Lab Working Hours for GA/RA

[Hibush]

Is it on top of covering tuition? Even in this case 13k appears to be very low (even more so if one considers current job market for CS graduates).

Yes. It is on top of covering tuition.

Wondering if the students will request for enrolling in Summer for dissertation credits rather than stipend for RA work?

Can you clarify the difference between these options?
It looks as if you are separating work for you as a RA and their own research with only former to be supported by the stipend.
In most cases I would consider these options to be the same with student's own research entangled with supervisor's.

I hope to combine RA work and student research work to be the same. ie., aligning research proposals/grant work tied to the student dissertation work. But not successful so far... Most of my funds are from startup grant... One NSF grant that I recently got is more education oriented. However, I did get recently a tiny industry research grant that can support a student for 1 year starting Spring 2022.

Your plan is thoughtful in aligning all the students academic goals with the economic incentive. A couple of connected issues that are creating a problem, the  students motivation for study, and the funding.

The extremely low stipend is a serious limitation. I view the stipend's intent as supporting living costs during grad school so outside work is unnecessary, not as direct pay for labor. This level fails in both contexts, leaving students in a financial position that is unreasonably precarious. You won't be able to recruit students if you don't give them a chance to live a fairly normal (if research-focused) life.

One characteristic of good grad students is that they are super excited to pursue their own research and appreciate the opportunity. You don't need to push them to spend time in the lab because that is the opportunity they came for. You student does not seem to fit that description. If you had a competitive stipend, your chances of getting a go-getter go up.

What are your options for getting students on a Federal assitantship, or a grant supplement up to that level? An NIH T32 is the low end at $25,836; NSF GRFP are $34,000. There are a number of schools above NSF, so that is not the competitive top end.  You can figure out what others are offering the students you wish would apply.

[Caracal]

In our University, the leadership provide the new faculty with a decent start up fund and let the new faculty take care of recruiting PhD students and provide RA/GA etc.,

I joined this University in Spring of 2020... As part of recruiting strategy, I found that other faculty in the department are offering minimum stipend amount (20 hour per week PhD student rate) in Spring ($6500) and Fall ($6500) and full tuition (minimum required 9 credit hour for International Student) for Fall ($7530) and Spring ($7530).

To recruit more PhD students in my group, I decided that for a first year PhD student, for the stipend part, let me try go with getting TA assistantship (again for minimum stipend amount of $6500 for 20 hour/week work) from the department. This arrangement has been working so far for all the three PhD students in my group.

One thing I could have done to make students work on research (in addition to being TA for 20 hours per week) is to have them enroll them in few credit hours of dissertation research along with the course work. That way they can spend some time on Research as opposed to all course work.  I might try this option going forward.

Another option, I am thinking is to split $13000 (or may be $15000) stipend across three semesters (Summer, Fall and Spring) and have the students work purely as RA.

Wondering if the students will request for enrolling in Summer for dissertation credits rather than stipend for RA work?

Thanks for explaining, now I understand.

In my opinion, this arrangement (you pay tuition from startup, but stipend is paid from 20 hr/wk TA) is a bad deal for both you and your students.

If a student is on a 20 hr/wk TA and taking 1st yr grad classes, they have little-to-no time to do research. You are lucky if they have time to read a few papers and attend your group meetings. If they do spend a substantial amount of time in the lab there is a danger they fail the courses and then everyone suffers. Doing a TA during 1st yr coursework would be great for a student who was unattached and just finding their way, but these students have to worry about pleasing you too or else their tuition waiver is in jeopardy.

Its also a bad deal for you because you are paying a lot in tuition and getting almost nothing in return. You would be better off to pay as an RA and then can reasonably expect to get them to spend 20+ hrs/wk in the lab. You would be paying ~2x what you are paying for the current arrangement but would likely get >>2x the work.

The stipends are indeed low, but presumably you are not able to set the TA stipend so I give you a pass on this. Your proposed RA stipend is not competitive in physical science, but I leave that for another thread if you are interested.

This might be a stupid question, but is anyone usually interested in actual number of hours in science programs?

In theory, in my humanities program, TAs and RAs were supposedly working some number of hours a week on those responsibilities, but it was only for tax and labor purposes. If you were a TA, you were expected to do your grading on time, attend class and teach your sessions in some sort of vaguely adequate fashion. If you were an RA, you would work out something to do with a professor. In theory it might have been 30 hours a week, but nobody was averaging anywhere close to that, and there was no expectation that anybody would. It was very clear to all of us that our main job was to prepare for comps.

[Hibush]

This might be a stupid question, but is anyone usually interested in actual number of hours in science programs?

In theory, in my humanities program, TAs and RAs were supposedly working some number of hours a week on those responsibilities, but it was only for tax and labor purposes. If you were a TA, you were expected to do your grading on time, attend class and teach your sessions in some sort of vaguely adequate fashion. If you were an RA, you would work out something to do with a professor. In theory it might have been 30 hours a week, but nobody was averaging anywhere close to that, and there was no expectation that anybody would. It was very clear to all of us that our main job was to prepare for comps.

