[HN Gopher] Grad student unions strike deal with University of C...
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Grad student unions strike deal with University of California
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 104 points
Date : 2022-12-22 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| The entire financial structure of higher education seems like a
| pyramid scheme.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Part of it comes from a job market and hiring practices built
| around credentialism. When higher education becomes an
| "essential" stepping stone in ensuring a career, it gets
| inundated with an almost predatory mindset that cannot conceive
| of anything but its own necessity and will tirelessly protect
| that perceived necessity at all costs. Higher education was
| intended for the creation, protecting, and nurturing, of
| knowledge and liberal (in the classical sense) humanistic
| ideals. Nowadays, it's a career engine and often, to put it
| simply, pay-to-win.
| tbruckner wrote:
| Not familiar with academia, but where does this extra $ come
| from? Won't this just mean departments will recruit
| proportionally less PhDs?
| mjhay wrote:
| Ideally it would come from cutting the bloated administration
| that leeches off of research funding that professors and grad
| students attract, while impeding their work, but that's not
| going to be what happens.
| whakim wrote:
| I would caution against such sweeping generalizations about
| where the money goes. Statistics usually show tremendous
| increases in spending on "staff" (i.e. non-faculty) salaries,
| but those staff do a variety of things. For example, I
| previously worked as a staff researcher at a big private
| university; my job involved building open source software and
| writing papers. The research center I worked at had a couple
| faculty members and PhD students but probably 20 folks with
| jobs like mine. The fact is, a lot of the research _is_ being
| done by that so-called "bloated administration."
| malshe wrote:
| Administration doesn't consist of the people at that lower
| level. The admins are the VPs, associate deans, vice
| provosts, assistant this and associate that. They draw in
| low to medium six digit salaries and recruit a bunch of
| people to assist them.
|
| > The fact is, a lot of the research is being done by that
| so-called "bloated administration."
|
| That's such bs! Admin have no time to read a single paper,
| forget about doing original research. Admins do exactly
| zero research.
| whakim wrote:
| > Administration doesn't consist of the people at that
| lower level.
|
| This isn't the way "administration" is calculated.
| Statistics showing "administrative bloat" point to growth
| in spending on "staff"/"non-teaching employees"/etc. The
| job I describe above would have fit this definition of
| bloat.
| malshe wrote:
| The non teaching staff doesn't come out of thin air. They
| are employed for the people in the administrative
| positions.
| whakim wrote:
| My experience (described above) provides a direct
| counterexample to this.
| 131012 wrote:
| For example, if you want to use modern tools (aka code) in
| a department where nobody is hired for their coding skill,
| you need some staff. And you need to pay them well,
| because... you know. Startups, SF, FAANGs.
| mjhay wrote:
| In scientific disciplines, professors and grad students
| just write their own code. At least that was the case in
| my department, other similar departments at my
| university, and people in my field from other
| universities. It's very bad code of course, but I've
| never heard of anyone getting hired specifically to
| program, besides a few CS undergrad interns being brought
| in. No one had anywhere near the kind of budget to hire
| professional programmers.
| stevenbedrick wrote:
| This is thankfully beginning to change, though far more
| slowly than many of us would like to see. There is much
| more talk about "research software engineering" happening
| in a lot of fields, and some funding agencies are
| beginning to take notice. Anecdotally, I know of a couple
| of PIs who have been successful in arguing for higher
| budget caps on R01 submissions in order to cover the
| costs of having appropriate computational staff on their
| grants, which is something that I never would have
| believed if somebody had told me about it ten years go.
| And some fields (like computational biology) have been
| ahead of the game in this regard.
|
| It remains a huge challenge from a budgeting standpoint,
| though, I don't want to downplay that too much. And there
| are also other challenges- until very recently, my
| university didn't have job categories for software-
| related research staff roles, and so we had enormous
| difficulties figuring out how to hire and appropriately
| pay such people. The "how do we hire them" part has been
| fixed, which is a big help- but we still have to figure
| out how to pay for them ourselves.
| 131012 wrote:
| And when it becomes a huge challenge from a budgeting
| standpoint, you need appropriate administrative staff to
| figure this out.
| mjhay wrote:
| There are staff researchers, but at least at my university
| such people were mostly soft money and were responsible for
| bringing in their own funding, which the university then
| proceeded to take 56% off the top for overhead.
|
| At any rate, their numbers were insignificant compared to
| the administration, which occupied numerous buildings,
| including an entire skyskcraper. They didn't help us, and
| in fact made our jobs more difficult.
| whakim wrote:
| I'd love to see the data on "insignificant compared to
| the administration," because it doesn't fit my actual
| experience in any way. (I'm not saying you're definitely
| wrong, but I hope you might slightly re-evaluate your
| priors here.) And no, many staff researchers don't bring
| in their own funding; like PhD students they're funded by
| a combination of the university and grants (which they
| often help write).
| mjhay wrote:
| That's what I meant by "soft money." By administration, I
| am talking about more stereotypical bureaucracy, such as
| the ever-expanding number of various kinds of deans. I
| worked with soft-money people, who were called "research
| professors" in my department. They worked hard and
| brought in much more money for the university than they
| cost.
| whakim wrote:
| Thanks very much for clarifying. My original point was
| that these staff and their salaries are often lumped in
| with "stereotypical bureaucracy" when discussing
| administrative bloat, and I think they're a greater
| percentage than many people realize :)
| hedora wrote:
| In UC, grant overhead was 50% the last time I took.
| That's money the administration takes out before the
| professor gets it. Staff researchers, equipment,
| students, etc come out of the other half. Assuming the
| professor is using 20% of their grant money on staff
| researchers (this is likely a high estimate), $5 is going
| to administration for every $1 spent on staff
| researchers.
|
| Edit, also some admins are paid out of the professors'
| budgets, after overhead is taken out.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| They operate on a huge surplus from what I've heard
| COGlory wrote:
| It depends.
|
| At my university, graduate students are state employees, but
| not standard state employees the way
| facilities/staff/administrators are. Those groups have a union,
| benefits, and pension plan, everything is very rigid.
|
| Graduate students are paid a "stipend", required to work 19
| hours or less/week, and can't have any other form of state
| employment that might put them at 20+ hours/week. Total pay
| comes out to about $18,000/yr before student fees. This is
| because at that point, the type of employment is considered
| changed, and benefits have to be provided. The default
| appointment is for teaching, and doesn't include summer pay (no
| teaching in the summer).
|
| However, if your group has external funding, you can use that
| external funding to pay the students, but you can only pay them
| the default appointment (plus summer). So the wage doesn't
| change, the students are still paid by the university and are
| state employees, but the university gets the funds from grant
| funding, not wherever it comes from for TAing (probably
| undergrad revenue + state taxes).
|
| The best solution here is state legislature passing legislation
| to increase what graduate students are paid, take the money out
| of the tax budget (seriously, 100% of graduate students at my
| university are below the federal poverty level, which just
| enables this stupid degrading benefit double-dipping to
| subsidize salaries), and provide benefits and treatment as
| standard state employees.
|
| However, universities have been sucking up cheap/slave graduate
| student labor for years and are completely addicted to it. They
| have ignored this demographic completely and most state
| universities cannot function without graduate students.
| Graduate students do research. Research attracts big
| researchers who bring in multi-million dollar grants for the
| NIH and NSF. The schools take 45%-65% off the top of each grant
| in the form of indirect cost recapture. That heavily subsidizes
| the schools. Also, high quality researchers brings in more,
| better undergraduates. All of this while grad students are paid
| $16k-$30k/yr, mostly without benefits, for extremely highly
| skilled technical work. When fewer and fewer Americans were
| going to graduate school in the 80s and 90s, rather than try to
| make graduate school more enticing, the US simply pivoted to
| the H1B system. The hilarious thing is many schools claim
| graduate student tuition is part of their compensation, and
| that's worth tens of thousands of dollars, but in reality,
| graduate student tuition is just being in a research lab doing
| work that benefits the university anyways. Most graduate
| students in science take 4-6 classes over ~5 years of graduate
| school - not worth anything close to what universities claim it
| is. And most grad students still have to pay student fees,
| while having reduced access to undergrad facilities (no dining
| hall, no dorms, no gym access at lots of universities, reduced
| health clinic access, etc).
