 1-bedroom for $2.2K (not including utilities), that means
| you've got $161 for electricity, food, phone, internet, fun,
| literally every other expense for the rest of the month.
|
| The rapid rise in rents is the big killer here -- the
| difference between $500 and $1000 for a shared room is more
| than enough to break the bank.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > If your stipend is $19K, a single student's take-home pay
| is $16,734, less ~$1,600 in required departmental fees. So,
| you've got about $1261/mo to pay for everything. If you split
| a 1-bedroom for $2.2K (not including utilities), that means
| you've got $161 for electricity, food, phone, internet, fun,
| literally every other expense for the rest of the month.
|
| Where is this? When I started my PhD in the early 2000's, my
| after tax monthly income (state school) was $1400-1500 per
| month, which is more than what you listed above. Granted, we
| got paid only 11 months of the year, and yes, did pay
| university fees, so the total per month may have been
| similar, but: Seriously, this was almost 20 years ago - I'm
| sure they pay more now. Either your numbers are off, or your
| school sucks (sadly, quite likely).
|
| When I went to grad school, my original goal was Berkeley.
| But when I found out how expensive it was to live there, I
| picked a top school in a cheaper town. The monthly stipend
| was only $100/mo less than at Berkeley, but rent was several
| hundred dollars cheaper.
|
| Edit: Hard to find numbers quickly, but just checked and one
| of the engineering programs there currently pay $2300/mo (11
| months a year). That's $25K vs your $19K. Of course, in some
| cities, that's still not enough.
| notch656a wrote:
| If you know you're going to be living on $1261 / mo there are
| plenty of decent engineering schools in low cost of living
| areas. I don't know why on earth you would choose a place
| with that kind of housing market if you know you're going to
| live on poverty wages.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| The last point is critical. This issue could largely be
| mitigated by subsidized grad student housing. It might be
| more like a dorm than an apartment, but I think many grad
| students would be fine with that.
| lightweightbaby wrote:
| In case some is curious about how it is in Europe: I'm a PhD
| student (physics) in Denmark and I get 2500$/month after tax. I
| save from 1000$ to 1500$ each month. Disclaimer: I bike
| everywhere and share a 1400$/month flat with partner. Also, the
| entire pay comes directly from the university, I never had to
| apply to get funding after getting accepted (this was the main
| reason to go to Denmark).
| plopilop wrote:
| Here in France: I had a ~1 900EUR salary after taxes (incl.
| income tax, 2 000EUR otherwise) but because I was working in a
| company fulltime (the contract stated I was to devote myself
| 100% to my research, the reality was different but that's
| another topic).
|
| My partner, on the other hand, has a public contract (with
| teaching charge), she gets around 1 400EUR after taxes. Living
| with this in Paris is not easy (1 studio of 15m2 will cost
| around 650-700EUR)
| uberman wrote:
| While I agree that PhD students don't get enough cash on a weekly
| basis to get buy, they are certainly compensated well above what
| is quoted in the article.
|
| International PhD students by law cannot work more than 20 hours
| a week. Most institutions cap paid responsibilities at 20 hours a
| week. Most have 9 month appointments, most likely get the full
| cost of their tuition and fees waved. Most of the time waved
| costs such as tuition are not counted as compensation so are tax
| free. Most likely get healthcare.
|
| A PhD student at U-FL has an effective compensation package well
| above 75k per year even though they only directly see 18k in pay.
| voxl wrote:
| Thinking in this way has always been very toxic. Some
| professors think this way and will accidentally state how PhD
| students are overpaid and underworked... Any sane analysis
| would note that PhDs are valid added to society, we want PhDs,
| and pipelines into industry for them. Using your analysis there
| would never be another PhD student.
| uberman wrote:
| Your reaction is understandable but you lack a larger
| perspective. I have never argued that society does not
| benefit from PhDs only that when talking about compensation
| one must include all the factors.
|
| Would you accept a job offer before considering the benefits
| package? I would certainly not.
| yxwvut wrote:
| There's not a line in this that makes any sense. Sure, maybe
| you're only TA'ing 20 hrs a week max, but you're also doing
| research work well beyond those 20 hrs regardless of whether
| your advisor has enough grant money to let you escape the TA
| time sink by putting you on the clock as an RA for work you
| were already going to do.
|
| And it's a joke to pretend that you should owe tuition. That's
| nothing but a tax dodge for the university so they can pay you
| even less (pre-tax) for the same post-tax take-home.
| uberman wrote:
| Why should you be paid to attend your classes or to conduct
| your own research? That is like asking to be paid to go to
| the gym.
|
| If your employer pays more that 5k of your tuition then you
| own tax on it so the US tax system clearly sees tuition as a
| benefit. You can call BS on the cost of tuition but that does
| not fundamentally change the fact that a waived charge is a
| benefit. The US tax system was a hairs breath away from
| making all tuition benefits even institutional grants at the
| undergraduate level taxable.
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| > PhD students by law cannot work more than 20 hours a week.
|
| While most teaching (and research) assistanships might indeed
| be technically 20h/week, I can assure you most/all PhD students
| work >20h/week total.
|
| You still need to do your research on the side. If you RA and
| your PhD research align, nice. If it doesn't, tough luck.
| uberman wrote:
| I don't intend to assert that PhDs don't do a lot more work
| that 20 hours. I know first hand they do. The work they
| typically are compensated for (TA/RA/FA) are typically capped
| at 20 hours a week. This also aligns with the legal limits
| for international students on F1 visas.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I suspect that even the people who wrote that rule knew it
| wouldn't actually mean anything practically. It's just a
| convenient excuse to exploit someone in a vulnerable
| situation.
| mbauman wrote:
| > PhD students by law cannot work more than 20 hours a week.
| Most have 9 month stipend appointments.
|
| Wat. Citation needed.
| uberman wrote:
| Sorry, I posted faster than I was thinking.
|
| F1 students are limited by law to 20 hours a week and where I
| work, stipend responsibilities are similarly capped at 20
| hours though though that is not a legal cap, just one that
| aligns with the international cap.
| mbauman wrote:
| There are both TA assistantships and research
| assistantships. As a graduate student researcher, your
| stipend "responsibilities" include research output.
| uberman wrote:
| I'm not sure where you are going with this. Certainly you
| can have a TA/RA/FA appointment and sometimes a
| combination of the three. At the university I work at,
| you should not technically be assigned more than 20 hours
| a week over those responsibilities. This blanket policy
| means faculty don't have to account for the potential
| visa limits of the individual students they work with.
|
| Note though that an RA is research of behalf of a faculty
| member. Your RA and compensation for it is for assisting
| with that research. It is not for conducting your own
| research even if you dovetail it it to a larger
| research/lab project. In fact, you almost certainly need
| to pay for the use of the lab and project data via
| authorship (sometimes first authorship).
|
| I'm not debating that this is fair. Going back to my
| original post though I'm just calling out that the total
| compensation package for phd candidates far exceeds their
| take home pay.
| cvoss wrote:
| I can't speak to the "by law" part. But many universities,
| including two that I have experience with, consider the PhD
| stipend to be compensation for a part time job (RA/TA),
| accounting for 20 hours of the student's time, with the idea
| that the remaining 20 hours are to be devoted to taking
| classes. And during the summer, when a student may not be
| taking classes, a student may receive a full 40 hours' worth
| of compensation.
| andreyk wrote:
| If you think the main thing PhDs do aside from doing RA/TA
| is taking classes, you don't understand what a PhD involves
| that well...
| uberman wrote:
| I work at an elite tier 1 research university that is an
| international household name. My spouse is a tenured
| faculty member who runs a lab and several concurrent DoD
| funded grants.
|
| I understand perfectly well what a phd candidate does and
| what they are compensated for as well as what their fully
| loaded costs are.
|
| If you believe that the cost of a phd student is 18k a
| year, it is you who does not understand what working with
| a phd student involves. In fact, 18k probably does not
| even cover their health care costs. We can debate about
| what a phd candidate "should" be compensated for and if
| their current levels of compensation are fair but any
| argument needs to include the full picture.
| mbauman wrote:
| This is a silly take. The "true" cost of an employee is
| _always_ higher than their salary. Often by 50-100%.
|
| Your argument here is like saying the minimum wage
| needn't be increased because the "true" cost of an
| employee is already $15/hr. They should be grateful for
| those administrative costs! And doubly so that we don't
| tax them!
|
| TFA is literally about the take-home cash.
| draw_down wrote:
| oefrha wrote:
| > effective compensation well above 75k per year
|
| What are you even talking about? Are you counting the bullshit
| known as "tuition" in the compensation? PhD candidates are
| really employees, not students.
|
| Even a Princeton postdoc's comp doesn't reach 75k. A bit more
| than 50k actually in the physics department (might have risen a
| bit in the past few years, not sure).
| uberman wrote:
| Of course tuition should be counted as part of compensation
| just as health care should be counted. You can be mad at the
| cost of tuition or healthcare if you like, but that is a
| separate issue.
|
| Waved tuition is a benefit and it was a hairs breath from
| being a taxable benefit in the USA several years ago. It is
| still the case that if your employer pays more than about 5k
| of your tuition then that is taxable so clearly tuition waved
| or paid by your employer is a benefit at least in the US.
|
| There are compelling arguments and union movements supporting
| the notion that graduate and PhD students should be classed
| as employees and I certainly don't have a big issue with
| that. That is also a separate issue though.
| oefrha wrote:
| I know for a fact that I wasn't taking regular courses
| beyond my first year, even though I was still charged
| "tuition".