For TAs my institution has a rather hard 15-hour requirement. Some instructors have the TAs work less, and that causes some discussion of inequity. Courses that need only one TA but need more than 15h can set up a 20h appointment. In that case, the stipend is increased by one third.

The RAs in science have similar hourly requirements, but that is nominally for research that is unrelated to the thesis. Thesis research is supposed to take up all the rest to a student's time. In reality, most of the RA research is thesis-related so they get a better deal that the one on paper.

[Kron3007]

In our University, the leadership provide the new faculty with a decent start up fund and let the new faculty take care of recruiting PhD students and provide RA/GA etc.,

I joined this University in Spring of 2020... As part of recruiting strategy, I found that other faculty in the department are offering minimum stipend amount (20 hour per week PhD student rate) in Spring ($6500) and Fall ($6500) and full tuition (minimum required 9 credit hour for International Student) for Fall ($7530) and Spring ($7530).

To recruit more PhD students in my group, I decided that for a first year PhD student, for the stipend part, let me try go with getting TA assistantship (again for minimum stipend amount of $6500 for 20 hour/week work) from the department. This arrangement has been working so far for all the three PhD students in my group.

One thing I could have done to make students work on research (in addition to being TA for 20 hours per week) is to have them enroll them in few credit hours of dissertation research along with the course work. That way they can spend some time on Research as opposed to all course work.  I might try this option going forward.

Another option, I am thinking is to split $13000 (or may be $15000) stipend across three semesters (Summer, Fall and Spring) and have the students work purely as RA.

Wondering if the students will request for enrolling in Summer for dissertation credits rather than stipend for RA work?

Thanks for explaining, now I understand.

In my opinion, this arrangement (you pay tuition from startup, but stipend is paid from 20 hr/wk TA) is a bad deal for both you and your students.

If a student is on a 20 hr/wk TA and taking 1st yr grad classes, they have little-to-no time to do research. You are lucky if they have time to read a few papers and attend your group meetings. If they do spend a substantial amount of time in the lab there is a danger they fail the courses and then everyone suffers. Doing a TA during 1st yr coursework would be great for a student who was unattached and just finding their way, but these students have to worry about pleasing you too or else their tuition waiver is in jeopardy.

Its also a bad deal for you because you are paying a lot in tuition and getting almost nothing in return. You would be better off to pay as an RA and then can reasonably expect to get them to spend 20+ hrs/wk in the lab. You would be paying ~2x what you are paying for the current arrangement but would likely get >>2x the work.

The stipends are indeed low, but presumably you are not able to set the TA stipend so I give you a pass on this. Your proposed RA stipend is not competitive in physical science, but I leave that for another thread if you are interested.

This might be a stupid question, but is anyone usually interested in actual number of hours in science programs?

In theory, in my humanities program, TAs and RAs were supposedly working some number of hours a week on those responsibilities, but it was only for tax and labor purposes. If you were a TA, you were expected to do your grading on time, attend class and teach your sessions in some sort of vaguely adequate fashion. If you were an RA, you would work out something to do with a professor. In theory it might have been 30 hours a week, but nobody was averaging anywhere close to that, and there was no expectation that anybody would. It was very clear to all of us that our main job was to prepare for comps.

I am in Canada, and this is not a thing.  Our students work on their thesis and we tend to focus on progress rather than time in the lab. I'm sure some advisors do mandate hours, but they seem to be the minority and There is no distinction between their thesis work and their RA work.  I hire  and pay students to do work that contributes to the grants objectives directly as part of their thesis.

However, I started a PhD in the US (ended up dropping out), and it was a very different story.  They expected me to work on unrelated projects for my RA, and then my thesis research was separate.  In my case, they expected too much,.and I found there was no time for my PhD work.  I brought this to my advisor's attention several times, and he agreed at the time but never made any changes.  This was one of the main reasons I dropped out, I really felt like cheap labour more than a grad student.  Perhaps this was just culture shock and I had unreasonable expectations for the US, or maybe I just had a bad advisor, but it was a learning experience for me.

So I think it is a mix.  Some advisors do indeed count hours, while others not so much. 

[mamselle]

Nope, it's fairly standard.

Former spouse and I called grad students in his lab 'sub-worms,' because the undergrads paid, so they might be 'worms,' but were seen as aerating the university's foundations with their cash.

The grad students, however, both had to work, and do their own work, AND be paid for it.

That made them sub-worms.

They were below the level of the worms in that universe.

Whether TAs, who had to do most of the grading, or RAs, who had to run the answers to a thousand questions to earth, it was stressful all around.

It's one thing I felt at the time as though the humanities at least got partially right (although that was changing, even then, as well).

Exploitation of student workers really does need redress.

M.

[PI]

Perhaps OP has figured out how to solve this issue. Others have mentioned this:  asking to work X number of hours or being in the lab at a particular time may not be a great approach for all. I try to get them excited about a good problem and then gauge their progress weekly and not worry about how they manage their time daily. There is no way you can tell if they are really thinking about the problem even if they show up daily and stay for some hours.

I do give some advice on what might work the best especially if they have to work with others. If the progress is not good, I take the discussion from there to address the reasons..

If the student is not a good fit, try to find them another advisor.