| option wrote:
| of course. Typically in STEM PhDs are paid from the research
| grants of their advisors.
| Retric wrote:
| Somewhat, but departments will likely end up spending a higher
| percentage of their budget on grad students.
|
| Also, student unions have different priorities because this
| isn't a lifelong career so reducing the number of jobs isn't a
| big deal.
| mbreese wrote:
| There isn't one answer to this question. It depends heavily on
| the department. For example, biomedical graduate students are
| often covered by external (federal) grant funding. This
| increase can be factored into the budgets for those, but only
| in the future. AFAICT, it is still up in the air how it will be
| funded in the shorter term.
|
| Humanities students are another story though. External grants
| for those are more rare, IIRC.
|
| I'm not sure if the universities can survive in its current
| model with fewer graduate students. They are very integral to
| the teaching/grading/etc for undergraduate classes. So, it will
| be tough to make the system work with fewer of them. At least,
| that's what the striking students are counting on.
| [deleted]
| lapcat wrote:
| > Won't this just mean departments will recruit proportionally
| less PhDs?
|
| Maybe they should. The PhD dropout rate is almost 50%.
| Universities exploit PhD students for cheap labor and then
| throw them away.
| DrThunder wrote:
| [dead]
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Already happening in the humanities. Many major programs in
| my field when I was applying (as an international student, so
| there already were some "quotas" in place on how many
| international students a program would take) were signaling
| that they were reducing the recruitment number simply because
| they could no longer insure TT placement afterwards. It's too
| little too late tbh, but at least they are starting to do it.
| I know they are starting to do it in non-humanities programs
| as well.
|
| I'll add as well: the standards expected for present day PhD
| students is insane compared to PhD students a generation ago.
| When I speak to some of the tenured professors I know, they
| readily admit that they would not meet the standards for TT
| positions today. Add to that the insane number of applicants,
| and the tendency for hiring committees to default to
| applicants from top-tier programs for hiring (regardless of
| the quality of their research), and you end up with an
| increasingly bubbled and desperate profession that is
| extremely unwilling to break from party line and disrupt
| whatever sliver of a living they ended up in.
| Jugglerofworlds wrote:
| I'm a PhD student at a top CS research University, and I'm
| leaving with a master's degree. I agree that the bar for
| admission into the program is way too high. I only got into
| two Universities despite having multiple publications as
| well as experience working in government research labs.
|
| The majority of my fellow students are international,
| mostly from China. I know hardly any other Americans in my
| program. At this point I see the system as more or less a
| way for international students to gain citizenship. I'm all
| for immigration, but I think it has gotten to the point
| where American students don't even want to go to graduate
| school at their own Universities, and the system imports
| foreign students who they know they can abuse for cheap
| labor. If grad student salaries were higher I'm sure we
| would see more Americans joining.
|
| I decided to leave due to abuse by my initial advisor. So
| many of my fellow students have experienced abuse or
| neglect by their advisors. By neglect I mean that advisors
| won't even talk to them because the advisor has tenure and
| doesn't care. Many CS doctorate holders I've talked to have
| expressed that their degree was not worth it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There was a proposal to unionize even when I was a grad student.
| It didn't go anywhere.
|
| What _should_ happen, but won 't, is: the Board of Regents says
| to UC, "Pay them what they want. Cut your administrative costs to
| pay for it. You may not raise tuition."
| mattcantstop wrote:
| I am the first in my family to graduate from college. I grew up
| incredibly poor. It was presented as THE way out of poverty
| growing up. I work in a field completely unrelated to my degree.
| My university degree didn't help my earning potential. I ended up
| making plenty of money in tech, so my degree debt didn't matter
| much.
|
| I have a lot of kids. Only one of them has any plans on going to
| college. I try to dissuade my kids from going to college. There
| are a few degrees where going to school is the best path. But for
| most areas of higher education there are superior ways to learn
| the material, if the education is the goal. I majored in English
| Literature. Completely worthless degree. I should have just
| joined a few book clubs or hired a writing coach. Something like
| https://writeofpassage.school/. That would have been far less
| expensive and probably better.
|
| Higher education in the United States needs an overhaul. $34,000
| in California is ridiculous. I hope they get their money on the
| path to us changing the foundation of higher education.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| I believe there is a strong generational divide here. A lot of
| people from the previous generation seem to assume "My degree
| did not help me make it big/I made it big without a degree, so
| a degree is worthless" without realizing that the labor market
| has shifted (for various reasons, pick your favorite culprit)
| so much so that if you are looking for your first job, a lot of
| entry level positions will not even consider your application
| if you do not have a high level degree.
|
| I am glad you could make it big in tech without a degree in
| tech, but maybe it is necessary to rethink whether the same
| policy would work for your children.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Alternatively, work more actively to ensure that policy will
| work for them. e.g. develop enough of a network at a larger
| company that you know someone who can make exceptions to get
| them hired, work at a smaller company that has more flexible
| policies, or start your own company and have them work for
| you (which is really just the limiting case of approach 2).
| peanuty1 wrote:
| Most tech companies' (like Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, etc) entry-
| level positions are new grad roles that require a degree.
| bnprks wrote:
| To add some relevant facts from my experience as a current
| Stanford PhD student: If I work over the summer my yearly take-
| home pay is about $50k pre-tax [1]. This is theoretically for 20
| hours/week of research work "for my advisor", and the rest of my
| time is theoretically research work "for my degree completion".
| (In practice this is the same research)
|
| The money flow shenanigans as best as I can tell are:
|
| 1. My advisor gets grant money from the government
|
| 2. Stanford takes about 40% as "overhead"
|
| 3. Stanford charges my advisor my tuition costs, paying for my
| "class" which is just doing research with my advisor. This is
| about $35k/year for years 1-4, dropping to $14k/year for years 5+
| with a "TGR" registration [2]
|
| 4. I get $50k/year as the remaining money
|
| Note that my advisor also has to spend some portion of his post-
| overhead grant money on paying Stanford for research space and
| paying for part of his own salary. Numbers are of course opaque
| to me, but it leaves me confused what "overhead" pays for if it's
| not fully covering building space and faculty salaries.
|
| From my perspective, had I skipped grad school and gone straight
| to work at a big tech company, I would have 5 extra years in my
| career earning a take-home salary of ~$250k total comp. This
| makes the opportunity-cost of my 6 years of graduate school about
| $1.5 million compared to going straight to industry out of
| undergrad.
|
| Of course, grad school offers lifestyle and work-focus
| flexibility that can be far greater than available in industry. I
| feel for myself the monetary tradeoff has been okay, but only
| because I had no debt from college and have the option to enter a
| highly-paid career track (software development) immediately after
| graduation. For students with debt coming in to grad school or
| less lucrative career prospects, even Stanford's $50k/year would
| be tough swallow in a high-cost area like Palo Alto.
|
| [1] https://gfs.stanford.edu/salary/salary22/salary_tables.pdf
|
| [2] https://studentservices.stanford.edu/my-finances/tuition-
| fee...
| fooker wrote:
| US universities have been running an interesting scam with grad
| students for several decades.
|
| This is how it works.
|
| * Professor obtains a grant to fund some research.
|
| * The university takes ~80k USD from the grant per year per PhD
| student.
|
| * The student gets ~30k USD per year.
|
| * The rest is 'tuition', health insurance and other various fees
| ('international student fee', 'mandatory fee', 'differential
| fee', some university facilities fees, etc).
|
| PhD students have bogus course requirements just to make this
| scam justifiable. Contrast this to the system in most European
| universities where the student gets a significantly larger
| fraction of this money. (2x-3x in general, sometimes all of it!).
|
| This is not really a solvable problem because a PhD is the most
| reliable path to US emigration for Indian and Chinese students,
| so there's always going to be a demand
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| I think you just explained the cause. The demand for a US PhD
| is higher than a European one internationally.