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Universities aren't actually providing a service to the phd
| candidates though. The candidates are providing a service
| to the university. No one would get a phd if they had to
| pay tuition.
| uberman wrote:
| As a university employee with a spouse who is tenured
| faculty I can assure you that phd candidates are not a
| net positive work wise from an institutional perspective.
| The good part is that you can usually rely on a phd
| candidate to produce the work they have been assigned.
| Masters candidates, you have a 50/50 shot of being
| assigned someone who will produce anything of value.
|
| All you need to do to verify this is to look at the large
| number of candidates that languish after even a little of
| their institutional support goes away. Look at the
| percentage of candidates who can't get even to, let alone
| through their proposal then add on all the candidates who
| make it through their proposal but can't make and
| progress to a defense.
|
| Everyone pays to get a phd. Like many others you are
| confusing a salary with compensation and in this case
| opportunity cost. Take 3 or 4 years to get a phd and that
| can be half a million in opportunity cost alone.
| Institutions certainly charge tuition and fees but your
| compensation as a candidate exceeds those benefits. The
| excess is what a candidate sees as their paycheck.
|
| I know you don't want this to be the reality and I am
| sympathetic. I once worked as a camp counselor for an
| entire summer only to find my paycheck at the end of 3
| months was a total of $100. I technically got paid a lot
| more but apparently the camp charged us for food and
| lodging and $100 was the net. It was a rude shock to be
| sure, but as an adult you need to understand how things
| work and why they work that way.
| [deleted]
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > Everyone pays to get a phd.
|
| The question is only how much. Universities would be
| paying $0 if they could. Turns out they can't. If
| candidates tax bill goes up $10k universities would have
| to increase the stipend by that much. No one works for
| free. People pay for undergrad because it increases
| earning potential by huge amounts, a phd isn't really the
| same. Those candidates could easily get jobs if they
| wanted.
| natly wrote:
| Almost as if the STEM shortage wasn't a shortage in the first
| place hm..
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Is it just me or is the rampant abuse of the H1B system
| absolutely prolific but a sort of hush topic in SV? The more I
| see the hiring from the inside the more obvious the
| exploitation seems. I would really like some context from
| someone with a more positive view of the subject as it is
| really souring me to current management methodologies from a
| nationalistic perspective at least within my filter bubble.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Not all STEM is created equal. While there may not be thousands
| and thousands of jobs for a biology PhD, there are over 1
| million open software/IT jobs. The good paying jobs are focused
| on what we value as a society. Clearly we value tweets and
| tiktoks and apps on mobile. We don't value teachers and nurses
| and lots of other essential jobs. If we want change, that is
| where we need to focus; find a way to value contributors to
| society.
| medvezhenok wrote:
| The good paying jobs are focused on where there is a high
| return on capital (or at least perceived to be a high
| return).
|
| The sad thing is that people start to think of returns to
| capital as << societal value >> when the two are independent
| variables
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >find a way to value contributors to society.
|
| We already have, it is called paying them more (and/or
| increasing quality of life at work such as shorter work
| hours, or remote work, etc). Generally, people do not like
| higher taxes though.
| cratermoon wrote:
| So do vast swathes of Americans.
|
| Pop quiz: In what countries does it cost a full day's wages or
| more to fill a car's gas tank?
|
| US minimum wage is $7.25/hr. As of this writing, US gas prices
| average $4.71/gal. For a typical car the gas tank holds about 15
| gallons. Even a small car would have a 12 gallon tank.
| NullInvictus wrote:
| Pair it with the fact that by-and-by, apartments are extremely
| expensive, and in short supply, so that service jobs are often
| not near where people are forced to live, and that you have to
| pair the cost of a car with the cost of gas, and rent. Public
| transit is a joke, a hollow underfunded mess in most cities.
|
| It is absolutely brutal out there, and the response is
| inhumane.
|
| I don't want to discredit the experience of grad students. I've
| known more than a few Grad students (anecdote warning), and
| they are also stuck in a special kind of hell. As the article
| mentions, they often can't seek other employment, so they're
| stuck with what the university pays. But even if they could,
| they can't - universities may stipulate that they expect X
| number of hours a week, but that's a joke. Every task given
| over to graduate students comes with piles of mandatory
| overtime under crap conditions that are unpaid.
|
| The university may talk about 'valuable experience that will
| pay dividends' (conveniently not paid out by the university),
| but grad students often deal with losing proof of that
| experience when their work or ideas appear under the byline of
| their advisor. What do you do? Your relationship with your
| advisor is crucial to graduating.
|
| Suffer all that, and _maybe_ you'll get your PhD. I've met a
| couple of phD students who dropped out simply because their
| advisors were intolerable, or really disinterested in any part
| of the advising process except squeezing work from their
| student workers.
|
| Looking from the outside in, there's a weird sorta hazing
| elitist mindset going on. Professors say, "My PhD program
| sucked, so now I'm going to make it suck for you. Can't hack
| it? Well, you probably don't 'belong'".
| twistedpair wrote:
| Who needs to buy 15 gallons of gasoline daily (unless in the
| transit industry or doing a long road trip)? Seems like a
| mismatch between frequency of earning (days), and car filling.
|
| Most people fill their car weekly or less. Heck, since the
| pando, I do it less than once a month.
| mediaman wrote:
| I was a little skeptical of this because of the impact of
| state-level minimum wage laws that are higher than the federal,
| so I pulled up the data on how many people are paid the US
| federal minimum wage.
|
| Turns out that 1.1 million people have jobs that pay the
| federal minimum wage or less. But that number does not include
| tips, and about 60% of those people work in restaurants or
| bars. It's hard to say how much in the way of tips they get,
| but it's fair to say that there are at least 440,000 people who
| are earning no more than the federal minimum wage and don't get
| tips to make up for it.
|
| That's about 0.6% of the hourly workforce. For them, filling a
| 15 gallon tank of gas would take 10 hours of labor, or even
| more after deducting employee taxes.
|
| Also, while the federal minimum wage demographic skews young,
| about half of the 1.1m figure above are over the age of 25.
|
| Above data is per the BLS.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Yes you note that I didn't take into account payroll taxes.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Doesn't make sense to use federal average gas price here.
| Anyone making the federal minimum wage is in one of the
| lowest cost of living parts of the country and will
| subsequently also have one of the lowest gas prices to go
| along with that lowest income.
| mediaman wrote:
| It doesn't vary enough to make a big impact. Regular gas in
| Alabama is only about 8-9% cheaper than the national
| average. So it almost cuts an hour off.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > In what countries does it cost a full day's wages or more to
| fill a car's gas tank?
|
| Most countries.
