ann arbor is overrated. » Blog Archive » A Far, Far, Better Thing

A Far, Far, Better Thing

Conservative columnist Jay Nordlinger on his hometown (from a year-old column about the Lynn Rivers/John Dingell race):

Friends, I was raised by Ann Arbor liberals; was educated by them (sort of); was enmeshed with them. I’m not sure there was anything “intellectual” about them. I’ve since known a few intellectuals: particularly at my places of employment, The Weekly Standard and NR. Ann Arbor? Wouldn’t have thought of the word, actually. “Jacobin” comes to mind.

We thought Jacobins were supposed to be revolutionary and all that, but we could imagine Madame Defarge in the Old Fourth Ward Association.

He also refers to Rivers as “Ann Arbor squared” in another column, which we guess makes her A to the fourth.

Also, a letter in today’s Daily also fails to grasp the connection between all of those research papers coming out of the University and the fact that grad students are paid. “That must be a tough life, to actually have all your living expenses covered by your salary,” writes Jon Ochmanek. Undergraduates, he points out for those grad students who went straight from high school to grad school and may not be aware of the undergrad experience, must “take out loans to cover the rest of the living expenses.”

19 Responses to “A Far, Far, Better Thing”

Poor undergrads, warming the desk at the Union pool hall for only $1000/month … I was a TA in undergrad (no research; just grading, lab, & office hours) and you couldn’t pay me enough to do it at the grad level.

Entirely unrelated: what Ann Arbor eating establishments (dine in or carry out) are open on Thanksgiving?
posted by Anonymous on November 26th, 2003 at 2:58 pm e
That’s another GEO thing - they want the University to stop hiring undergrad TAs (”IAs”) in place of GSIs. But GEO also doesn’t emphasize research all that much, and research assistants, who are also employees, are not in GEO. I think there’s a big difference between replacing people who GSI to support a research career with IAs, and replacing GSIs who do no research. That’s why I can’t entirely side with GEO, although I’ll pick them over uninformed undergrads who think grad students have the cushiest jobs on the planet.

Incidentally, being a GSI for a semester is a condition for certain fellowships.

As for the Thanskgiving thing - not sure about that.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on November 26th, 2003 at 10:49 pm e
Oh, Whole Foods is probably open, and they have carryout.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on November 26th, 2003 at 10:50 pm e
I think I’m missing the point of this site. Very professionally done, clean layout, but I’m still missing the point. I mean, what purpose does it serve to make angry generalizations about a city? Are you jealous, and taking it out or something? Are you one of those people who think that we’re the “People’s Republic of Ann Arbor?”

Call me naive, but in my short career as a “political canvasser,” I wasn’t exactly impressed with the rest of Michigan. Between the stomach-wrenching poverty of Flint, and the pure, all-WASP condominium villages like Gross Point, our state is generally messed up.

I just don’t get it when people attack Universities–college isn’t the “real world,” professors are all stuffed into “ivory towers,” and all that nonsense. I wonder if such critics know any real college professors. Maybe they’re jealous (again), or frustrated because they don’t understand what the professors are saying (and therefore decide that they’re making a conscious effort to sound pompous and pretentious, and therefore don’t know what they’re talking about)?

Maybe you critics need a scapegoat, since you can’t blame big business or the government (michigan congress = GOP, big business = GOP). Your only other option is to go after a medium-sized town in southeastern Michigan that generally seems pleased with itself. Is that how it is?

What defines overrated? I live in Ann Arbor, and I like it well enough. It’s nice to actually have a semblance of a downtown, without it being a ghetto abandonded by white people now living in suburbs. And it’s nice that some neighborhoods don’t have identical houses, with identical cars, identical people, and identical church-style doorbell chimes.