|
| Supply and demand.
|
| Edit: downvoted for stating a fact that shows US relatively
| better lol
| fooker wrote:
| You are right, a US PhD degree is in more demand in general.
|
| There is a reason our economic systems are not pure supply
| and demand though, because in that case workers/environment
| eventually end up being exploited.
|
| The US would look very different without minimum wages,
| environmental protections, and a bunch of other regulations
| which limit supply and demand based exploitation.
| [deleted]
| toomim wrote:
| I still remember the days when students were students, and
| workers were workers.
|
| First, you were a student, and paid tuition to learn.
|
| Then, you graduated into the workforce, and paid off your
| tuition.
|
| Now students call themselves "student workers" or "academic
| workers", and treat the PhD like it's a job that's supposed to
| pay them enough to raise a family.
|
| It's a sign of a failing bureaucracy when the terms start to
| contradict themselves.
| illini1 wrote:
| I believe that's too narrow of a viewpoint and disregards the
| nuances of the relationship between graduate students and their
| universities. In recent times universities have increasingly
| relied on grad students for teaching and research functions. If
| you asked a graduate student to describe their experience they
| will most likely compare it to a job because it has the same
| responsibilities as one.
| petsfed wrote:
| Speaking as a (former) partner of a University of Oregon grad
| student, what it actually came down to was that folks weren't
| paid enough to even live in the community they worked and
| taught in. I was making more at my shitty retail job for
| $8.50/hr, 25 hours a week, than my partner was making working
| 60+ hours a week, in a job that _required_ a college degree. I
| was not contractually barred from taking other work, unlike my
| partner. And most terms, my partner was expected to teach or TA
| classes for the university as well as working on their
| dissertation. This is common for most grad students, and has
| been for decades.
|
| Based on average cost of living in that community, a $54k
| Stanford grad student stipend is fair, perhaps low: you
| shouldn't have to take on an additional $40k a year in debt
| just to afford the privilege of accepting a "full ride"
| graduate fellowship.
| esalman wrote:
| Okay, boomer.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| Things change. For example, now those students have enough
| awareness of how they were getting screwed, and ability to
| organize, that they did something about it.
|
| And whether you think it's fair or not, apparently the UC
| system needed them enough to strike this deal.
| passwordoops wrote:
| When I moved from Canada to the US for my post doc, it blew my
| mind to hear the level of debt my American colleagues were mired
| in - from $70-$110K, early 2010s.
|
| I'm pulling for the students here, and these are basic benefits,
| but you've gotta reign in student debt in the first place
| DrThunder wrote:
| [dead]
| kyrra wrote:
| The issue is back in 2009, the US government started backing
| student loans, so they were guaranteed loans. There was also no
| loan limit on these. This is allowed universities to charge
| more and more money, in the fed was happy to back these loans.
|
| This is led to bloat within universities. See:
| https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-administrative-bloat-is...
| kneebonian wrote:
| This is the correct answser if the a ton of money suddenly
| becomes available for something the price of that thing will
| increase because the amount of the thing hasn't changed. You
| see this most especially in colleges because we've
| established a price floor by promising every student 5k and
| then promising them more loans on top of that.
|
| Then we make the loans non-dischargable and there is no real
| reason for a university to every place any limit on what they
| charge for tuition since the customer who is buying the
| product is not the customer paying for the product.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Your timeline is incorrect. Student loans were federally
| guaranteed for decades up until 2010.
| s3000 wrote:
| >graduate students would receive a minimum stipend of $34,000
| by October 2024--a raise of $13,000
|
| How do those numbers add up? If a degree costs $100K and a
| graduate student costs $25K per year, then one person can pay a
| personally tutoring graduate student for four years to acquire
| all knowledge. If 10 students pool their money, education costs
| only $10K.
|
| There needs to be some space to meet and there needs to be a
| budget for professors but another $10K should cover that
| easily.
|
| What's the obstacle that prevents students and graduate
| students and even professors from going back to the beginnings?
| They can organize their own university where the administration
| works for them.
|
| There is no need to strike if the university has to match the
| offer of a competent competitor.
|
| >Universities were generally structured along three types,
| depending on who paid the teachers. The first type was in
| Bologna, where students hired and paid for the teachers. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university#Characteri...
| mcguire wrote:
| 3 semester hours / class, 15 semester hours per semester, 8
| semesters (4 years) works out to about 40 different
| instructors over 4 years.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I really liked Bruce Porter, but I don't
| think he could replace Bob Mugerauer teaching Contemporary
| Moral Problems.
| s3000 wrote:
| If you want to have 40 different instructors, you need 40
| times more students. That doesn't change the fundamental
| economics.
|
| If you want famous professors, you either have to pay more,
| or create an enticing environment. You still have the
| option to pay for recordings of their lectures which should
| be more affordable.
|
| A well-funded university will be better in several
| dimensions but quality of education and research is
| entirely within the influence of whoever starts a new
| university. Nothing else should matter.
| solveit wrote:
| See also SMBC making this point a few years ago:
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/college-level-mathematics
|
| The problem is that being privately tutored by UC Berkeley
| faculty is worth much less than a UC Berkeley degree[1], even
| though you might learn a _lot_ more. And starting a new
| university from scratch is apparently difficult, although I
| share your confusion on exactly which part is so difficult,
| and whether the difficulty could be circumvented by getting a
| billion or so in private donations, or if it 's a case of "no
| matter how much money you pump into Brown, it'll never become
| Harvard. Only Harvard can become Harvard".
|
| [1]: Unless you go and make yourself famous for it, which in
| this case might be quite doable[2]. But the general point
| that just learning the material without an official piece of
| paper recognized by the system is often worth _significantly_
| less than having the piece of paper.
|
| [2]: And someone should do it and make headlines.
| jancsika wrote:
| I'm all for reigning in student debt, but how about solving
| fast homomorphic encryption first?
|
| Look I'm for affordable tuition, but is frankly going to be _a
| lot_ [1] easier with the jobs that homomorphic is gonna bring
| to cloud.
|
| 1: "a lot" spoken suddenly guttural, like Trump does
| Thorrez wrote:
| I don't understand how this is related. We can put more
| effort into finding fast homomorphic encryption regardless of
| student debt.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Taking on student loan debt is a choice, we need better
| financial literacy in this country. This is bigger than just
| student loan debt - look at how Americans rack up credit cards,
| car loans, becoming house poor with massive mortgages. Most of
| my friends growing up came from low or low-middle class
| incoming earning households. They ALL went to community
| colleges, then transferred to state colleges, saving tons of
| money in the process. The only people I know IRL who have
| massive student loan debt were the upper middle class kids from
| well off families. I think has to do more with how you're
| raised/your mindset about budgeting/money. Yes, colleges need
| to cut admin bloat too ... but good luck on that happening.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Realistically, that means cutting administrative overhead. It's
| fairly ridiculous that the top UC administrators are getting
| higher salaries than the state's governor is. There's also a
| lot of contracting deals for services that could use some
| scrutiny in the UC system. This trend has been ongoing for
| years (2015):
|
| > "Weeks after an announced increase in state funding staved
| off a tuition hike, the Board of Regents riled spending critics
| this summer by handing 3% raises to some of UC's highest-paid
| employees. The number of those making at least $500,000
| annually grew by 14% in the last year, to 445, and the system's
| administrative ranks have swelled by 60% over the last decade
| -- far outpacing tenure-track faculty."
|
| https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20...
| theGnuMe wrote:
| The top pay goes to medical doctors, the football/basketball
| coaches and some admins. This money isn't coming necessarily
| directly from tuition costs. I agree though it is too
| expensive. Universities are always building new buildings.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| New buildings are funded by donors who might not have
| donated without the building.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| When I visited my alma mater, I told them I wanted to
| endow a chair in the CS Department.
|
| Not a professorship; an actual, physical chair.
|
| They weren't amused. I think they'd heard that one
| before.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Next time show up with the chair
| domoritz wrote:
| And universities need buildings.
| DrThunder wrote:
| [dead]
| feet wrote:
| Part of the problem is that in some states, state funding
| can _only_ be used for buildings and nothing else. So
| universities get funding and are forced to spend it on
| nonsense
| alistairSH wrote:
| That's a statement I haven't heard - do you have a
| source? Not doubting it, just want to read more.
| feet wrote:
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-cb-illinois-
| colleges-...
