U of California Grad Students Strike

[Puget]

There are different ways of doing this-- here, we don't pretend they are being paid for TAing, rather all they get a stipend and tuition waiver as their funding package, and as a condition of receiving that funding package they must TA X number of semesters (about half of them for us, unless they are on a training grant). When there is need, they can also TA additional classes for additional pay, and when they do that it is considered part-time employment on top of their stipend.

[ciao_yall]

Coincidentally spent Thanksgiving with a couple. Husband just finished a post-doc at Berkeley and now has a job in industry. His wife was on a dependent visa and was not allowed to work. At one point they were having housing issues and the husband had to sleep in the lab for a few weeks while the wife stayed with friends who lived a few hours away because they couldn't scrape up the cash to move into an apartment after something went wrong with their old place.

Grad school seems to have been designed for people who have other financial resources, such as family money or a supporting spouse, in order to survive. Or, they are too young to get married and are still willing to live in a dorm-like situation.

Is it realistic to fund grad students at least at an entry level salary for Bachelor's degrees so they can pay their bills and live reasonably independently?

[dismalist]

Graduate students have been endowed by their creator with above average intelligence. Why such lucky people have a right to any kind of support that the paying institution does not believe is efficient, and hence voluntary, is beyond me. I'm happy to give my tax dollars to the unfortunate, but not to those who have gone into  the lottery of life with decisive advantages.

There is always the possibility of borrowing to meet desires above and beyond what can be financed by stipends and such. If the borrowing is not worth it, graduate school is not worth it.

[marshwiggle]

There are different ways of doing this-- here, we don't pretend they are being paid for TAing, rather all they get a stipend and tuition waiver as their funding package, and as a condition of receiving that funding package they must TA X number of semesters (about half of them for us, unless they are on a training grant). When there is need, they can also TA additional classes for additional pay, and when they do that it is considered part-time employment on top of their stipend.

That makes a lot of sense, and avoids the confusion about what the "job" is.

Grad school seems to have been designed for people who have other financial resources, such as family money or a supporting spouse, in order to survive. Or, they are too young to get married and are still willing to live in a dorm-like situation.

Well, it does have that "school" word in the title, so living like a student doesn't seem like a stretch.

Is it realistic to fund grad students at least at an entry level salary for Bachelor's degrees so they can pay their bills and live reasonably independently?

The issue is clarity on what the "funding" is for. For instance, since grad students' research helps their advisors, then it would make sense if the most productive grad students got payed more than their less productive peers. If they're being paid to study, then the ones who earn higher grades should get higher pay. On the other end of the spectrum, does a "Marxist" pay scale make sense, where a grad student supporting a spouse gets paid more, and more still if there are kids? (What it costs to "live independently" will certainly depend on how many it has to support.)

[mamselle]

Sheesh, some of you guys really seem to hate grad students....

M.

[mleok]

Sheesh, some of you guys really seem to hate grad students....

M.

I don't hate my graduate students, but I operate in a competitive grant environment, so doubling my costs for the same level of research productivity means that my grants are less competitive, and much fewer graduate students end up being funded on research grants. In mathematics, this is less of an issue, since we have a large number of teaching assistantships, but I suspect this will be more of an issue in other STEM fields. At the end of the day, if a first year graduate student fresh out of college who is still taking a full course load costs as much to support as a postdoc, it would be naive to think that would not result in a dramatic decrease in the number of first year graduate students being funded on research grants.

[Wahoo Redux]

Graduate students have been endowed by their creator with above average intelligence. Why such lucky people have a right to any kind of support that the paying institution does not believe is efficient, and hence voluntary, is beyond me. I'm happy to give my tax dollars to the unfortunate, but not to those who have gone into  the lottery of life with decisive advantages.

There is always the possibility of borrowing to meet desires above and beyond what can be financed by stipends and such. If the borrowing is not worth it, graduate school is not worth it.

Pursuit of knowledge and discovery, Pttttthhhhhhhth!

Not really worth paying for.

Sheesh, some of you guys really seem to hate grad students....

M.

I don't hate my graduate students, but I operate in a competitive grant environment, so doubling my costs for the same level of research productivity means that my grants are less competitive

No one hates graduate students.

It's no one's fault.

Academia is simply corporatized and getting more so.

[marshwiggle]

Sheesh, some of you guys really seem to hate grad students....

M.

I don't hate my graduate students, but I operate in a competitive grant environment, so doubling my costs for the same level of research productivity means that my grants are less competitive, and much fewer graduate students end up being funded on research grants. In mathematics, this is less of an issue, since we have a large number of teaching assistantships, but I suspect this will be more of an issue in other STEM fields. At the end of the day, if a first year graduate student fresh out of college who is still taking a full course load costs as much to support as a postdoc, it would be naive to think that would not result in a dramatic decrease in the number of first year graduate students being funded on research grants.

Absolutely. If I demanded that my employer double my salary, they would probably fire me, assuming (logically) that they could probably find someone to replace me for less. On the other hand, if my employer decided to cut my salary in half, I would probably quit. So any salary negotiations have to happen between the limits of what both parties will actually accept. It doesn't matter what I would *like to be paid (as much as possible), or how little my employer would like to pay (as little as possible), it's based on what will actually keep either one of us from ending the arrangement.

