Those Pampered (Grad) Students
The News relies on a faulty understanding of how universities operate in their story on GEO talks. “The typical graduate student instructor teaches 16.5 to 20 hours a week during the eight-month academic year. In return, the graduate student receives a full tuition waiver, health care coverage with the premium paid by the university, and a salary of $15,199.” Twenty hours a week? That doesn’t sound like a lot of work.
What they leave out is that grad students in most departments are also expected to do research — whether their funding for a particular semester comes from a teaching assistantship, research assistantship or fellowship — in order to continue in their programs. Since the U of M is a research university, it places a high value on research.
If it’s such a difficult, underpaid job, why don’t grad students go find work in the private sector? Why is it so hard to find an empty GSI position? Tuition+$15K still translates to more than $45,000/yr for an out of state student…for a grad student that is absolutely ridiculously spectacularly wonderful.
That’s $5K more per year than my starting salary as an industrial engineer in ‘02—working 60 hour weeks—and $15K more per year than I earned right out school with an industrial engineering B.S in ‘01. I suspect there are a fair number of full-time university employees (who already *have* graduate degrees) that would be quite pleased if the U decided to bless them with $45K/yr.
Poor GSI’s. They have it so rough.
posted by Patrick on February 22nd, 2008 at 2:34 pmPatrick learned how to construct an excellent strawman in engineering school.
posted by Bob Dively on February 22nd, 2008 at 2:52 pmIt is disingenuous to argue that a tuition waiver is exactly the same as a salary. As I’ve pointed out before, this would mean that you take a major pay cut when you become a PhD candidate. Furthermore, if you pay your own tuition, you can take out a student loan to do so. If you want to buy something else that costs the same as tuition, you cannot. See what happens if you try to tell the department that’s paying your tuition that you would like to pay your own tuition and they can just write you a check for the sum.
GSI’s do not believe that it is a grossly underpaid job. That’s a strawman. They are asking for certain cost-of-living increases. When deciding whether it’s reasonable to grant them these increases, we should look at all the work they do that is considered of value to the university. Too much of the news coverage does not do this.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 22nd, 2008 at 2:57 pmIt’s also not just a simple calculation of the value of an individual grad student’s work. We as a society want people to be educated - thus the existence of public schools like UM in the first place. If grad students cannot afford to be grad students because they can’t get enough money to live, then we’re going to have less grad students.
posted by Bob Dively on February 22nd, 2008 at 3:10 pmEr, “fewer grad students”.
posted by Bob Dively on February 22nd, 2008 at 3:11 pmIt’s not JUST that society places a value on research and so grad students should get paid better. The university needs graduate students to function, but the individual departments need GOOD graduate students to maintain their rankings and status as excellent research programs. Graduate students don’t just teach - they run studies, collaborate with the faculty, and make the individual programs important centers for useful work. Comparatively, however, Michigan pays its graduate students less than other peer institutions, and not even enough to really live reasonably in Ann Arbor. That means that we’re loosing superior students to other programs that offer more money. Finally, tuition waivers don’t mean much. Almost ALL PhD programs at a comparative level waive tuition - you don’t get a PhD unless tuition is waived, so it’s not a factor that should be given great weight when considering grad student compensation. I think some people just need to re-adjust the way they think about PhD programs - it’s not just ‘going to school.’ It’s a real, full-time job; graduate students are considered part of the faculty, and they do a tremendous amount of work beyond teaching for 20 hours a week. That means that the standard argument (i.e., “you’re in school, you made that choice, why should you get health-care? Why should your spouse get health-care? Go out and get a job if you want those benefits”) should be reconsidered.
posted by Ashley on February 22nd, 2008 at 4:19 pmI had to decide between Michigan and Anon. U for graduate school in the mid-nineties — the programs were roughly equal in quality. When I made my decision, their stipends were exactly the same. Five years later, and I went to Anon. U for a faculty position, and the stipend at Anon was higher by a couple thousand. Next year, Anon U.’s stipends will be in the mid-twenties.
posted by Anna on February 22nd, 2008 at 4:47 pmWhen I was a grad student at Cornell in the late 1980s, grad assistants did not get a full tuition waiver. Nor was the stipend enough to cover living costs in Ithaca.
When these issues were raised by an organization similar to GEO, the university professed surprise that anyone was trying to live on a grad stipend. It’s just a “contribution” to your expenses, they said. Cold comfort for those of us who didn’t have trust funds.
So, yeah, Cornell grad students WERE grossly underpaid in those days.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on February 22nd, 2008 at 6:26 pmIs this true?:
“It is disingenuous to argue that a tuition waiver is exactly the same as a salary”
The fed seems to include lots of waivers, breaks, and incentives as income. You have to pay taxes on it as if it’s income.
posted by BecomingJaded on February 22nd, 2008 at 6:32 pmWrong. As if it’s a scholarship.
posted by Dale on February 22nd, 2008 at 8:15 pmNo, you don’t pay taxes on the waiver, you only pay on your stipend.
posted by Anna on February 22nd, 2008 at 8:21 pmFrom the National Center for Education Statistics:
“Ph.D. students in the sciences who attended full time, full year received an average of $15,000 in assistantships, and those in engineering received an average of $13,500.”
The average stipend for a doctoral student in a public university was actually $9,842. So, technically, the benefits here are above average, but the figures aren’t separating out research institutions from other colleges, where doctoral students may not be expected to produce as much research.
posted by ex-suburbanite on February 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 pmGiven that UM has top graduate departments in many areas, it’s very misleading to lump it in with every school, including those that don’t attract talented enough students to merit any stipend at all.
posted by Anna on February 22nd, 2008 at 8:24 pmPeople outside the PhD track and faculty frequently elide the distinction between masters students and PhD students. Masters students do a small fraction of the teaching and research that PhD students do (if any). This is largely based on skills and commitment to education, though not entirely. In addition, the opportunity costs of a masters program are tiny compared to those of a PhD program. Students in professional programs often don’t get what the demands of a PhD program are but, when they do get the opportunity to GSI, enjoy the benefits that the union has bargained for over 30 years.
posted by Errata on February 22nd, 2008 at 8:27 pmOne should note that the reason that the number of hours required is listed as “20″ is usually done as a legal maneuver to allow foreign students to have RAs and TAs that do not violate the terms of their visas.
To give you an idea of how low the stipends are at UM, the stipends for engineering students at Carnegie Mellon in the late 1990s were $15,000/yr to cover the expenses of living in Pittsburgh (where a 1-bedroom apartment could be had for $350/month).
posted by Constantine on February 22nd, 2008 at 10:29 pmamplifying aaio’s commentary, GSTAs are full-time students, holding down a half-time job on the side.
as for the stipend, it took me about a minute to discover that CMU and UM both pay about $1,800 a month. i pay my GSRAs a little extra in the summer, so they end up with about $25K a year.
posted by peter honeyman on February 23rd, 2008 at 2:36 amI’m pulling in a cool $20K as a phd candidate. man, oh man, the living is easy!
posted by Living Large on February 23rd, 2008 at 1:04 pmI’m so glad I don’t live in Academialand anymore.
posted by Brandon on February 23rd, 2008 at 4:43 pm