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Football/basketball makes money for the school. If anything
| it's a little absurd that the players make so much money
| for the university with little to no compensation for
| themselves.
| ladberg wrote:
| For some schools sure, but do you have any proof of that
| for Berkeley? I'm an alum and as much as I'd like that to
| be true I haven't seen anything better than handwavey
| guesses.
|
| Last year the top 6 highest paid employees at Berkeley
| were all coaches or athletics administrators, of which
| the highest (head football coach Justin Wilcox) was paid
| $4 million. The football team isn't anything special,
| consistently coming in middle of the pack and not drawing
| in huge crowds.
|
| The people rooting for Cal are doing it out of
| college/hometown spirit and not because we think our team
| is the best. If instead of $4M we spent $200k on a coach,
| would that change the outcomes at all? That would save
| $84/student per year in tuition, which is not a
| negligible amount.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| > If instead of $4M we spent $200k on a coach [...] that
| would save $84/student per year in tuition
|
| I don't know how California state schools are run, but at
| least in Oregon it doesn't work like this. The athletics
| programs are funded from a completely different pot of
| money than the academics, specifically so that football
| spending doesn't affect tuition. At Oregon State
| University (where I'm currently a grad student), the
| football program is profitable and brings in enough
| ticket sales to pay for itself and all the rest of the
| athletics programs too.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Right and they could use some of that money to lower
| tuition but they don't.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They use that money to fund all the scholarships and
| expenses for the non-revenue sports.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| It's the PAC12 TV deal more than Cal's individual
| performance, though obviously things will get weird with
| UCLA and USC leaving. If teams start hiring "cheap"
| coaches, the networks will object or demand lower fees.
| vkou wrote:
| It makes money for a few schools, and loses it for the
| vast majority of them.
|
| The lottery also makes money for a few of its
| participants.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Athletics at most universities is an "auxilliary
| enterprise" it is self-funded by ticket sales and
| donations. This is especially true at the large D1
| universities where the coaches are celebrities and highly
| paid. Coaches at small schools don't make a remarkable
| amount of money.
|
| Also players can now be compensated for their "name,
| image and likeness" and top players are earning millions.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| Rather than the students, I'm rooting for the tax payer in this
| one. California should determine grad student pay at state
| schools based on what level of funding is required to meet its
| educational mission, attract good students, and balance against
| other state priorities.
| ummonk wrote:
| More importantly, I'm with the undergrads. Their tuitions
| shouldn't go up to pay for a bunch of whiny PhDs who could
| have worked in industry instead.
| lapcat wrote:
| PhD students provide a lot of the teaching labor at
| universities as lecturers and teaching assistants. What do
| you think would happen if they were gone? This is precisely
| why striking is effective, because the universities _need_
| them.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| Universities have many needs besides TAs. the key to
| figuring out what a fair price for satisfying those needs
| is to have a market where supply can match demand. The
| same process can be used to set a fair price for grad
| student TA labor.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| And they raised demand by constricting supply. Nice.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _The same process can be used to set a fair price for
| grad student TA labor._ "
|
| That is exactly what the union is negotiating.
| ummonk wrote:
| They won't go, and if they do senior undergrads and
| masters students will do the teaching instead.
| lapcat wrote:
| > masters students will do the teaching instead
|
| It's a graduate student union. Both Masters and PhD
| students are in the same union.
|
| > senior undergrads
|
| 1) They're not qualified.
|
| 2) Why would they even want to? It's time consuming and
| low paying. In fact, it would be even lower paying
| without a union, so senior undergrads would need to form
| one. Also keep in mind that PhD students are generally
| intending to go into teaching in the future, whereas
| undergrads generally aren't.
| ummonk wrote:
| Masters students often don't receive a stipend.
| mcguire wrote:
| If they're working in a teaching or research position,
| they do get paid.
|
| If they don't work for the university, these union
| negotiations don't affect them.
| cudgy wrote:
| Universities would have to hire and pay actual professors
| instead of milking their students?
| jleyank wrote:
| Actual professors, no. Adjuncts. They don't need ta's for
| anything other than lab safety for the major-specific
| courses. It's the first two years with the gobs and gobs
| of students.
| ablatt89 wrote:
| It's not just lab work, I TA'd for physics and students
| would come to TA discussion sessions to get a more
| detailed lesson on the material covered that week since
| often the professor is just repeating the contents of a
| textbook. Also, many TAs would spend many additional
| hours in tutoring and office hours, giving individualized
| attention to students, and this workload adds up.
|
| TAs also grade quizzes, final exams, create questions for
| problems, etc... The professor often does very little
| work and leaves it to the TA, at least in my experience
| as a TA for physics courses. It's a lot more than just
| maintaining a lab.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Can't get adjuncts for the price you pay phd students in
| California though.
| mcguire wrote:
| That's a different group in the strike.
| (https://www.science.org/content/article/postdoc-union-
| reache... discusses "postdocs and academic researchers",
| which isn't faculty, but I believe included adjuncts.)
| lapcat wrote:
| Yes, and actual professors are vastly more expensive than
| grad students, so how is that going to help with
| undergraduate costs?
| cudgy wrote:
| Are they really that much more expensive? Also, wouldn't
| that provide more actual jobs for PHd's instead of
| competing for a scant number of jobs? Furthermore, I do
| not believe that the costs of undergraduate education are
| driven by professor salaries; I suspect there are other
| drivers like administrative overhead and overbuilt
| facilities.
| tosc wrote:
| > I suspect there are other drivers like administrative
| overhead and overbuilt facilities.
|
| Right, and this is why they are trying to underpay
| teaching staff.
|
| There is no problem with "whiny" PhDs. The problem is
| with overpaid self-dealing administrators betraying the
| purpose of the institution.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Are they really that much more expensive?
|
| Yes. From the article: "If the deal is approved by union
| members, graduate students would receive a minimum
| stipend of $34,000 by October 2024--a raise of $13,000
| for some students". So as I said, professors are vastly
| more expensive.
|
| > Also, wouldn't that provide more actual jobs for PHd's
| instead of competing for a scant number of jobs?
|
| Yes. But it wouldn't do anything to save money on
| undergraduate education.
|
| > Furthermore, I do not believe that the costs of
| undergraduate education are driven by professor salaries;
| I suspect there are other drivers like administrative
| overhead and overbuilt facilities.
|
| Then what's the objection to higher stipends for PhD
| students?
| cudgy wrote:
| Why pay higher stipends if the students are no longer
| performing professorial duties? It may be the case that
| they are still warranted, but fewer duties means more
| learning and opportunities to earn money part-time in
| coops or private companies.
| Vaslo wrote:
| [flagged]
| mjhay wrote:
| That's a dumb thing to say, because it sounds like
| striking worked in this situation. By this same all-caps
| libertarian logic, any strikes would be ineffective
| because the workers need "The FACTORY" or whatever.
|
| The "university" is a huge collection of thousands of
| people, numerous competing groups, etc. The grad students
| can shut the whole thing down if they strike, because
| they are integral towards research and undergrad
| education happening.
|
| There's nothing quite like the unfounded confidence that
| ignorance brings.
| [deleted]
| tosc wrote:
| Who should do the teaching instead?
| ummonk wrote:
| Senior undergrads and masters degree students, as well as
| PhDs who are willing to work for the current market rate.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| Tuition increases are by far going towards administrative
| faculty rather than academic faculty. Most academic
| faculty, especially those doing research, are getting their
| own funding and not burdening the tax payer in the
| slightest.
|
| Research is also incredibly important, _especially_ at
| state schools, so that undergraduate students have more
| opportunity to participate in and learn from active
| research.