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| Pretty much every other country in the world. Europe pays
| $8/gal or more depending.
| mberning wrote:
| People in the US are very spoiled in this regard. In Europe
| and Asia having a car and being able to afford to drive it is
| honestly a luxury.
| tyoma wrote:
| In most of the US a car is a necessity. Public transport is
| either non-existant or so badly done it is effectively
| unusable.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > or so badly done it is effectively unusable
|
| This is intentional. See General Motors streetcar
| conspiracy.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Lots of countries in Asia have a variety of taxi-style
| transport services that make owning a car not as necessary.
|
| For example, just in India alone you can hitch a ride on a
| bicycle rickshaw, auto-rickshaw, taxi, bus, train or
| subway. It's pretty easy to get around anywhere without
| having to drive, but this is also only possible because
| labor costs are so absurdly low (and of course, generally
| not that great for the drivers), with costs for private
| rides on the first 3 often comparable to public transport
| costs in the US.
|
| Plus, Europe and Asia are generally more densely populated
| than the US, so having a car is a status symbol in that it
| shows that you can afford a safe place to keep a car.
| Meanwhile, outside of big cities like NYC (where car
| ownership is similarly a bit of a luxury), people easily
| have room to safely park one car per family member.
|
| These are all heavily intertwined factors though, just as
| owning a car isn't as much of a status symbol in less
| densely populated areas, owning a car is less necessary in
| more densely populated areas.
| notch656a wrote:
| People in southeast Asia have motorcycles or trikes (taxis)
| despite having comparatively much lower income. In China
| most households own a motorbike. Clearly motor transport is
| highly desirable and borderline "needed" to keep up the
| kind of industrial society that can maintain their
| population, healthcare systems, fertilizer production, life
| saving pharmaceutical production, etc. Many people would
| simply starve if motor vehicles could not facilitate the
| movement workers and goods necessary to maintain these
| populations.
|
| Having avidly driven both motorcycles and cars, I can tell
| you the safety a car provides you is not just a luxury.
| It's a a way to protect your children from higher chances
| of death in transit. In some states in the US transporting
| the family on a motorcycle would simply be illegal, as they
| mandate minimum age for riding on the kind of vehicles that
| one can legally transport their family on (in Asia the
| family is often times 3+ up on the same tiny motorbike).
|
| I suggest you work on repealing transportation child safety
| and emissions laws if you want to bring us closer to Asia.
| Families do not need the spoiled luxury of these foolish
| safeguards.
| rabuse wrote:
| It's not really "spoiled", as that is the price due to the
| fuel taxes in Europe, where the U.S. pays almost nothing in
| fuel tax. If they don't like that high of a fuel price,
| then they're free to vote for another party.
| midhhhthrow wrote:
| And the whole world is free to suffer the consequences of
| global warming which are becoming increasingly dire.
|
| Sorry for the snarkiness but it just needed to be said
| umeshunni wrote:
| Usual caveat that no one actually makes minimum wage
| cwmoreiras wrote:
| Good point! Lowest wage I ever had was $7.40/hr. That was the
| minimum wage for my state at the time. It was a whole 15
| cents more than the federal minimum wage.
|
| 15 cents * 8 hrs/day = a whole $1.20 per day above the
| federal minimum wage. It was awesome.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > Pop quiz: In what countries does it cost a full day's wages
| or more to fill a car's gas tank?
|
| i'm going to guess "most of them" if you're using minimum wage.
|
| i just checked britain and came up with 107.31 pounds for an
| average tank, whereas 8 hours at their minimum wage will get
| you 76 pounds.
|
| so what's the point? grad students are usually salaried in my
| experience, and can get housing near enough to the university
| that they walk, not drive, even in the US.
| midhhhthrow wrote:
| I got an ebike and filling that up costs me very little. Not to
| mention the savings on insurance, registration, parking, smog,
| maintenance and they can be cheap to buy if you know where to
| look
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| > Pop quiz: In what countries does it cost a full day's wages
| or more to fill a car's gas tank?
|
| Most of them? If you're looking at minimum wages, Luxembourg
| with the highest at $14.91[1] comes out to about $120 daily.
| Gasoline is at or above 2EUR/l in Europe now, a typical gas
| tank holds about 60 liters, so about 120EUR to fill the tank.
| Which is more than $120.
|
| You don't need to fill the tank daily, at least I'd hope not.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_w...
| vangelis wrote:
| > fill a car's gas tank well there's your problem
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Pop Quiz: How many people in the US are working for the Federal
| Minimum wage right now today...
|
| I am willing to bet it is very few given what I have seen
| advertised for traditional minimum wage jobs.
|
| I am not sure how pointing to what the legal minimum wage is
| holds any value in the conversation, that matters is the
| current market rate for labor, we should not be looking to
| government as the basis of our economic worldview
| cratermoon wrote:
| About 1.1 million people have jobs that pay the federal
| minimum wage or less. Not counting farm jobs (think migrant
| labor).
| phpisthebest wrote:
| That looks to be 2020 BLS data, before the Massive labor
| shortage, the Great Resignation, and massive wage
| inflation.
|
| Do you have a current source?
|
| But even assuming that data is still valid, that is what
| 1.5% of the labor force, and about 1/2 that is teens, or
| under 24 years old.
|
| so the massive amount of focus on "minimum wage workers
| needing to support a family" we are talking about 0.75% of
| all workers that would fall into that categorization, we
| should help these people with social programs to be sure,
| but I would not call that a crisis, or something needing
| massive economic/regulatory upheaval to resolve, it seems
| to be the market is doing just fine with wages with out
| government intervention
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Pop quiz: In what countries does it cost a full day's wages
| or more to fill a car's gas tank?
|
| I would assume most of the countries that have months of
| backlog for US Visas consular appointments?
| nomilk wrote:
| 3 years' of pain is worth it for many in computing, data science,
| and engineering, because it will definitely give candidates an
| edge for the rest of their careers.
|
| But PhDs in _some_ (not all) non-STEM fields almost seem like a
| blight on one 's resume, and could make a PhD candidate's career
| _harder_ , not easier.
|
| Is that a signal there's an oversupply of PhDs in some
| disciplines? Possibly.
|
| Interested to look into longitudinal studies of PhD students of
| different disciplines and where they end up 10 years' later..
| mrfox321 wrote:
| In the us, a PhD is 5-6 years if you include the masters that
| is potentially received along the way.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I think the PhD is overrated, and along with that I think a lot
| of university education is overrated; note this is someone with
| two BA's and a Masters. Unless you're teaching, or doing some
| hard core research, I don't see that the PhD is necessary or even
| a good investment. That time could have been spent gaining
| experience, which IMHO, is extremely valuable.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| A PhD has never been about economics. It is about impacting the
| type of work you do and how much control you have over the
| direction of that work. Want to work in a major research lab?
| Get a PhD. Want to be a professor building a research program
| in an area of your choosing (assuming available funding)? PhD
| required.
| tombert wrote:
| Part of the annoyance there is that most research gigs are
| gatekept behind doctorates. I cannot tell you how many times
| I've been declined from Microsoft Research, despite having a
| bachelors degree and more than a decade of industry experience,
| _specifically_ because I 'm "not qualified enough" for a
| research engineer experience.
|
| > That time could have been spent gaining experience, which
| IMHO, is extremely valuable.
|
| I certainly agree that if your goal is to maximize earning
| potential, than there's no question that industry experience is
| substantially more valuable than a PhD.
| hedora wrote:
| MSR is pretty competitive. How many papers do you publish in
| a typical year?
| tombert wrote:
| None thus far.
|
| To be clear, and I realize that the tone of my comment
| might come off as a bit more bitter than I intended it to,
| I don't _blame_ MS for declining me. Obviously they 're
| free to decline anyone they'd like, and I'm sure they get
| people with PhDs and industry experience all the time.
| zenithd wrote:
| s1dev wrote:
| I don't think anyone does grad school expecting that it's going
| to be a good investment. Most people I know do it because they
| can't imagine themselves doing anything other than research. Is
| it a waste if afterwards you just get some 9-5 software or
| finance gig? Definitely. That said, there's few other ways you
| get to spend several years becoming a world expert *in a topic
| of your choice*
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Economically punishing prospect scientists is the reason we don't
| have flying cars.
| dathinab wrote:
| As far as I can tell what he did is more or less common business
| in high speed currency trading (and part of the reason the EU
| originally planed to ban it, until lobby corruption happened).
|
| If your trading bot (here the "algorithm of the index") messes up
| you are deep in problems because other bots and people will find
| it and will use it to their advantage.
| tombert wrote:
| It's a bit of a shame that the US doesn't really allow part time
| PhDs (at least not in any of the schools that I asked). If they
| did, conceivably a lot of these students could get a relatively
| well-paying job in engineering or a lab or something, and as such
| the schools could get away with paying less. Part of the reason
| that I didn't bother trying to pursue the CUNY PhD in mathematics
| was specifically because the stipend they were offering wouldn't
| be enough to cover my mortgage (~$2,000/month), and they didn't
| offer any kind of part-time plan.
| compsciphd wrote:
| when I was a phd student at Columbia, we had a student in our
| lab who was a full time employee at TJ Watson and his work at
| Watson was part and parcel of his phd. Basically supervised by
| both his IBM manager and my advisor.
|
| When I was looking at programs, as I already had been working
| at a military lab since I was in HS, I asked every advisor I
| interviewed with if research work I was doing at the lab could
| be the basis of the phd if I wanted (i.e. to do the same thing
| as the labmate mentioned) and almost everyone I spoke to had
| zero issues with it, with the proviso that the work was
| appropriate for a phd.
|
| At the end of the day, I did it all on campus (with many
| summers spent at labs or industry), but a good chunk of the
| work I did could easily have been done with proper guidance in
| an industry setting as well (though that's more in retrospect,
| I wouldn't have known how to sell the ideas to industry back
| then).
| gaze wrote:
| I don't really know how one does a part-time PhD. The kind of
| work that you produce during a PhD requires 4-6 years of full
| dedication. A part-time masters I could see.
| tombert wrote:
| In England a PhD tends to take on the order of 3-4 years if
| done full time, largely because they generally require a
| masters as a prerequisite to even _start_ the degree. A part-
| time PhD tends to take on the order of 5-6 years.
|
| Of course, even doing a part-time PhD, you end up spending a
| fair bit of time studying (on the order of 4-6 hours/night).
| [deleted]
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| A PhD is a full-time job, time-wise. I'm not sure how _really_
| feasible a part-time PhD + part-time job really is. Maybe for
| some, but most likely not for most imho. Agreed that it would
| help financially though.
| abcc8 wrote:
| I believe that the stipulation of no part-time PhD is dependent
| on training grant requirements. I couldn't have a second job
| during graduate school and it would cause big problems for the
| department, and by extension, me, if I was found to have a
| second job. It might work differently in other fields, but this
| is at least my experience in a hospital-affiliated biology
| department.
| hedora wrote:
| Engineering PhD candidates often have summer internships that
| pay extremely well. Most thesis advisors encourage their
| students to do this, since it helps ground research in real
| world problems (and conserves grant money, of course!)