Most of the people I know are happy with their situation–with the exception of my conservative friends, who seem to hate everything about this city even though they decided to move here. Fortunately, no one seems to hate them back.
posted by zeichner on November 29th, 2003 at 9:30 pm e
I don’t know if you’ve read the archives at the old site, but a main theme of the blog is that the U of M is the only thing that A2 has going for it, and that a lot of the locals here view it with suspicion, resenting its students and even going as far as to think that they, not the University, are the main source of culture in this town. I know lots of college professors and I think they’re great.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on November 30th, 2003 at 1:05 am e
That’s hysterical that this guy thought this was a conservative website. And speaking of which, the folks over at the Michigan Review/Goodspeed blogs are driving me nuts with their rants about how grad students should be entirely at the whim of the market. One guy argued that grad students make four times the poverty level in Michigan; he was factoring out-of-state tuition into the figure. When I tried to make the point that tuition wavers aren’t income, he didn’t accept it. I then asked him why then the money wasn’t taxed and someone else told me it was because the IRS “hasn’t figured it out yet”(yeah, the IRS is real slow about picking up sources of revenue) or because of “political reasons” (yeah, that powerful grad student lobby on Capitol Hill). Sigh. Well, I think these guys are a lost cause and it’s just not worth the aggravation of more posts over there. I just wanted to say though that if people like this ever get the power, liberal-arts education as we know it will go straight into the toilet. Heck, it may already be well on its way.
posted by Joe F. on November 30th, 2003 at 1:25 pm e
What defines A2’s overratedness? (sweeping generalization alert) People who exude an air of superiority but who aren’t cosmopolitan enough to realize how unwarranted (and rude) that is. Silly nutshell example: I live in Ypsi, and when I say “good morning” to passersby here, I generally get a response, if I’m not good-morninged first. In A2? I usually get a scared/haughty look with no response. Trivial but true.
At least those folks know “the elegant way to say chocolate” (thank goodness!)
posted by Laura on November 30th, 2003 at 4:34 pm e
About GEO not representing research: I was around when GEO first came into existence (or shortly thereafter… I forget). Anyway, the reason GEO emphasizes teaching is because teaching was/is seen as taking time away from a graduate student’s *real* work, which is research. Smaller stipends were more acceptable to students who felt they were really being supported to do what they wanted to be doing — developing a career as an academic researcher — whereas teaching something like math 115 was seen as a major distraction and as taking much more time than the University paid people for. Since RA-ships were seen as in alignment with the goals of grad students, the people with the serious beefs were the TAs (or GSIs, whatever…). Anyway, that’s why GEO focuses on the TAs/GSIs.

I like our system here much better. Everyone here is on a University fellowship; everyone is paid the same amount, and everyone teaches X semesters during their time here — and the teaching is supposed to prepare people for the job market, it is not a job that is worked for wages. Our system cuts down on the inequities between graduate students and puts the emphasis back on scholarship, where it belongs.
posted by anna on December 1st, 2003 at 1:48 pm e
Question for Joe F: If you do not classify tuition waver as income, then what do you classify it as? My question is sincere. I think that many TA’s would be very disappointed if the U. paid them an hourly wage for teaching, including taxes, and then presented them with a bill for full tuition. There isn’t a chance in hell that the wages for a TA would cover the tution bill, particularly if it was for an out of state student. Research is a different story.

I have yet to run into a graduate student at UofM (and I have met a ton of them) who knows how much tuition is. I find this to be a little unsettling.

At the time that I was shopping around for grad schools, paid tuition was far from a foregone conclusion, so I am wondering why students here do not assess a value for their tuition. How do you know if you are being compensated fairly if you have no idea what the value of the tuition waver is?
posted by todd on December 1st, 2003 at 2:25 pm e
Todd,

I guess my answer would go like this: I think of the tuition waver as a “benefit”, like (ironically, given recent events) health insurance. After all, one cannot be a Graduate Student Instructor without being a graduate student, but no one would be a grad student instructor if tuition wasn’t waived because they’d have to go get a full-time job to pay the tuition! The U. obviously needs lots of GSIs (or, God forbid, professors would have to do all that teaching), so the waver is a reasonable medium that serves everyone’s needs fairly well.

The argument someone else made that really got my goat was that the waver was exactly the same as income. It is a ludicrous argument, because one could envision grad students getting a tuition waver and NO salary and Thomas Wharry would still tell grad students they were living well. “But I have no money,” the grad students would say. “No, you’re paid well above the poverty level,” Wharry would insist, as the grad students slowly starved to death.