|
| In my experience having worked at both prestigious private
| and low ranking state schools, state school doing research
| are much more willing to have undergrads involved in
| research. I've seen plenty of young students coming from
| low income, rural homes go on to become more successful
| than they ever imagined because they had access to research
| facilities and teams.
|
| edit: it's worth noting as another commenter has that
| _most_ of the teaching in universities is done by highly
| underpaid grad students.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Just made me wish this place supported the "100" emoji
| idontpost wrote:
| [dead]
| jleyank wrote:
| Replying to lapcat's comment (which wasn't possible), I
| suspect the schools would just look to adjuncts or senior
| u-grad students to be the necessary ta's. It's not like a
| 1st or 2nd year PhD student is particularly good or
| interested in ta'ing - they might be taking courses and are
| certainly fulfilling program entry requirements. Any
| research out of these people is gravy.
|
| Interesting concept. Paying students to attend. I survived
| on this support in ancient times as somebody has to handle
| all those pre med/vet/dental students. But it was lean and
| I still can't enjoy Mac and cheese. It certainly wasn't a
| job or career.
|
| Edit: reply again to deeper in the thread: we used the
| early students for things like 1-2 year lab as they were
| way better at lab than the students. Nobody handled a
| recitation unless they were 3rd year or more, had neutral+
| evaluations and their boss lacked RA funding. Those with
| funded profs didn't waste time ta'ing as they did work and
| wrote paper drafts. Those with new or unfunded profs did
| the ta gig and they also did full time work and writing
| drafts. 10+ extra hours a week ta.
| lapcat wrote:
| > I suspect the schools would just look to adjuncts
|
| Adjuncts are more expensive than PhD students. That's not
| going to help at all with undergraduate costs.
|
| > or senior u-grad students to be the necessary ta's.
| It's not like a 1st or 2nd year PhD student is
| particularly good or interested in ta'ing - they might be
| taking courses and are certainly fulfilling program entry
| requirements.
|
| If 1st or 2nd year PhD students are not particularly
| good, then wouldn't senior undergraduate students be even
| worse? Anyway, in my experience 1st or 2nd year PhD
| students didn't usually TA. It was the longer tenured
| students who were the TAs.
| avisser wrote:
| You can get adjuncts and undergrads to be replacement
| TAs, but from my 2nd-hand experience via my wife (PhD in
| psychology) it would be research where things fall apart.
| The tenured professors rely heavily on PhD students to
| run grant-funded research and write papers for the lab.
|
| The general public thinks first and foremost about
| education, but for lots of academics, teaching is a
| necessary evil and research is where the prestige (and
| money) is.
| ummonk wrote:
| Exactly. Fundamentally, these grad students want to
| further enhance a system where undergrads pay tuition for
| an education, and that tuition gets paid to research-
| focused academics instead.
| okaram wrote:
| If your students are striking, chances are you won't attract
| good students, and are not balancing priorities well.
| uluyol wrote:
| PhD students really don't get paid much. Tuition is waived if
| you're a TA, and you get a small stipend + good benefits. If
| you're an RA, you bring money into the university (through
| being the engine that pulls in grant money and having your
| tuition paid).
|
| Most students I know were TA for one or two semesters and RA
| for the remainder of their 6 years. As far as I can tell,
| they are all a financial gain, not drain, for the university.
| That will likely depend on the department though.
|
| I don't know about Masters students.
| mcguire wrote:
| The benefits don't sound all that good.
|
| " _"The current child care subsidy will be enough to cover
| ... less than 2 months of child care per year"_ "
| uluyol wrote:
| This depends on your university, and also you should
| compare against a benchmark that's not cushy tech
| companies. I had spouse + child health care with no
| premium and only copays, no coinsurance. Didn't need the
| child care benefits so I don't know about that
| specifically.
| jleyank wrote:
| No, if you're an RA your prof brings in the money. Might
| also be the fund draw for post docs but I can imagine some
| with their own funding (awards or governmental). Based on
| my experience I would think PhD candidates are smart
| technicians for much of their residency.
| twelve40 wrote:
| You both bring the money, ideally. I co-authored grants
| with my professor and was expected to publish to make
| name for our work and fulfill the proposal's publishing
| requirements. Sure, the professor is infinitely better
| than me at this stuff, but there was a whole team,
| including grad students, who labored to get those grants,
| at least when I was there.
| mcguire wrote:
| That's part of your training.
| jleyank wrote:
| I did all that also, but $randomgradstudent didn't get
| the grant. Like $majorprof didn't do the lab work, work
| up the numbers, .... They merely edited, which was
| important, and had to mojo to get published.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| That feels like saying it's a restaurant owner that
| brings in money, not the staff. If the professor couldn't
| do all the work on their own, then it's the team (which
| includes the RAs) that's bringing in the money. Sure, the
| professor is the "name" behind the work, but there's a
| lot people involved.
| jleyank wrote:
| While the servers might keep the customers, it's the chef
| and perhaps the owners that make the restaurant happen.
| And this is a _terrible_ analogy for grad school as that
| staff is paid for shit in the states. Are we going to
| give ta's $2 /hour and expect their students to tip them?
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Looks like you're arguing just to argue now. The analogy
| was making the point that more than just "the person in
| charge" is responsible for bringing in the money. Nothing
| more. The point of an analogy isn't to have every detail
| line up.
|
| If I said that the introduction of the automobile to
| common public use was similar to the introduction of
| domesticated animals for riding, because it opened up a
| larger/wider area that people could interact with...
| saying that a car has wheels but a horse doesn't wouldn't
| invalidate that comparison.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Are we going to give ta's $2/hour and expect their
| students to tip them?
|
| That would be interesting, because TAs do the grading.
| ;-)
| vt85 wrote:
| [dead]
| chriskanan wrote:
| PhD students get stipends and tuition covered most of the time.
| They were striking for greater stipends and benefits.
| jedberg wrote:
| On the one hand, as a strong supporter of labor, I absolutely
| support the students here, striking for better conditions.
|
| On the other hand, when an employee of a private employer
| strikes, what they are saying is, "We want you to shift more of
| your profits to the employees than you are now.".
|
| But when a public worker strikes, what they are saying is, "We
| want you to take away resources from someone else and give it to
| us.". And that is when things get tricky, because you have to ask
| who is _losing_ resources so that they can pay the grad students
| more. Will they take it away from administrative positions?
| (great!) Or will they hike tuition, essentially taking it from
| other students (who may not mind since they can get ever bigger
| federally backed loans which is a whole other problem).
|
| In short, I stand with the students but I don't think there is
| any good solution here, unless the state can be convinced to
| increase funding.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| I think the UCs have plenty of revenue generating public
| activities that could be a reasonable funding source before
| taxing students more.
| jedberg wrote:
| Regardless, they are a non-profit entity, which means any
| money they take in is allocated to a certain function. So no
| matter what, you have to take money away from someone else,
| not profits away from owners.
| feet wrote:
| Oh no, taking money from the poor administrators making
| 300k/yr don't take away their resources and give them to
| the grad students who do the actual teaching and research!
| jedberg wrote:
| I specifically said that I support taking it from
| administrative salaries.
| amluto wrote:
| Let's put this in perspective. Under this agreement, UC can hire
| a college-educated, generally high achieving, generally highly
| motivated researcher, in California, for $34k/yr. This worker
| will be motivated to work hard (to graduate) and is likely to
| also teach classes and work rather long hours. This is an
| _incredibly_ good deal.
|
| Obviously the total cost is more than $34k/yr, because graduate
| students, like any other employees, have overhead. But university
| money has a way of going around in circles, and (although I
| haven't checked the particular details here), a good fraction of
| this money may be chargeable to grants, this costing the
| university as a whole nothing except to the extent that these
| charges displace other charges that the university might
| otherwise benefit from.
|
| In fact, in some cases, universities charge _more than 100%_ :
| the university can charge a "fee" (graduate tuition) and bill
| that fee to a grant. And in other cases (but maybe not under this
| agreement), the university can collect the fee _from the
| student_.