As in Mleok's example, why pay for a grad student who needs to be trained and then will leave after a couple of years, if for the same rate, you could hire a post-doc, or even better, a full-time research associate who will stay indefinitely?


*Or for that matter, on my expenses. or what someone else is getting for a similar, job, etc.

[mamselle]

I didn't mean so much those who work with them and try to be fair within constraints, but those who go on about how greedy they are, and how unrealistic, and so on (some of whom don't appear to run STEM labs or understand how those systems work.

My humanities situation was terribly difficult, and I had a couple friends who were likewise in seriously straitened circumstances--one figured she could spend 2.50 per day on food in order to cover her rent--and when a smart-aleck loan officer figured out how he could deny my summer stipend (grinning as he did so), I ended up with 2 months' uncovered expenses at a time I'd planned on writing up 2 chapters of my work...and the need to cover with temp work instead. (I sort-of did both, but the writing needed more work, later, than if I'd had the time clear then).

So, I had that kind of scenario in mind, where suspicion is always on the student as a grifter, not the embedded lab setups, where I know (from having temped for PIs) that they're usually trying to do well by their students.

M.

[ciao_yall]

Sheesh, some of you guys really seem to hate grad students....

M.

I don't hate my graduate students, but I operate in a competitive grant environment, so doubling my costs for the same level of research productivity means that my grants are less competitive, and much fewer graduate students end up being funded on research grants. In mathematics, this is less of an issue, since we have a large number of teaching assistantships, but I suspect this will be more of an issue in other STEM fields. At the end of the day, if a first year graduate student fresh out of college who is still taking a full course load costs as much to support as a postdoc, it would be naive to think that would not result in a dramatic decrease in the number of first year graduate students being funded on research grants.

Absolutely. If I demanded that my employer double my salary, they would probably fire me, assuming (logically) that they could probably find someone to replace me for less. On the other hand, if my employer decided to cut my salary in half, I would probably quit. So any salary negotiations have to happen between the limits of what both parties will actually accept. It doesn't matter what I would *like to be paid (as much as possible), or how little my employer would like to pay (as little as possible), it's based on what will actually keep either one of us from ending the arrangement.

Again, this comes down to social mobility. Your employer would replace you with someone who had other sources of financial support.

So, someone from a low-income family would not be able to get a PhD because they would not have the supplemental resources to survive on a grad student stipend.

This is kind of like the part-time vs full-time faculty argument. Is a part-time adjunct wage intended to meet one's independent financial needs? Or is it intended to supplement an already full salary and benefits?

When part-time faculty are cobbling together a living on multiple adjunct gigs, is the better argument to suggest they be paid more for each gig? Or to create full-time positions so they can focus on one campus job?

[research_prof]

Sheesh, some of you guys really seem to hate grad students....

M.

@M: We do not hate our grad students. We happen to have written a few grants and we understand what doubling the salary of our students would mean in terms of budget. It would basically mean that with the budget of an average NSF grant, we would not even be able to support a single grad student. Who would do the work then?

Unless funding agencies increase the budgets we are allowed to have, doubling the salary of a grad student is not feasible. Doubling someone's salary at a university would mean (in addition to the actual salary increase) 20-30% of the additional salary for fringe benefits plus indirect cost for the salary increase. In terms of actual grant dollars, this would be (probably more than) 3x of what a grad student costs today (depending on the actual amounts for fringe benefits and indirect cost).

PS: As mleok said, if grad students were to cost as much as postdocs, I would also hire only postdocs instead of grad students. Less work for me with more immediate results.

PS2: There are several universities that discount or fully waive tuition when a grad student is supported through a grant. This allows faculty to offer very competitive stipends and also be able to compete for grants. The question is why UCs not only do not discount tuition, but they even charge out of state tuition rates for international grad students supported through grants (on top of high indirect cost rates). In other words, UCs have to become a bit less greedy (call it a bit more flexible if you like). With such policies, if UCs were not in California, I doubt they would even be able to attract good faculty and students.

[mleok]

PS2: There are several universities that discount or fully waive tuition when a grad student is supported through a grant. This allows faculty to offer very competitive stipends and also be able to compete for grants. The question is why UCs not only do not discount tuition, but they even charge out of state tuition rates for international grad students supported through grants (on top of high indirect cost rates). In other words, UCs have to become a bit less greedy (call it a bit more flexible if you like). With such policies, if UCs were not in California, I doubt they would even be able to attract good faculty and students.

Yes, when I was at Purdue, the tuition remission charged to a grant was discounted from what the sticket price is. When I moved from Purdue to UCSD, I ended up redirecting the funds budgeted in my CAREER award to postdocs instead, because tuition meant that the number of graduate students I could support decreased by about 40%, which made them much less competitive than postdocs, which in math often do a bit of teaching as well.