I think your question about the value of the tuition is a good one. I can really only speak for my old department, and other (mostly science) departments my friends were in (it might be different in others). In my department, they don’t admit students they cannot offer funding to. Perfectly qualified students have been rejected because they can only afford X students that year, or no professor is willing to come forward and take financial responsibility for the applicant. (I know this for a fact as I was on the faculty e-mail list for a while.) Telling the student they were admitted but have to self-fund is not an option.

Why? I think it’s partly so they can say they fund all their students (it looks good). I think it’s also because, unless the prospective student is independently wealthy, they (unlike a law school or med school grad) will never be able to pay off their loans in a timely fashion after graduation.

I think many grad students don’t take the dollar figure associated with tuition too seriously. I’ll admit I never did. (Partly because if I had to pay it I wouldn’t have gone to grad school. Every department that admitted me when I applied to grad school offered me at least 2 years of funding, and it wasn’t because I’m such a genius. It’s standard practice, at least in my field.) I think it’s because the dollar figures associated with tuition are so arbitrary. There’s “in-state” and “out-of-state”, but what percentage of grad students are “in-state”? Who decides where to go to grad school that way? Then there’s “precandidate” and “candidate”, and one may be four times the other. I’ve argued with people about why this might be. But I just can’t see it. I don’t see a precandidate really costing the university four times more. My attitude always was: I’m a grad student and I need to progress and get out of here asap. Let the University classify me however it wants. And let them associate whatever dollar figure with that status. As long as my tuition is waived, I’m satisfied. (Otherwise you’d have PhD candidates in rebellion, asking for higher salaries to compensate the fact their tuition waver only covers $3000 a semester and not $12,000 a semester.)

So that’s my answer. I hope I didn’t come across as ungrateful at any point. But at the same time, these kinds of subsidies are necessary if the U. (and society as a whole) wants academic fields to continue (or at least not become the exclusive providence of the rich). The folks over at MR/Goodspeed happily turn a blind eye to certain realities (such as that even grad students need to eat) when they don’t correspond with their particular worldview.
posted by Joe F. on December 1st, 2003 at 4:31 pm e
Todd, I am a graduate student at U of M. The value of my tuition waiver is about $3,700 per semester. But there is no way that the University is providing me with instructional services worth that amount: I see my advisor three or four times a semester, and haven’t taken a class in ages. So I tend to view the University’s assessment of the value of tuition as arbitrary–something like the U of M hospital’s prices for the uninsured. And I second Joe F. on the candidate/precandidate distinction.
posted by AP on December 1st, 2003 at 9:38 pm e
Thank you for your answers. I put it to both of you that you should really take the time to assess a value to the tuition waver. You need to know this number. It has value, and it is not arbitrary. It has a cost to the state, and its taxpayers. Speaking as someone who has paid taxes in the tens of thousands to the state and local governments over the past few years, I am happy and proud to help to pay your tuition so that you can graduate and contribute to the world in whatever way that you see fit….and I realize that you EARN that tuition.

AP: I think that you are erroneous in assuming that the value of the degree is based upon coursework. You are charged for your DEGREE, and the price for that degree is what the market will bear….this is why it is so important to know the actual value of the tuition waver.

There should be equal pressure on you and your advisor to finish your dissertation in an expedient manner. It is costing both you and the state money. If you ask me, one of the functions of the GEO should be to force the hand of the faculty to spend time directing their candidates in such a manner that they can produce a quality dissertation in a short a time as possible—this is in the best interest of both the State who pays for this dissertation, and the student who is scraping by.

I think that we all know that all Graduate students should know the value for their compensation, fair or no. Its just good business…and like it or not, the U. is a business.
posted by todd on December 2nd, 2003 at 12:07 pm e
But what could be more pressure than the prospect of more time in A2?
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 2nd, 2003 at 1:28 pm e
Todd,

I understand your point, but the problem with the tuition wavers is that they are sort of “funny money” with a somewhat arbitrary value. For example, you are “paying” a different amount for tuition depending on how many years you are in graduate school (precandidate versus candidate). To make things more complicated, for a number of reasons, grad students don’t cost the university nearly as much as the “tuition” as they “charge” the student’s department (though no money really changes hands in most cases), since students are engaged primarily in individual (or lab group) research.