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Colorado State will allow this fully online.
| https://www.online.colostate.edu/degrees/online-phd.dot
| [deleted]
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| They definitely do in engineering - USC and UCLA had most of
| its PhD students working full time in industry and only part
| time in their PhD program and grad school generally. I know
| because I was one of them.
| david38 wrote:
| I have never heard of this for computer science. I went to
| UIUC so I am only talking about the Midwest.
|
| How would you have time to finish? A full time PhD works a
| LOT. I can't imagine doubling the time to a PhD.
| [deleted]
| lupire wrote:
| It helps if your job is related to your PhD.
|
| (And if it's not, why are you doing both at the same time?)
| abhgh wrote:
| I did a part-time PhD (not in the US, so I am only
| responding to the latter part of your comment). It's hard,
| exhausting and can occasionally be frustrating. I gave up
| most of my weekends during the time. My sleep hours were
| less than what they should have been - and I did this for
| years. If you're wondering, it did lead to some health
| problems (esp. my back), thankfully not major, most of
| which I've recovered from.
|
| Do it only if research really interests you - this was my
| case, so the sense of gratification from learning and
| finding out things offset many of the negatives. Also,
| having a patient advisor and good friends helped a lot.
| tombert wrote:
| Out of curiosity, since you've gone through this before,
| do you have any advice on the best way to manage your
| time doing a part-time PhD.
|
| I've started my part-time a month ago, and it's been
| pretty exhausting already, and I suspect it will get
| harder. How did you budget time to talk to family, or to
| do something for yourself to avoid burnout?
| abhgh wrote:
| It was hard for me to set aside specific hours of the day
| for PhD during the week - because I occasionally had
| early morning and late evening meetings for my day job.
| And on some days the work itself would spill over. So the
| simple policy I followed as: if I am not involved in work
| from my job, work on the PhD. Far from simple to follow
| though.
|
| I'd often work out of cafes and libraries (I used to
| cycle between a small set of my favorites), because the
| change of atmosphere, and often the ambient activity,
| helps. Not to mention, if you're tired and trying to work
| from home, it's easier to get distracted (I could justify
| dozing off), than when you're at a cafe with your laptop
| in front of you and there's little else to do. I found
| that university cafes can be particularly helpful because
| you see a lot of people working around you.
|
| Family and friends: I didn't really plan talk time with
| my parents or friends but was mindful we talk without too
| much of a gap in between (at least twice a week with
| parents). I used to reserve the times when I _really_
| needed to unwind for these chats. Note: I was single for
| most of my PhD, and got married when things were winding
| down.
|
| On weekends, I would typically allow myself Sat morning
| off for a change of pace. On most weekends, I would drive
| off out of my normal ambit of travel, and work from a
| cafe/library away from home.
|
| Of course, none of above advice worked during the
| pandemic- working on the PhD became relatively harder
| then.
|
| Essentially, since I couldn't have changed the amount of
| work I needed to do, I substituted that lack of variation
| by constantly changing the atmosphere I worked in. That
| helped a lot.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Yeah, a friend of mine has a PhD in Economics, that he got
| while working full-time at FDIC. I know a number of people
| working full-time at government research labs in various math
| and science fields that are PhD candidates. The part-time PhD
| seems like it's extremely common as long as there is real,
| employment-market demand for that PhD, too.
|
| On the other hand, all the history PhDs I know can't even get
| work at their own university.
| tombert wrote:
| Fair enough; when I reached out to schools within commuting
| distance of me (the general NYC area), none of them offered
| any kind of part time plan for Mathematics or Computer
| Science (the only fields I'm really interested in).
|
| Sadly, there are not a ton of universities that offer an
| online PhD in CS or Math, meaning that I _was_ limited to
| what I could easily get to via train, at least in regards to
| schools in the United States. Eventually I found _one_ school
| in England that was willing to let me do a part time PhD
| online, which is where I 'm enrolled now.
| lupire wrote:
| England is easy for getting a PhD in math or CS -- just do
| your own research independently , and then submit your
| thesis for PhD certification..
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| Where is all this tuition even going to? Schools in the US
| charge an absurd amount of tuition compared to schools in
| Europe/Asia and yet these colleges are also systematically
| underpaying PhD students, Teaching Assistants, etc.
|
| College Professors don't exactly make the big bucks either.
|
| Yet, universities in the US have made put many Americans in
| lifelong debt.
|
| These colleges are all "nonprofit" (and get significant tax
| benefits), so where is the money even going?
| twistedpair wrote:
| Ever seen Football coach, and college president salaries?
|
| For state colleges, they're often some of the highest paid
| employees in the state. [1]
|
| 1. https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/28261213/dabo
| -s...
| dgfitz wrote:
| The vast majority of coaches don't make this kind of money.
| I refuse to believe tuition is insanely high because of
| coaching salaries. I was actually under the (possibly
| incorrect) assumption that coaches salaries come largely
| from boosters and things like ticket sales, jersey sales,
| etc.
| twistedpair wrote:
| Here's some real data for you, in a NY college no less.
|
| President of my undergrad college made $884K last year
| [1], but a medical school professor made nearly $2M.
|
| 1. https://nonprofitlight.com/ny/rochester/university-of-
| roches...
| mikkergp wrote:
| They're a professor for Orthopedics. Orthopedics is the
| highest paid specialty and at a university, Professor ==
| Physician.
|
| Point is he's making that money for the hospital for
| patient services, not because of his teaching.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Medical schools usually have separated funding sources
| too. Many professors are in fact practicing medicine in
| their field.
| temp8964 wrote:
| No. Football coaches don't get salary from tuitions.
| Athletic department has separated funding sources.
| danaris wrote:
| This may be true for some colleges and universities, but
| certainly isn't universally so.
| Cerealkiller050 wrote:
| Then you look at the revenue college football brings in to
| the rest of the university, the coach salaries looks like a
| bargain.
|
| Not only that, for most universities college football (some
| men's basketball) cover all the other men's and women's
| sports that hemorrhage money.
| leothecool wrote:
| Coach salaries -would- look like a bargain if revenue
| correlated with win-loss rate or quite frankly any
| measurable activity the coaches do. But, they don't.
|
| IMO the guy in big-10 football who deserves a multi
| million dollar salary is the guy in the mascot fursuit.
| mbesto wrote:
| > Then you look at the revenue college football brings in
| to the rest of the university, the coach salaries looks
| like a bargain.
|
| Now do this analysis while paying student-athletes
| salaries and tell me if the coaches are bargain.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Athletics is normally (always?) a separate self-funding
| enterprise attached to th e university. Tutition dollars
| don't pay the coaches; alumni donations/gifts, sponsors,
| and ticket sales do.
| grier wrote:
| This article is about graduate student stipends. Tuition does
| not have a cost for these students, so the stipend only needs
| to cover living costs (which as the article points out, it
| frequently does not).
|
| In CS, graduate students often intern over the summer and can
| make up for some of the difference.
|
| Tuition is paid by the university, typically from a grant.
| RaoulP wrote:
| I'm curious about this too, in my mind it doesn't add up at
| all.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Audit them to find out.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Baumol's Cost Disease. Basically anything that requires non-
| scalable human interactions is super expensive, because the
| cost of labor in the U.S. is super expensive. People don't
| realize it because when the Baby Boomers grew up, the U.S.