|
| For comparison, NSF GRFP currently pays $37k/yr. Stanford appears
| to pay about $27k/yr (which, if I understood the table right, is
| a bit embarrassing). The DoD's NDSEG pays $40.8k/yr. Hertz pays
| $34k/yr.
|
| So, as far as I'm concerned, this agreement is a bargain for UC.
| esalman wrote:
| > UC can hire a college-educated, generally high achieving,
| generally highly motivated researcher, in California, for
| $34k/yr
|
| That's not exactly how it works.
|
| The faculty receives a funding, from a public source such as
| NSF/NIH, or private source, maybe Google/Facebook, or donation.
| Roughly 50% of that goes to the the university in lieu of
| overhead, admin, facilities etc. expense (this should sound an
| alarm bell to anybody reading). Roughly 25% covers tuition
| expense- again to the university. The remainder is that $34k
| you are reading about.
|
| So yes, the NIH/NSF will grant more than $100k of the taxpayer
| money for one student, but the university takes 75% or more of
| that and peanuts are left for the grad student workers. If
| someone is in a good place, they might have $1500-2000 take
| home every month. If a they are in a bad place, it could be
| lower than $1000 a month. Basically you'd make make less than
| half of what a fast food worker makes. But without you,
| grading, research and all other critical higher education
| activity will stall.
| thunkshift1 wrote:
| How is your comment different than what the parent comment is
| saying?
| tonfreed wrote:
| It makes you wonder how 50% goes to admin costs. That feels
| like a lot of overhead
| esalman wrote:
| In FS2017, the overhead at my department (top 5 ECE program
| in the US) included the following:
|
| - Library 2%
|
| - Admin & General 9.4%
|
| - Departmental Admin 26.6%
|
| - Plant Maintenance 24%
|
| - Interest on Financed Bldgs 4.6%
|
| - Equipment Depreciation 11.6%
|
| - Building & Improv. Depreciation 11.3%
|
| - Sponsored Programs Admin & GTRC 8.4%
|
| - Student Services 2.1%
| _gmax0 wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the accuracy of those numbers. I feel like
| there's oftentimes little accountability in the nebulous
| academic bureaucracy.
|
| An extreme case from earlier this year, in which a
| university employee was caught stealing:
| https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089525660/a-former-yale-
| empl...
|
| How much of this happens on a per-employee basis? What is
| the expected value of loss if everything is tallied and
| reconciled?
| amluto wrote:
| High end universities regularly mark up most expenses
| charged to research grants by about 75%. This is the
| result of negotiations between the university and the
| government.
|
| Nongovernmental grantors will sometimes negotiate _much_
| lower overhead. I suspect the negotiation goes "here's
| $1M to a prestigious professor, and you may not touch it.
| We'll give you $100k to make you feel better. Take it or
| leave it. By the way, if you leave it, we will happily
| offer the same research group $1M if they pack their bags
| and move to a different university."
|
| Wise professors with grants with differing overhead
| schedules will, of course, allocate charges to minimize
| the university's cut.
| pkaye wrote:
| I was a student in a CSU (California state university) and
| a professor nominated me for a award from industry which
| was valued at $1000. To pass me the check, the university
| took 20% of the award!
| metadat wrote:
| This sounds like very bad behavior, sorry this happened
| to you.
|
| What did the institution claim the justification was?
|
| Taking an extra cut from a student, a group who are
| already generally pretty poor, is peak scumbag.
| happyjack wrote:
| It's called indirect cost overhead. Universities take
| anywhere from 0-100% (yes, you read that 100% right) of
| money they take in.
| amluto wrote:
| I think you're agreeing with me. The university pays the
| student some absurdly small amount of money. Even ignoring
| the actual value added by that student, the university
| collects enough money for doing so that it comes out ahead.
|
| Note that this may not be the case for teaching assistants.
| One can get a teaching assistantship without being attached
| to any particular grant. This money actually comes from the
| university (but the university may still charge fees to the
| student).
|
| As a bit of trivia, the NSF GRFP is not a normal grant --
| it's a highly prestigious grant directly to a graduate
| student. And it, at least historically, didn't put up with
| this nonsense. GRFP gave the student a stipend and the
| university a smallish, _fixed_ fee. This fee was well below
| the normal graduate fees. However, hosting NSF students is
| considered a privilege, most research groups want them
| (they're free from the PI's perspective), and as a result,
| the universities simply eat the "loss" and waive the balance
| of the fees.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Why does this system even exist? Grad students shouldn't even
| really be students, but rather junior level employees who can
| switch employer at will if they get better offers.
| sgc wrote:
| I did my graduate work in Europe, and I think it is crazy how
| a bunch of unqualified/ semi-qualified students without their
| doctorates are teaching in US universities. We had exactly 0
| doctoral candidates teaching classes, whereas it is
| widespread to have masters candidates teaching in US
| universities - many of which are not cheap at all. They
| should be students and researchers first and foremost, until
| they can complete their learning.
| bitL wrote:
| Don't Stanford TAs get $100/h for running classes though? Are
| the wages you mentioned total or just base with a large
| variable portion?
| gmadsen wrote:
| Speaking of just other schools, that sounds like that would
| be without a tuition waver. Typically when these super low
| stipends are talked about, it is with full tuition paid for.
| Although I think I have heard that Stanford's PhDs don't get
| automatic tuition waiving and need to get grant money
| mattkrause wrote:
| "Tuition" is a bit nebulous for PhDs because most of your
| time is not actually spent doing coursework: my program had
| students take 4-5 classes the first year, and 2-3 more at
| some point in the next four years.
|
| You were otherwise registered for placeholder courses like
| "Dissertation research" and expected to be full-time in the
| lab. There were plenty of educational opportunities
| (journal clubs, seminar series, the occasional workshop),
| but certainly nothing like a full undergrad course load.
| mcguire wrote:
| You do have to pay tuition for those "thesis" and
| "dissertation" classes.
|
| In the 1990s-early 2000s, when I was a gradual student at
| UT Austin, I worked for the university, but not as a TA
| or RA; as staff, I had to pay for my tuition. At the
| time, just the "dissertation" class was about $1000 per
| semester.
| j-wags wrote:
| Narrowly speaking, $100/hour is probably true. However my
| arrangement as a chemistry phd student at UCSD included the
| following conditions:
|
| To be eligible to earn $100/hour, you must be a grad student
| who:
|
| * only earns at that rate for 20 hours per week
|
| * is forbidden to work any other job for pay
|
| * pays $20k/year in "tuition" despite the fact that you don't
| take classes after the first year or two of your 5+ year
| program
|
| * also works at least 30 hours per week for $0/hour in your
| research lab (otherwise your advisor will drop you)
|
| So, when you include those conditions, the situation is
| really "work 50-80 hours per week for $30-35k/year in an
| expensive california city". Which people were fine to do
| until phd student stipends started falling behind the cost of
| living in these cities for the past 10 years.
| ffggvv wrote:
| do they also get tuition wavers? 34k + free 20k tuition aint
| bad as a student
| _gmax0 wrote:
| Yes but it's not guaranteed every quarter at a UC school.
|
| At least in my department, you have to re-apply on a quarter-
| basis for TA positions, which are generally highly sought
| after for its material compensation (no tuition, fee
| remission, and a small stipend). For research positions,
| contingent on you being able to 1) produce results, 2) the
| duration that the research proposal runs. Unless you're a PhD
| student/PostDoc/PI with a compelling research narrative that
| is novel and impactful, it can be hard to land grants (many
| individuals from many schools each competing for the same
| dwindling pool of funds).
|
| So I completely understand young people striking for more
| benefits, but truly, it has to come out of the university
| administrations' pockets. Professors and PIs are like cash
| strapped entrepreneurs who have no way of raising additional
| funds for students unless they leverage industry connections.
| EDIT: I don't have any visibility on the "under-the-table"
| finances of PIs and professors, however.