Furthermore, in many cases, especially in the natural and social sciences and technical fields, federal, not state, taxes are paying the tuition for graduate students (though of course that’s still you the taxpayer — but this is money that is budgeted to keep the US research infastructure going, which, through my experiences with one of the research institutions here in the US I can attest is a lot cheaper than having multiple huge national institutes of health to do all the research, for example).

I don’t recall what the overhead charged on grants is at UM, but here it’s over 60% beyond what the grants are worth in “direct” costs. At UM it’s close to that, I know. That means that for every dollar brought in in grant money, the government (you the taxpayer) actually pays $1.60 and the university skims the $.60. So, for every tuition dollar that is brought in, the university profits by $.60 (unless tuition is “backed out” at Michigan, but I don’t think it is). Furthermore, getting the grants (which the university greatly profits from, given that it does NOT cost them $.60 on the dollar for the lab and secretarial and computing “support” that they offer in support of grants) and subsequently doing the research that one is granted money to do is nearly impossible without grad students, whose tuition and stipend are usually covered by the grants they are working on (I can attest in my role as a faculty member in the sciences that grants cannot be obtained or administered without a nice cadre of smart grad students). So, at least in the sciences (probably not in the humanities, but those students teach a LOT usually), the gains and losses to the University cannot really be easily summed up by “value of tuition waver”, since my bet would be that the university recieves a net profit from having graduate students in the sciences.

Also, grad students do lots of things that they aren’t compensated for by the university, i.e. things that people would have to be paid to do if there weren’t grad students to do them. So, the “value” of your tuition waver is somewhat offset (in who knows how many dollars) by the value of your service to your department/school or the university. For example, being conversant in unix, I served on the department’s computing committee. I didn’t get paid for that, though of course I was happy to do it. However, had the U needed to pay someone to bring to the table information that I provided for free would have cost the university a lot more than my tuition waver.

Finally, tuition waver-plus-stipend is still less than you’d have to pay to hire someone to cover the classes that grad students cover. So, the UM has a net profit there, too.

Anyway, sorry this is so long-winded, but as you can see (and I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of the complexities of a typical university budget), it really isn’t as simple as saying, “my compensation package is worth X”. Because in sharp contrast to undergraduates, grad students, in a myriad of ways, bring in a lot of the dollars that cover their tuition.

Anna
posted by Anna on December 2nd, 2003 at 7:04 pm e
anna,

thank you for your interesting post. I did not know about all of those things that you mentioned.

….I did take the time to look up the cost for grad school. Outside of the professional schools (MD’s, MBA, Law), the out-state cost is ~$14K, and in-state is ~$8,000. This is MUCH lower than I expected. I would bet that most Ann Arborites think that the value of a tuition waver is much, much higher as well…..food for thought.
posted by todd on December 2nd, 2003 at 10:38 pm e
Good points, Anna. The U isn’t stupid and wouldn’t be offering tuition waivers if they thought they were losing money at it.

I’d also venture a guess that there is a difference in how employment law treats people who receive tuition waivers, as opposed to those who get paid money. Certainly the U has been very reluctant to let go of the notion that grad students are “scholars” and that the work they put in for the U is merely “part of their education.”
posted by mythago on December 2nd, 2003 at 10:49 pm e
Anna, thanks for the explanation. I didn’t know a lot of that.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 2nd, 2003 at 11:04 pm e
No prob. University financing is actually really fascinating and complicated.

One last point of information: The tuition that you cited for out-of-state grad students only applies to precandidates. All candidates are considered “in-state” for tuition purposes. So, only around a third of grad students receive the $14K waiver, the other 2/3 receive $8K. (I arrive at 1/3 based on an average time-to-candidacy of 2 years and an average grad school stint of 6 years).
posted by anna on December 3rd, 2003 at 10:11 am e
Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
posted by Hickman Lynn on January 26th, 2004 at 5:48 pm e