| effectively had a monopoly on capital, which meant that our
| "ordinary factory workers" could enjoy massively outsized
| productivity relative to the rest of the world. Now our
| ordinary factory workers are being undercut by ordinary
| factory workers abroad, since the rest of the world has
| rebuilt its capital stock, and so only professions that still
| enjoy global monopolies (eg. big tech) can afford service
| workers.
|
| For comparison, a mid-range preschool in the Bay Area costs
| about $30K/year, vs. $14K/year in-state tuition for UC
| Berkeley. If students get about 24 hours of instruction/week,
| for two 13-week semesters, that works out to about $22/hour.
| A nanny is about $25-30/hour, a therapist is $100+/hour,
| plumbers are about $200/hour, a lawyer can be $750-1000/hour.
| Given 20-30 students in the classroom, costs are not all that
| different from lawyers.
|
| Schools in Europe/Asia are government-subsidized, like the
| public school system in the U.S, so you don't see the true
| cost.
| yumraj wrote:
| > where is the money even going?
|
| Paying for stadiums, sports teams and millions in coach
| salaries.
| haakonhr wrote:
| I don't think it is fair to compare with Europe. The
| Norwegian University of Science and Technology, as an
| example, got around 1b USD over the national budget. Stipends
| and loans to students are provided by another governmental
| body (Lanekassen), but in the US some students get a "full
| ride" (incl. accommodation and so on). However, the amount of
| debt you hear some americans ending up with is crazy.
| RaoulP wrote:
| Just to add to that - Students at the Norwegian University
| of Science and Technology do not pay tuition fees. So the
| stipend and loan provided by Lanekassen go mainly to living
| expenses.
| tombert wrote:
| To be fair, if you graduate in four years, and are alright
| with state universities or community colleges, and major in
| some kind of field that allows you to be an engineer,
| university doesn't have to put you in lifelong debt. Many
| students do community college for the first two years, and
| then finish at a university, and end up on the order of
| ~$30,000 of debt. That's a lot of money, but generally not a
| life-ruining amount for an engineer.
|
| That's not even counting the weird universities like WGU,
| where you can get a bachelors for less than ~$15,000 without
| too much trouble.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Many students do community college for the first two
| years, and then finish at a university, and end up on the
| order of ~$30,000 of debt.
|
| For people in many European countries, this is an absurd
| amount of debt to get a university degree.
|
| Edit: For context: About 20 years ago, my university's
| annual fees was $15000/year for _out of state_ students,
| and $4600 for in state - in today 's dollars. Now that
| university charges $28K for out of state and $8.3K for in
| state - almost doubled after accounting for inflation. In
| other nearby universities I see people paying $15K/year for
| in state. This is a huge increase in two decades.
| tombert wrote:
| That's entirely fair, I'm a big proponent of making
| colleges either free, or extremely heavily subsidized by
| the government. I completely agree that it's still
| ridiculous to leave with $30,000 of debt.
|
| I'm just saying that, for someone working an engineering
| job, that is not generally a life-ruining amount of
| money, especially in comparison to the increased earning
| potential that a degree affords you (which is, I suspect,
| why they get away with charging such exorbitant tuition
| in the first place).
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Are dormitories / living expenses included in those
| American debt numbers or you take them as separate?
| tombert wrote:
| I was taking them as separate. I did my bachelors online
| (while working full time), so I didn't know how to factor
| that into the calculation. I just texted a friend to ask,
| and he said he left his state school with about $35,000
| in debt, but that was with a partial scholarship for the
| tuition, so I suspect a good chunk of that was the dorm.
|
| If we double the number I gave to $60,000, that's a lot
| more, and starting to approach life-ruining territory,
| but I'd say still falls a bit shy of it for an engineer.
| wincy wrote:
| I met a person who went to a for profit university, never
| got a degree, and works at Cheesecake Factory. He owes
| $120,000 and has three kids. His life was effectively
| ruined by this college.
| tombert wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that; I think that a lot (most?) for-
| profit universities are really predatory. You pay an
| obscene amount of money to them, you get an education
| that's _maybe_ on par with a local community college, and
| if you drop out you end up owing a ton of money without
| even that. That 's why I qualified my statements with
| "state school or community college". They're generally at
| least somewhat respected, and don't cost anywhere near as
| much as a for-profit school. There are also some non-
| profits private universities that don't charge a ton of
| money for tuition, like the aforementioned WGU.
|
| The first time I attempted school and dropped out, I
| started getting a ton of advertisements for for-profit
| universities in the mail. I knew that they were often
| scams, so I threw them away, but I can totally see an
| alternate universe in which I _don 't_ know that and end
| up with a boatload of debt for the rest of my life.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Your European parents paid that $30K and more in
| additional taxes though. The money came from somewhere;
| land and buildings and qualified professors do not come
| for free in Europe.
| [deleted]
| BeetleB wrote:
| I'm failing to connect your comment with mine. Yes, of
| course it came from additional taxes. Those additional
| taxes did not put people into $30K of debt in those
| countries. If you're poor, you don't pay that much in
| taxes. My mythical European parents did not get go into
| debt paying those taxes so I could go to school.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Well, sure, but it isn't like taxes are that much higher
| - honestly, my taxes moving from the US to Norway weren't
| realistically higher than state + federal + health
| insurance, and if you consider the out of pocket for
| health care, the bill is cheaper. Not to mention that
| Folks that go to school and wind up working a lower-
| paying job (teaching, for example) aren't on the hook for
| all of it either.
|
| And you aren't even paying for the same sort of things:
| Many colleges have sports teams in the US, for example,
| and the degrees take longer in the US. For example, you
| don't have to get an undergraduate degree in Norway to
| become a doctor so you spend less time actually in
| school.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Most of it goes to academic instruction expenses, and
| operations. The fast growing expense is more likely the
| latter as administrations have rather grown in size per
| student. Land appreciates in value too, even if the
| universities may own campuses, it remains in the balance
| sheets.
|
| Research is also a cost, even though they some of it back,
| they aren't VCs so this can bleed money there as well, and
| pretty fast, especially for underperforming institutions.
|
| I'm shocked shocked by the tuition fees in the U.S. But
| comparing with India and even Europe is a bit silly since
| those places don't compare in term of university ranking and
| average income level. Those professors/researchers are packed
| with long years of studies plus a loan they had accumulated
| themselves so it's a bit like a positive feedback loop.
| musicale wrote:
| > These colleges are all "nonprofit" (and get significant tax
| benefits), so where is the money even going?
|
| 1. Non-teaching admin positions, like vice presidents and
| associate deans of whatever, and all of their organizations
| and support staff.
|
| 2. Large bureaucracies that eat money and grow continuously.
|
| 3. Country club campuses and amenities.
|
| 4. Student services.
|
| 5. Legal departments and regulatory compliance.
| lupire wrote:
| This is offtopic.
|
| PhD has no tuition, except in an accounting sense (you pay
| tuition, they pay you back as a stipend).
| tombert wrote:
| If you're part-time, they typically don't even give you a
| stipend. I have to pay roughly 11,000 pounds per year for
| my PhD.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >Schools in the US charge an absurd amount of tuition
| compared to schools in Europe/Asia
|
| US schools get far less from the state than Europe and Asia.
| You can find many school budgets online, including sources of
| revenue. So this is easy to check. [2] lets you look at
| country per capita spending on tertiary education - the
| regions you mention tend to spend significantly more tax
| dollars than the US does.
|
| The result is that most European and Asian schools get funded
| by taxpayers, i.e., those not attending university end up
| helping pay for those who do, while in the US more of the
| funding is paid by people that attend schools.
|
| Also, the US, as a result, also ends up with a higher
| percentage of adults with college degrees than those with
| state sponsored schools [1], since those places tend to make
| it harder to go to college, since taxpayer pressure on cost
| reduces opportunity.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertia
| ry_...
|
| [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TERT.PC.ZS
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > [2] lets you look at country per capita spending on
| tertiary education
|
| The link shows government spending per student as a
| percentage of GDP per capita, rather than overall
| government spending per capita. This figure can get
| distorted when there are more students in the system for
| any reason (such as due to private investment).
|
| > since those places tend to make it harder to go to
| college, since taxpayer pressure on cost reduces
| opportunity.
|
| This does not follow. Rather, having more students
| decreases the per-student government expenditure figure,
| even as the burden on the taxpayer stays the same.
|
| As a percentage of GDP, US government expenditure on
| tertiary education is roughly in the middle of what various
| countries in Europe spend.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/707557/higher-
| education-...