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| I don't understand how I, a grad student in the UT system make
| 37k a year in salary (and was offered something similar by
| another UT school) when my peers in California make so much
| less.
|
| What happened to the UC system?
| ahoho wrote:
| Depending on your department and funding period, this may not
| be a like-for-like comparison. The 34k is an academic-year
| minimum; the CS stipend at Berkeley is $50k over the full
| year [1] (of course, to be fair, it is Berkeley). That said,
| I do think other UCs pay considerably less and do not
| guarantee summer funding
|
| [1] https://jeffhuang.com/computer-science-open-
| data/#verified-c...
| game_the0ry wrote:
| > What happened to the UC system?
|
| Same thing that happened to the state and all its
| institutions - it became culturally and morally corrupt.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| As an undergraduate, I always felt like the money given to
| graduate students was just a tax on undergraduates. Whenever the
| graduate instructors wanted more money, they would raise the fees
| for undergraduate students.
| mjhay wrote:
| They taught your sections and did your grading, for 7/11 clerk
| wages. You are apparently very ignorant of how your university
| operated.
| passwordoops wrote:
| It's the dubious administrators raking in $250-400K a year that
| contribute to the increased tuition. See for example:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33831936
| curun1r wrote:
| The dubious administrators are a symptom, not a cause. The
| root cause is guaranteed loan money. About a decade ago, I
| remember seeing a study posted here that said that for every
| dollar of increased guaranteed loans, tuition went up 71
| cents. There's just no incentive for a university to charge
| much less than the maximum amount that the student can
| borrow.
|
| The first step to addressing the college affordability crisis
| is to get the government out of student loans to attend
| private universities and colleges. If private lenders want to
| step in, that's fine, but then they have to do an actual
| actuarial process to determine which students will be capable
| of repaying. Once the government is only involved in public
| education, they can start working on cost cutting, but that
| too has to start with cutting back on loans, because those
| just make tuition go up.
|
| I get that guaranteed loans come from a place of wanting to
| make education more accessible and not just a part of the
| entrenched privilege of the wealthy, but guaranteed loans are
| one of those zombie policies that makes the situation worse
| rather than accomplishing its goal.
| peter303 wrote:
| My department at Stanford has a diversity administrator, a
| fund raising admin, a sustainability admin, and some more I
| am probably not aware of. Only senior admins get six figures.
| passwordoops wrote:
| It would be interesting to see the full salary structure at
| Stanford compared to Berkeley. It's not freely available,
| but they have a link that requires an email (waiting for my
| burner account to be approved):
|
| https://cardinalatwork.stanford.edu/benefits-
| rewards/compens...
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Thank you! All the anti-union comments here kind of baffle me
| given that grad students meaningfully contribute to the
| academic mission. If anything, the economics of tutoring as a
| side gig in grad school led me to realize how much I was
| getting ripped off as a TA. There is much better fat to trim
| in the UC system than grad student stipends.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Honestly, I'd much rather student tuitions be going to grad
| students working as TAs. It makes for better grad students
| (experience as teachers is invaluable in solidifying that
| undergrad knowledge which can fade) and encourages them to
| continue on their academic career path to PhD and beyond
| (which themselves are career tracks on life support).
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Grad students aren't just "older undergrads who really like
| studying", they are researchers, assistants to professors, and
| teachers of undergrad courses.
|
| For that reason, they deserve to be paid, and I would argue
| given their role presently and for the future of the country,
| they should be paid at least enough to rent a 1 br apartment
| and cook their own meals.
| Phemist wrote:
| In continental Europe (not the UK afaik), grad "students" are
| considered proper employees of the university. In my home
| country, they have been traditionally called "Assistant in
| Training", much akin to a paid apprenticeship in the
| sciences.
|
| Mind you, they are not paid a lot, but enough to be able to
| rent an apartment in the city the university is in.
|
| In English, we have started calling them PhD "students" as
| well, which imo very much undermines the perceived position
| of these "students".
| wlesieutre wrote:
| A friend had a UC professor ask if she'd be interested in a
| _remote_ postdoc because it would have been impossible for
| them to hire someone in California given the postdoc pay
| rates.
|
| I don't know if that's an unheard of arrangement or not, but
| it sounded totally weird to me.
| jleyank wrote:
| Makes perfect sense for a computational field such as
| molecular modeling or engineering.
| j-wags wrote:
| Your comment could be read in two ways. Could you clarify?
|
| 1) The UC professor offered a remote postdoc because they
| did not have enough funding to pay the minimum UC postdoc
| salary, but could pay less to out of state employees
|
| 2) The UC professor offered a remote postdoc because the
| allowed UC postdoc salary was not sufficient to attract
| candidates given the area's cost of living
| wlesieutre wrote:
| 2 was my impression for why they were looking for remote
| candidates, pretty hard sell to move to any of UC's areas
| on a $55k salary.
|
| Someone else probably accepted, in her case she'd already
| taken a better opportunity elsewhere. I just thought it
| was strange for a grad student position to be so
| disconnected from the university campus.
|
| But with the insane cost of living I guess it's not
| surprising.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The entire academic institution is a scheme to extract money
| from undergrads to pay for research and administrators. Easy to
| see when you realize how much contempt professors have for
| undergrads.
| mjhay wrote:
| It sounds like you are quite ignorant of how research happens
| - the situation is precisely the opposite of what you
| describe. The research money comes almost exclusively from
| external grants, and the universities take a large chunk,
| often > 50%, off the top.
|
| The research subsidizes the university, not the other way
| around as you somehow think. Most professors would love to
| spend more time on undergrad education, but that's not what
| keeps the lights on - research grants do.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Professors would leave the university system if they didn't
| need the resources it provided them. They know they need
| undergrads, and they hate it.
| mjhay wrote:
| You have a bizarre idea of how this works. I take it you
| have never done grad school research? You can't just
| independently get research grants, you basically have to
| be in an established university or research center.
|
| The lab equipment, the computers, all of that comes from
| research grants. Professors are incentivized by the
| university to get more grant money (e.g. focus more on
| research), because that means the university gets more
| money. This isn't complicated.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I guess I'm just jaded from having to deal with
| professors who obviously couldn't stand undergrads and
| did everything in their power to ignore them. Undergrad
| would be much more effective if it was separated from
| research.
| mcguire wrote:
| My experience was the opposite. The best classes were
| those taught by professors doing active research on the
| topic. Separating research would drastically harm
| instruction.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Thank you for your perspective. What do you think should
| be done about professors who have no interest in teaching
| but are forced to anyway by their university? The issue
| as I see it is about incentives. There are no incentives
| for being a good teacher, so all the effort goes into
| research, leading to subpar experiences for undergrads.
| mjhay wrote:
| Sure, it's not an ideal situation, but one that just kind
| of arose. Non-research focused liberal arts schools
| pretty consistently give higher-quality undergrad
| educations, but they are also a lot more expensive. Many
| professors suck, but many people in any profession suck.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Next you'll tell me they call this nefarious extraction of
| money "tuition" and all they receive in exchange is an
| education!