My issue with the graduate student demands is that they did not include a reduction in tuition as part of their platform, because most of the most vocal students are in the humanities and funded on TAs, and do not understand that tuition actually is charged to grants, and it not just some abstract concept. Without a reduction in tuition, PIs would have to bear the bulk of the burden, and in practice, that means that while some graduate students will be better off, most will be dropped from research assistantships, or lose their funding entirely. Decreasing tuition would shift the burden from the individual PIs to the university, which is much better able to absorb that decrease in income.

[research_prof]

PS2: There are several universities that discount or fully waive tuition when a grad student is supported through a grant. This allows faculty to offer very competitive stipends and also be able to compete for grants. The question is why UCs not only do not discount tuition, but they even charge out of state tuition rates for international grad students supported through grants (on top of high indirect cost rates). In other words, UCs have to become a bit less greedy (call it a bit more flexible if you like). With such policies, if UCs were not in California, I doubt they would even be able to attract good faculty and students.

Yes, when I was at Purdue, the tuition remission charged to a grant was discounted from what the sticket price is. When I moved from Purdue to UCSD, I ended up redirecting the funds budgeted in my CAREER award to postdocs instead, because tuition meant that the number of graduate students I could support decreased by about 40%, which made them much less competitive than postdocs, which in math often do a bit of teaching as well.

My issue with the graduate student demands is that they did not include a reduction in tuition as part of their platform, because most of the most vocal students are in the humanities and funded on TAs, and do not understand that tuition actually is charged to grants, and it not just some abstract concept. Without a reduction in tuition, PIs would have to bear the bulk of the burden, and in practice, that means that while some graduate students will be better off, most will be dropped from research assistantships, or lose their funding entirely. Decreasing tuition would shift the burden from the individual PIs to the university, which is much better able to absorb that decrease in income.

I agree with everything you said. My only kind of "disagreement" is that grad students are not supposed to know how funding works in academia (i.e., reducing their tuition would mean that they can be paid more). This is none of their business. Their business is to do their research. They want higher stipends (and rightly so since UCs do not pay livable stipends). It is the responsibility of the university to find out the mechanism to make that happen.

[jimbogumbo]

The reality is that we already pay our graduate students a liveble wage, so long as they're willing to share an apartment with another graduate student. They're not going to get rich on this, but the notion that they have to live in a car or rely on food stamps is a bit hyperbolic. There is already a huge variability in the amount that graduate students are paid, and the irony is that many of the unfair labor practices that the union has flagged have to do with STEM departments increasing the stipend for their students.

I'd like to revisit this for a comparison. I spent six years at Purdue as a grad, always as a TA. I had at least one roommate five of them. One year friend and I shared a very small cheap house, then one year in a cheap apartment. Then two years of a small cheap house with a friend, then one year of a bigger cheap house with two friends. Only one year alone, in yet another cheap small cabin (think Cabin in the Woods or Evil Dead). We thought we lived well, but we couldn't have done that comfortably in LA or San Diego or San Fran.

There is no easy way to make things livable there without a reduction (expenses) or increase (wages). My choice (not dismalist's for sure) is to increase what the Feds/State contribute to this in some meaningful way. We as a country reap the benefits of what these public R1s create but have not kept up our share of funding the increases in the cost of what they produce since the late 60s early 70s.

[mleok]

PS2: There are several universities that discount or fully waive tuition when a grad student is supported through a grant. This allows faculty to offer very competitive stipends and also be able to compete for grants. The question is why UCs not only do not discount tuition, but they even charge out of state tuition rates for international grad students supported through grants (on top of high indirect cost rates). In other words, UCs have to become a bit less greedy (call it a bit more flexible if you like). With such policies, if UCs were not in California, I doubt they would even be able to attract good faculty and students.

Yes, when I was at Purdue, the tuition remission charged to a grant was discounted from what the sticket price is. When I moved from Purdue to UCSD, I ended up redirecting the funds budgeted in my CAREER award to postdocs instead, because tuition meant that the number of graduate students I could support decreased by about 40%, which made them much less competitive than postdocs, which in math often do a bit of teaching as well.

My issue with the graduate student demands is that they did not include a reduction in tuition as part of their platform, because most of the most vocal students are in the humanities and funded on TAs, and do not understand that tuition actually is charged to grants, and it not just some abstract concept. Without a reduction in tuition, PIs would have to bear the bulk of the burden, and in practice, that means that while some graduate students will be better off, most will be dropped from research assistantships, or lose their funding entirely. Decreasing tuition would shift the burden from the individual PIs to the university, which is much better able to absorb that decrease in income.

I agree with everything you said. My only kind of "disagreement" is that grad students are not supposed to know how funding works in academia (i.e., reducing their tuition would mean that they can be paid more). This is none of their business. Their business is to do their research. They want higher stipends (and rightly so since UCs do not pay livable stipends). It is the responsibility of the university to find out the mechanism to make that happen.

I think it's one thing to say that graduate students shouldn't have to know how academic funding works, but the problem is that they incorrectly believe with absolute certainty that they do know how it works, and  that tuition is just a made up number. Again, I think it's unfair to say that the UCs do not pay livable stipends, they simply need to have roommates and live a bit further away, like the vast majority of people in California. Two graduate students in STEM fields receive roughly the equivalent of the median household income in San Diego, for example.