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >Rather, having more students decreases the per-student
| government expenditure figure, even as the burden on the
| taxpayer stays the same.
|
| That does not follow unless students cost zero to
| educate.
|
| As more students enter, it costs more.
|
| >As a percentage of GDP,....
|
| And the US educates a larger portion of their population
| than most (if not all?) European countries. This is why
| using % of GDP is misleading, since the countries are
| paying for a different rate of educated people. The cost
| per student is more applicable, since as those other
| countries scale up the number educated will necessarily
| spend more, since on the margin people don't cost zero to
| educate.
|
| This is why I pointed out the rates of education are
| different. Comparing a country spending 1% to educate 2%
| to one spending 3% to educate 10%, only looking at the 1%
| and 3%, is missing important information.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > That does not follow unless students cost zero to
| educate
|
| The remaining funding comes from the private sector (e.g.
| tuition fees).
|
| Comparing the US with Germany, for example, the US spends
| 0.9% of GDP from public funds and 1.6% of GDP privately
| for a total of 2.5% of GDP, resulting in 44% of the
| population being tertiary graduates.
|
| Germany spends 1.1% of GDP from public funds and 0.2% of
| GDP privately, for a total of 1.3% of GDP, and 27% of its
| population are tertiary graduates.
|
| So as a proportion of GDP, Germany pays only about half
| of what the US does, but still manages to have three
| fifths as many graduates as the US, proportionally. That
| is better value for money spent overall.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >The remaining funding comes from the private sector
|
| Again, that does not follow. Adding students means more
| students will apply for government aid, so more aid will
| be allocated. Lots of places get paid $X per student from
| the govt - adding students adds public cost.
|
| So yes, more students means more govt cost. Any student
| can apply for govt help, and if they meet requirements,
| they get the aid. They're not told sorry, you're number
| N+1 and we only fund N. You have to go private funded.
|
| >That is better value for money spent overall.
|
| Germany, (and pretty much all countries) pays far less
| for all advanced jobs. You cannot hire professors in the
| US for what you get them for in other countries (Baumol's
| cost disease, for example), so again this is not an
| accurate comparison.
|
| >That is better value for money spent overall.
|
| Such things are not linear - educating the last % would
| cost far more per person than educating the first 1%.
| Just like making something 50% burglar proof is not half
| the cost to make something 100% burglar proof. As you
| reach deeper into the pool of candidates they will take
| more effort, more time, and more money, per person to
| educate to some fixed level.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| lots of middle mgmt.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Going to admins getting paid high 6 figure or sometimes even
| 7 figure salaries.
| prepend wrote:
| > Where is all this tuition even going to?
|
| I have a family member who works in the "alumni relations"
| department of a small, regional public university. Probably
| ranked like #300 or something. There are like 5 people in the
| department. They make a magazine, email newsletter and
| schedule alumni events.
|
| It was really surreal when they explained their job and that
| the department exists.
|
| There's an admin costs problem in this country. There's no
| sufficient governance or oversight in controlling university
| spending. This is even a public university and it's just
| bizarre that they can make up positions that shouldn't even
| exist.
| uberman wrote:
| I'm not suggesting that there is not an abundance of staff
| at some institutions, but at most institutions, "alumni
| relations" is a profit center not a cost center. At least
| if they are doing the job that our "alumni relations"
| department does. Yes, ours produces a magazine as well but
| their real job is (or should be) to entice giving.
|
| This kind of thing would be like saying your typical
| account manager's job is surreal and perhaps in some cases
| that might be true :-)
| Invictus0 wrote:
| You haven't presented enough evidence to show that there is
| a problem. If the alumni relations department is bringing
| in donations greater than their salaries, they are a net
| benefit to the university. Even if they don't bring in that
| amount every year, it might still be a net plus: it might
| bring in better students, spread the word about the
| university, and it might lead to big gifts later down the
| line.
| muh_gradle wrote:
| Administrative bloat in higher education is well known at
| this point, and it's absolutely a part of where student
| money is going. All I see is a lot of "mights" in your
| post.
| didericis wrote:
| > Even if they don't bring in that amount every year, it
| might still be a net plus
|
| Or it might not.
|
| Thats the root of the problem. The administrators are the
| people coming up with the metrics and arguments to
| justify their own existence.
|
| I'm sure many of them believe they're making a positive
| contribution, and the situation is more complex and
| tragic than just "these are the baddies" type arguments
| suggest, but there's still an accountability problem that
| needs to be reckoned with.
| evolve2k wrote:
| I also reject the assertion they shouldn't exist. The
| "Alumni network" is listed as one of the additional
| benefits when enrolling for a degree.
|
| Further when the engineering firm you started after
| graduation with some of your classmates wines a National
| science award. Getting that profiled in the alumni
| newsletter could be unlocking a range of oppprtunities
| for your firm from grant funder interest to new
| commercialisation opportunity, all coming out of the
| alumni network.
|
| Just cause the work is quiet doesn't mean it's pointless.
| prepend wrote:
| An alumni network is great. I think the issue is having
| so many admin staff working on low value activities like
| magazines and newsletters.
|
| I'm a big fan of quiet work, but this is pointless. It's
| not pointless because it's quiet. It's pointless because
| it has minimal to no positive impact.
| prepend wrote:
| The alumni donations total about $50k/year and I think
| there's only like 200,000 alumnis that exist. The
| department is five years old and the growth is minimal as
| donations were like $30k with no department at all.
|
| My anecdote wasn't intended as evidence.
|
| But there's definitely a problem. You can look at
| official sources [0] for evidence showing that admin
| expenses are 21% at public, four year schools.
|
| I found this article while looking for the official stats
| [1] that claims the average university in the US has 45
| people in DEI. DEI is very important, I think, but 45
| employees boggles the mind and seems to be more of a
| symptom of runaway costs and lack of controls that would
| allow for so many admin staff on a single topic.
|
| [0] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75 [1] h
| ttps://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/administrati
| ve...
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Also know someone that works at a large university in
| alumni relations. Their department doesn't pay great, but
| the bar for performance is so low.
| prepend wrote:
| For my family member the salary isn't huge, I think like
| $40k so the whole department is probably less than
| $500k/year including overhead and whatnot. My assumption
| was if they are spending stupid money on this they are
| likely spending stupid money on many other things.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| $500k/yr spent on fundraising does not remotely sound
| like a stupid use of money to me?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| That depends on what the ROI is.
| soheil wrote:
| > There's an admin costs problem in this country.
|
| The money goes to the college administrators. They're major
| bureaucracies that plague and control universities money
| supply and more or less dictate universities' policies.
| danaris wrote:
| The data I've seen doesn't, by and large, bear this out.
|
| The money goes to the athletics and the infrastructure.
| (Not in the sense of "the best infrastructure money can
| buy", sadly; no, it's more like "raise $300 million to
| build this new dorm and let the richest donor put their
| name on it, then spend about 30% of what it needs for
| maintenance for the next 30 years...and then spend 5x the
| amount we would've had to if we'd just maintained it in
| remediation and renovations".)
| adventured wrote:
| > The money goes to the athletics and the infrastructure.
|
| Athletics for most schools are a net profit center, even
| for the #100 football program. The smaller schools aren't
| spending nearly so much on athletics as the schools with
| football programs.
| danaris wrote:
| First of all, I don't believe that's actually true based
| on what I've seen: what seems to be more often the case
| is that the tickets pay for the marketing and _some_ of
| the athletic infrastructure.
|
| Meanwhile, the coaches are being paid millions of dollars
| per year. I don't care _how_ much money the athletic
| program is bringing in; that 's not a responsible use of
| the money. (I get that it's something of a prisoner's
| dilemma at the _individual institution_ level; I 'm more
| talking about the broader issue.) If you have the money
| to pay the coaches $2M/year, that means you could,
| instead, stop paying your adjunct professors and regular
| staff sub-poverty wages, and/or perform proper
| maintenance on the buildings.
|
| And do _not_ get me started on the economics of stadium
| construction.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 5 people for Alumni relationships if they also deal with
| some other public relations really doesn't sound too
| horrible.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| Part of the issue is TOO MUCH governance. We have loaded
| colleges down with regulations and requirements, which then
| require administrators to handle these rules. Most of these
| administrative roles are not optional (at least not if you
| don't want to get sued).
|
| Most of these requirements independently make sense, but
| the sum impact weighs down universities and drives up cost.
| rch wrote:
| Factually unsupported cynical take: Without the made up
| jobs there would be even less of a market for the type of
| non-STEM graduates public universities like to produce.
|
| The regulations provide the justification for the jobs
| program needed to soak up the excess supply of non-trade
| graduates generated by overenthusiastic student loan
| policy.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > Most of these administrative roles are not optional (at
| least not if you don't want to get sued.
|
| They are mostly not optional if you want to receive
| federal funding. There are some small colleges that are
| totally private, do not take government funds, and so
| don't have to implement and administer many government
| regulations.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Alumni relations is a profit center for universities, not a
| cost center. Many universities are funded as much by alumni
| donations and endowment gains on them as they are by
| tuition.