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| If professors were paid to actually educate students I
| would agree. But that's not what's expected of them. I went
| to a top 25 university and would say most professors
| actively detracted from my education because they saw
| undergrads as nothing but a nuisance.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear you had such awful professors, but your
| experience is not universal so I would suggest you
| reconsider your assumptions.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I'm happy to reconsider in the face of evidence. My
| conversations indicate that professor contempt for
| undergrads is a relatively universal concept that most of
| my peers have experienced. If you have any evidence I'm
| happy to consider it.
| feet wrote:
| My experience was not like yours, I had numerous
| professors who not only took the time to entertain my
| questions but I also had some mentor me on research
| msrenee wrote:
| I'm sure we had very different majors and I definitely
| didn't go to a top 25 school, but I don't think I
| experienced this once getting my bachelor's. I had a
| couple crappy professors, but it was never due to them
| not caring about undergrads. They just sucked at
| teaching, mostly. Every one of my professors once I got
| to the more focused courses were passionate about
| educating new minds in their area of expertise.
|
| The career-building part after getting my BS was an
| exercise in futility, but if I could go back in time and
| go straight into my trade at my current workplace, I
| wouldn't. Thankfully I had a scholarship that covered
| tuition, so loans weren't an issue.
| [deleted]
| COGlory wrote:
| It's very much the opposite. Most good professors (and good
| teachers) would rather be doing research. Their research
| brings in millions and millions of federal funding, and
| colleges take 45%-65% off the top of each grand in the form
| of indirect cost recapture. Most research professors also pay
| some or all of their salary from their grants. And the good,
| successful ones, wouldn't be at that university teaching at
| all if the schools didn't supply the necessary research
| infrastructure. Those IDCs heavily subsidize the school.
| CaveTech wrote:
| Almost as if graduate research and professors are required to
| build an environment for high-value undergraduate studies. The
| distribution of fees is far from ideal, but your complaint
| should not be directed towards those that literally define the
| institution you wish to attend.
| deodar wrote:
| I have to agree with the GP comment. This is going to be a
| drain on both the undergrad programs and on the California
| taxpayers.
|
| I am not convinced that the value add to the undergrad
| environment will make up for it.
| idontpost wrote:
| [dead]
| mjhay wrote:
| Are you not aware that grad students teach sections, grade,
| and do most of the research work that brings in grant
| money? All for near-poverty wages. It's astounding how so
| many people are so ignorant of how universities operate,
| despite having attended them.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Sort of. Kinda. Maybe.
|
| In my experience, graduate students aren't really that
| effective at research until several years in to their
| education. From a productivity standpoint, it is largely
| a loss. Many would prefer to hire post-docs instead. They
| end up being not much more expensive after everything
| else is taken into account, and they are ready to do good
| work from the get-go (which, for people who's livelihoods
| depend on getting tenure and/or grant money, is pretty
| dang important).
| mcguire wrote:
| Postdocs were striking, too.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/postdoc-union-
| reache...
| watwut wrote:
| People who do bulk of work related to teaching and research
| on teaching and research institutions are entitled to
| demand to be paid.
|
| Cooks and waiters in restaurants don't work for free
| either. Programmers don't work for free and negotiate
| salary raises.
| nradov wrote:
| Graduate research has little relation to the quality of
| undergraduate studies.
|
| https://www.hmc.edu/about/
| feet wrote:
| What is the purpose of your link?
| nradov wrote:
| The data in that link shows that HMC provides a high
| quality undergraduate education. But they have very few
| graduate students doing research and teaching (just a
| handful of Master's degrees candidates) and don't have a
| doctoral program at all. So the statement by @CaveTech
| above is incorrect.
| feet wrote:
| I didn't see any data on that page, it looked like a
| generic "about" page for a university
| nradov wrote:
| The data is literally right there under Mudd Facts.
| Osmium wrote:
| I think it's important for discussions about this to distinguish
| between how things _are_ and how things _should be_.
|
| How things _are_ is that grad student labor is critical to the
| running of the university: critical for teaching of
| undergraduates, critical for performing research to reach
| deliverables on grants. Indeed, very little research is performed
| directly by faculty. And grad students are hurting, often at or
| below the poverty line. Typically a grad school program in the UC
| takes 5+ years, during which time wages might stagnate around
| $30k, without raise or career movement that would be possible if
| they spent those years in industry, despite by all objective
| measures their day-to-day work being very similar to a research
| job. Sunk costs make it very difficult psychologically to leave
| early. Abuse is rampant.
|
| How things _should be_ is very much open to debate. Perhaps a
| grad program should be as some claim it currently is: a
| privileged learning role, where you can focus on learning from
| world-leading experts. Perhaps university institutions should not
| rely on grad labor as much as they do, and invest more in
| faculty. Perhaps individual grad students would be better off not
| in grad school. There are lots of good suggestions in this
| thread.
|
| How we get from how things _are_ to how things _should be_ is
| also an open question, but I 'd advocate we do it with the least
| amount of harm to the specific individuals already living within
| this system. This proposed contract is already weak. The grad
| students deserve and need a lot more. And increasing the stipend
| to, say, the $54k proposed would also place incentives on the
| institution for change.
|
| Finally, without living wages and good contracts, there will
| always be diversity and inclusion issues in academia. Someone
| from a wealthy background may be able to slog through a few years
| with support from their parents, but people from a poorer
| background will not. It simply will not be an option for them.
| There is a deeper tragedy here, for everyone involved--the
| individual, and the institution--for what is lost when so many
| intelligent, driven souls are not able to participate.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > there will always be diversity and inclusion issues
|
| This is a totally unsupported and hypothetical claim. Given the
| gargantuan investments in DEI by universities, I'd be amazed if
| it were true.
| dopu wrote:
| Well, it's unfortunately true. White women have by far been
| the greatest beneficiaries of DEI efforts. Of the POC that
| have benefited from these programs, many come from wealthy
| families. Functionally, DEI programs mostly exist to launder
| the reputation of universities.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Cynical, but probably true.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| What gargantuan investments, tbh? I've been mostly hearing of
| volunteer-run DEI committees and the occasional checkmark or
| platitude on a forum somewhere. [Not trying to be snarky,
| genuinely wanting to know. I haven't heard of e.g. a trans
| student being paid way more money for attending grad school
| than a non-trans one.]
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If I do a DDG search for "dei chairman university", I get
| listings for :
|
| U. of Denver U. Michigan U. Washington James Madison U.
| Texas Tech Emory School of Medicine U. Virginia School of
| Engineering Miami University Washington State U. UCLA
|
| Now, if your argument is "All this is just empty
| platitudes" you might be right, but it's your turn to do
| the research.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| I am sure Stanford spent hundreds of thousands of dollars
| to get their recently release DEI breakthrough:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816
| hedora wrote:
| This looks like more of the same from this union: Below rent pay
| with increased gender inequality in the health care plan.
|
| Normally, what happens is students in lower cost of living
| campuses vote yes, but places like UC Santa Cruz overwhelmingly
| vote no, and end up on wildcat strike. I hope UC doesn't deport
| too many grad students this time.
|
| What should happen: Students should vote to replace the system-
| wide union with campus-wide unions with campus-wide contracts. If
| campus-wide unions / contracts are deemed illegal, they should
| wildcat strike until the law changes.
|
| What will happen: Grade students will realize that a $10K raise
| and health care for a few years is nothing compared to getting a
| summer internship or going to industry, so the union will
| continue to negotiate increasingly abusive contracts.
| patrick451 wrote:
| > This looks like more of the same from this union: Below rent
| pay with increased gender inequality in the health care plan.
|
| No, female graduate students are free to opt out of having
| kids.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I see nothing in this article about housing, which is a huge
| problem (particularly in the Bay Area and SoCal). So these
| graduate students will be expected to find housing around, say
| Berkely, on $34,000 a year.
|
| Consider [1]:
|
| > Pay and housing demands by University of California academic
| workers -- who launched a massive strike across the system this
| week -- could amount to several hundred million dollars annually,
| an "overwhelming" financial impact, a UC senior leader says.
|
| The UC system has a lot of money [2]. Current assets stand at
| $140 billion. Most of that is the pension fund ($81 billion).
| Note that the UC system employs a ton of people because it runs a
| significant health and hospital system. But here's the endowment:
|
| > The General Endowment Pool stood at $18.2 billion as of June
| 30, 2022. The 30-year annualized net return was 9%, the 20-year
| return was 7.9%, the 10-year return was 9.1%, the five-year
| return was 8.9%, and the one-year net return was negative 7.6%
| (1.4% over the benchmark).
|
| So the univeristy is making >$1B a year in returns on money that
| it was simply given.
|
| So why can't the UC system do what the NYU system does and supply
| grad students with housing? NYU owns billions in Greenwich
| Village real estate that is deciated to student and staff
| housing. This would have the benefit of controlling housing costs
| (for the students) and still keep assets on their balance sheet.
|
| [1]: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-11-16/uc-
| union...
|
| [2]: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/ucs-
| invest...
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