| madengr wrote:
| newsclues wrote:
| Yeah but what is the return on investment?
|
| The incentive to have a alumni department to increase
| donations clearly isn't in the best interests of society.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Society has decided that it doesn't want to support
| American universities through tax dollars [1] so you
| can't really blame universities for trying to find any
| and all other sources of funding.
|
| [1] https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-
| tax/state-hig...
| newsclues wrote:
| What about tuition?
|
| Or monetize research instead of gifting it to large
| (pharmaceutical) companies?
|
| This isn't the only way for education to fund itself, and
| the incentives are not aligned with the mission.
| pkaye wrote:
| In terms of drug research the value of the discovery
| rises only after the clinical trials are complete.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"Society has decided that it doesn't want to support
| American universities through tax dollars."
|
| This is hyperbole, the government is spending billions on
| American Universities in a myriad of different ways. And,
| many ways of support are not direct. One could argue that
| the guaranteed student loan programs are a roundabout way
| of supporting universities through tax dollars as well.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > One could argue that the guaranteed student loan
| programs are a roundabout way of supporting universities
| through tax dollars as well.
|
| No, guaranteed student loans are a way to transfer wealth
| from future taxpayers and borrowers to beneficiaries of
| tuition such as university staff and whoever is receiving
| money from the university such as construction companies
| and whatnot.
|
| The guaranteed loans with no underwriting obfuscate costs
| and thus result in a mid allocation of society's
| resources. Such as leagues of people spending their
| valuable years learning "communications" or "business"
| degrees and then sitting in a call center or other role
| that does not pay enough to make the degree they paid for
| in time and money to have any decent or even positive
| ROI.
| engineeringwoke wrote:
| Providing education isn't expensive; big campuses and
| teams of administrators are. Universities could easily
| return to the old ways, just cap annual loans at $20k per
| head. It would be painful, but they're fat, and what
| they're doing is bad for society.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Not to mention sports teams.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Sports teams are a profit center. Season tickets are
| hundreds or even a thousand dollars. And then there's the
| absurd money they make at the concession stands and
| merchandising.
| uberman wrote:
| You don't understand university sports revenues and
| expenses.
|
| Feel free to download a breakdown of revenues and
| expenses for the university of your choice at:
| https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/
|
| You are going to find that almost every school is net
| neutral with respect to their sports programs. Football
| and basketball typically funding all other sports.
| flaviut wrote:
| I haven't looked at the entire dataset, but looking at
| the major schools that are close to me:
|
| Expenses: 12M, 25M, 13M, 70M
|
| Revenue: 6M, 30M, 13M, 44M
|
| 1/4 is making a slight profit. 1/4 is breaking even. 2/4
| are making a major loss.
|
| A Kennesaw State University (00157700 )| Total
| Enrollment: 27,300
|
| B Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus | Total
| Enrollment: 14,476
|
| C Georgia State University | Total Enrollment: 22,276
|
| D University of Georgia | Total Enrollment: 27,877
| RhysU wrote:
| Stop giving the panhandlers money and they will go away.
| mysterydip wrote:
| I worked at a small private college for a few years in IT.
| Tuition increased every year, yet our budget always seemed to
| be the same or smaller ("we need to do more with less"), and
| my salary certainly didn't get proportionately larger.
| eunos wrote:
| Student services in US universities are massive coupled with
| salaries for coterie of admins, deans and middle-men.
| bell-cot wrote:
| ~6 years ago, the Univ. of Michigan did major renovations on
| its large student dormitories. We're talking old but
| structurally quite sound reinforced concrete & masonry
| buildings, each housing ~1,000 undergraduates.
|
| U of M spent about $100,000 _per student bed_ (not per room)
| on those renovations. They could have bought brand new,
| custom built, state-of-the-art suburban-sprawl McMansions and
| given every student their own bedroom (vs. mostly-shared dorm
| rooms) for less money. And had the old dorms left over.
|
| Yes, that money was on UM's Housing (vs. academic) side. But
| you should not expect other non-classroom, non-academic
| spending (by any part of UM, or similar institutions) to be
| any less profligate.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Typical culprits:
|
| - Too much admin per student compared to 40 years ago
|
| - (Much more likely): Severe decline in funds from the state.
| I know at least one nearby university that showed the data
| that the increase in tuition from 1980 to 2010 was almost
| entirely due to government cuts, and that the budget spending
| per student hadn't changed in that time frame - adjusted for
| inflation.
|
| - Fancy buildings
| musicale wrote:
| > - (Much more likely): Severe decline in funds from the
| state. I know at least one nearby university that showed
| the data that the increase in tuition from 1980 to 2010 was
| almost entirely due to government cuts, and that the budget
| spending per student hadn't changed in that time frame -
| adjusted for inflation
|
| This may be a good explanation for public institutions, but
| what is the justification for private institutions?
|
| For example, a year at the University of Pennsylvania (a
| private university) in 1980 cost about $7200 (equivalent to
| $25K today), but Penn currently charges about $75K per
| year.
|
| What is the justification for the additional tripling of
| charges, even after adjusting for inflation?
| cosmodisk wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University_endowment
|
| https://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances/#:~:text=.
| ...
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2020/financials-endowment-2020
| renewiltord wrote:
| These places are primarily admin staff with a small teaching
| department.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Middle management/admin salaries.
| dlsa wrote:
| No idea. But aren't those campuses wonderful with their huge
| buildings, new carpet, great landscaping, and every admin
| staff member has an amazing office chair and fitout. They
| even refresh that carpet every year along with brand new
| seating. The art! Its always changing as well. The university
| cars are great too. I've seen plenty of amazing cars that
| researchers drive around. The libraries are constantly
| changing each month. They renovated that building just last
| summer, didn't they? That oval is being redone as well.
| Amazing.
|
| Like I said, no idea. Ok, maybe _some_ idea.
| musicale wrote:
| It may be an interesting exercise to divide the non-
| teaching administrative budget by the number of students.
| adventured wrote:
| Admin and prestige buildings, across decades, along with the
| upkeep related to those things now and going forward
| (pensions/retirements, building maintenance & upkeep).
|
| Also, US incomes are among the highest in the world,
| everything should seem expensive here compared to the typical
| European nation. Comparing to eg Japan or Britain doesn't
| work, our incomes are far higher. If you want to look at
| costs for the median or above, you have to reference Sweden,
| Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia for comps.
| Simultaneously our costs are still too high even after you
| adjust for that (in things like healthcare and education).
| tyoma wrote:
| We don't have to guess. Most US universities are public
| institutions so you can just Google up their budget.
|
| As an example, here is the UC system:
|
| https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4511
|
| https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2021/chapt.
| ..
|
| About 70% of the UC budget goes to salaries and benefits. Of
| that, 70% of staff is non-academic.
|
| Full context below:
|
| Non-academic staff employees constitute nearly 70 percent of
| UC's workforce and are responsible for health services,
| student services, instruction and research support,
| compliance, and general administration (6.1.1). In October
| 2020, this group included 143,188 individuals. Overall, this
| staff workforce represented over 115,577 full-time equivalent
| (FTE) employees in that month.
|
| STAFF WORKFORCE About six out of every ten UC staff FTE are
| working for the University of California Health system. These
| frontline workers (including doctors, nurses, administrators,
| technicians, and allied health professionals) are playing a
| critical role in California's response to the COVID-19
| pandemic. Over 97 percent of these employees are supported by
| non-core funds, typically the revenues generated by hospital
| services. Students often work part-time on campus as part of
| their financial aid packages or for research experience.
| During the pandemic, UC campuses transitioned to remote
| instruction. With staff, faculty, and students no longer on
| campus, student employee headcount at general campus halved
| from 36,000 in October 2019 to 18,000 in October 2020.
| General campus, non-student employees are the remainder of
| the University's staff, at 43,752 FTE. This includes student
| services employees, career advisors, IT specialists, research
| administration, laboratory staff, food and auxiliary service
| workers, accountants, maintenance and janitorial staff,
| safety workers, and analysts (6.1.1).
| frumper wrote:
| Looking into UC Statistics from your link gives an
| interesting insight.
|
| I came away with the numbers 232k employees with earnings
| in 2021. https://universityofcalifornia.edu/about-
| us/information-cent...
|
| And Fall 2021 has student enrollment at 294,662.
| https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-
| us/information-...
|
| Some quick caveats, the employee count is for a year, and
| the UC system has about an 8% separation rate. The employee
| count also includes 29k student employees. Even so, that
| feels like way too many employees to service that student
| count, a bulk of which are listed as non-student
| professional and support staff.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| Note that these employee counts probably include whole
| hospital staffs (since teaching hospitals / academic
| medical centers are frequently part of universities).
| frumper wrote:
| Yes, that is a good point. Staff employed by the
| hospitals are included. UC Davis alone is more than 10
| thousand employees. I'd imagine a few of the other UC
| hospitals are also significant portions of that support
| staff.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| So 40% of employees aren't paid by the university system's
| academic arm, but by the healthcare section. 30% are
| academic staff, and 30% are support staff.
| daxfohl wrote:
| Even with the cost of medicine going through the roof,
| college kids don't incur a whole lot of medical costs on
| average. So it's surprising the university would need to
| spend so much there.
| ska wrote:
| > college kids don't incur a whole lot of medical costs
| on average.
|
| These are typically regular (teaching) hospitals, they
| serve the community not just the university.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| They're effectively separate organizations. One runs the
| universities, the other runs the hospitals + med schools.
| apcragg wrote:
| The UC Health system serves the general public through
| direct services and their research and teaching
| functions.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > Where is all this tuition even going to?
|
| Administrative staff, which has ballooned over the past
| several decades. Many of these people have mediocre ability,
| don't really do much, but once a position is created it is
| hardly ever eliminated.
|
| Buildings and renovations. Ever seen a modern student dorm?
| They are luxurious compared to what they were in the 1980s.
| It's a constant competitive war as students will actually
| choose a school based on the living accomodations over the
| education.
|
| Programs to assist students who should really not be there,
| and other programs that don't seem to recognize that college
| students are adults and should be expected to manage their
| lives by themselves. Do they really need the university to
| arrange coloring book time to help with the stress of mid-
| terms?
| delaynomore wrote:
| >Many of these people have mediocre ability Perhaps.
| University never intends to compete for top talent with
| their salary offerings. I recall during a salary discussion
| years ago, my manager at the time mentioned that the salary
| was indeed below market but offered up the point below as
| an advantage.
|
| >don't really do much, but once a position is created it is
| hardly ever eliminated. Yup. This was true and was a
| definitely a benefit.
|
| Source: 6 years working as IT for a public university.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| As a PhD student, I already got paid for only 20 hours of work
| per week. Of course, I worked at least 60.
| debacle wrote:
| Getting a PhD is an investment. How do you delineate a bear
| market for skills? Is it generally congruous with a bear market
| for assets/investment?
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Newsflash: _" Not having a profitable job well into your 30s
| leaves you poor, study finds"_
| Kevin_S wrote:
| I know biology and many other STEM stipends are very low.
|
| As someone in a business field with a very high stipend (32k), I
| am also feeling the pinch. My wife and I keep a relatively strict
| budget and I track with YNAB, and gas alone is pretty damaging to
| our spare income. And I am lucky to be at an institution in a
| college town with a relatively low cost of living. I don't know
| how my peers in cities like Boston do it.
| uoaei wrote:
| Have you considered a used bicycle for transportation?
| Hobbyists refurbish old steel frames that last forever and work
| as well as they did on day one, and they're usually $100-$300
| depending on your desired comfort level.
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| How is this any different from 20, 30, 40 years ago??
|
| Hint: it's not.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Does that make it viable or worth continuing?
|
| Hint: No.
| [deleted]
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| I believe that FunnyBadger is pointing out that people have
| been pointing this out for a long time and is frustrated that
| nobody has paid attention to it until it became a crisis. You
| know, kind of like how we treat every other problem we have.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| It's not a crisis. People are simply louder about it now.
| When people stop signing up for PhD programs, THEN it's a
| crisis. Until then, the system has no reason to care, thus
| the general public will remain completely oblivious.
| coldcode wrote:
| I was accepted into a Chem PhD program in the early 80's, but
| knew it would pay crap for years, so I figured I could work as
| a programmer for a couple years and save some money. 40 years
| later - I never went back to the PhD.
| muh_gradle wrote:
| Wages are sticky. Inflation keeps on going up. It's worse.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I finished grad school twenty years ago. My stipend was
| $1100/month for nine months and no tuition waiver. They did
| let me pay in-state tuition, since I was an employee within
| the state. For a while, I spent 60% of my after-tax stipend
| check on housing.
| fny wrote:
| Hint: it's a lot worse.
| lazyjeff wrote:
| I recently collected the first-year PhD stipends in computer
| science across 39 university departments, to have a real sense of
| the numbers. Basically to have a fair comparison, because a lot
| of reported stipends aren't clear whether they are 9-month or
| 12-month stipends, and stipends can different depending on the
| year/candidacy of the student.
|
| Data: https://jeffhuang.com/computer-science-open-
| data/#verified-c...
|
| The main conclusions I arrived at from this exercise is that 1)
| CS stipends vary quite a bit but have slowly been increasing, but
| NSF funding needs to catch up for them to go higher, 2) the
| 12-month stipend makes a big difference from the 9-month stipend,
| and I think universities should _guarantee_ the 12-month stipend
| (which only half do), rather than making summer stipend dependent
| on availability of advisor funding or student jobs (like TAing).
| bachmeier wrote:
| > universities should guarantee the 12-month stipend
|
| I'm not sure how this would work in practice.
|
| If you hand out 12-month contracts, you'll lose a ton of
| students, because they often want the summer for themselves (in
| many cases, they are from another country and want to travel
| home, or they have a spouse working somewhere else in the
| country).
|
| If you give the students the option on an annual basis, a
| school like Columbia might have the money to cover
| unanticipated expenses, but mine does not.
|
| > rather than making summer stipend dependent on availability
| of advisor funding or student jobs (like TAing)
|
| The money has to come from somewhere.
| lazyjeff wrote:
| > I'm not sure how this would work in practice.
|
| It's already working in practice for almost half the
| universities: summer stipends are guaranteed, but if students
| choose to intern elsewhere, you don't get the summer stipend.
| Nothing changes if their advisor is already funding them. I'm
| just saying the other half of universities should be doing
| this as well, that it should be universal.
|
| Yes it does cost a bit, but if you think about what's
| happening now for universities with no summer guarantee, it's
| that PhD students without summer internships are getting no
| pay in the summer. And even the ones that do find summer pay,
| it's still a stressful situation for them during the academic
| year, so a complete distraction.
|
| Honestly, I can't think of a better use of university money
| than to be paying PhD students who would otherwise be working
| for free in the summer (if their advisor can't fund them).
| Aperocky wrote:
| It can be argued that the credential to land a PhD in CS in any
| of these university would have most of the time guaranteed a
| much much higher paying job in the industry, and potentially
| less stressful one at that.
| JohnPDickerson wrote:
| Jeff, thanks so much for putting that stipend information
| together; I'm sure your list has started discussions amongst
| students and amongst faculty at many institutions. The variance
| in stipends was eye-opening to me, and clearly they all need to
| go up.
|
| The posted numbers for my home institution, the University of
| Maryland, are a bit off; current offers are $25k for 9-month
| and up to $36k for 12-month, if funded on an RA over the
| summer. That RA summer funding is not guaranteed. Again,
| clearly, this needs to go up.
| lazyjeff wrote:
| Thanks for checking about the numbers. I did just double
| check the Maryland numbers, and what's in my table seems
| correct:
|
| The 25K you're referring to is for 9.5-months so is
| normalized to 9 months to compare against the other 9-month
| numbers. It's already notated with the [1] footnote in the
| table.
|
| The 36k is not guaranteed in the offers given to students:
| the UMaryland CS offer letters states "Students who are TAs
| or RAs over the summer earn an additional $5,600 up to
| $11,000", which I can only interpret to mean that 11K is not
| guaranteed. So what's reported in that table is my
| interpretation of the minimum stipend if the student does get
| one, but what you say makes sense, that an RA provides the
| higher number in that range -- I just don't have a way to
| represent that.
| [deleted]
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Or... universities could... PAY THEM?
|
| Look at the endowments.
|
| Look at the tuition costs.
|
| Look at the grants.
|
| Where is the money going? As usual in the US, not to the people
| doing the work.
| DickieStarshine wrote:
| I'm a software developer in a large german city and I'm facing
| this issue. Rent is very high, around 50% of my net income. Food
| gets more expensive by the day and the war in the Ukraine isn't
| even factored in yet. I can't live outside the city since I need
| to go to the office 2-3 times per week just for the privilege to
| stare at my monitor there, just like at home.
| miked85 wrote:
| > _spark calls for action_
|
| If the action is having everyone else (including many who never
| attended college) pay off their debt, that seems like a bad idea.
| This just seems like a bad decision on the PhD student's part.
| kyle_martin1 wrote:
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-05-23 23:02 UTC)