More Misinformation on GEO
The News once again misleadingly ignores the contributions of graduate students to the university’s research output in their story on the GEO work stoppage: “Graduate student instructors teach part time while working on their advanced degrees … The typical instructor teaches 16.5 to 20 hours a week during the eight-month academic year in return for a salary of $15,199, benefits and a full tuition waiver.” Most people are probably not aware that “working on…advanced degrees” often requires the production of research that benefits the university.
By the way, our server has been slow because of spammers. We’re probably going to move servers soon; posting may be light while we work on this.
AAIO, you are conflating *Graduate Student Instructor* (teaches for money) with *Graduate Student* (produces research to earn advanced degree). You can be a GSI and “merely” take classes here (e.g. a Masters student or Med School student). Granted, the U uses GSI positions as a way to attract and support Ph.D. researchers, but the News’ captures the essential issue of the GEO strike–how much pay for the tightly defined set of teaching duties. The Ph.D. is the prize you get for all that research work.
posted by mcammer on March 26th, 2008 at 12:44 pmMore servers? Seriously?
All of the traffic ranking sites put AAIO with only a small handful of visitors:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/annarborisoverrated.com/?metric=uv
http://www.quantcast.com/annarborisoverrated.com
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/annarborisoverrated.com
Like… less than 3,000 uniques per month which is less than 100 per day. Granted, I don’t doubt that much of your traffic comes from non-human sources, but any mediocre shared hosting plan should still be more than sufficient for this amount of traffic. My main site had 4.3 million page views in February and we’re sitting pretty with one not-too-powerful server.
p.s. I was a GSI in computer science at U of M and it was probably the cushiest job I’ve ever had. My general opinion of the GEO is that they’re a bunch of whiny brats who are over-zealous about flexing their union muscle because they don’t want to get real jobs. I’m proud to say I didn’t join the GEO at Michigan and never paid them a dime!
posted by Jeremy on March 26th, 2008 at 1:32 pmNo, I think AAIO meant move to a different server. Not “servers”.
Those three traffic sites yield radically different results for my own Political Graveyard. They can’t all be reliable.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on March 26th, 2008 at 3:30 pmoff topic but we figured you might be interested to see the competition.
http://a2ihateyou.wordpress.com/
posted by jjdl on March 26th, 2008 at 4:00 pmOops… I think I misread “move” as “more”. My bad… Switching hosts might solve your problem if you’re with a bad one.
I agree those traffic sites are bad approximations at best, but they’re usually within a factor of 10 or so. That means that this will always be true:
google.com >> reddit.com >> politicalgraveyard.com >> annarborisoverrated.com
That is pretty helpful information in ballparking a site’s traffic.
posted by Jeremy on March 26th, 2008 at 4:02 pmAAIO, you are conflating *Graduate Student Instructor* (teaches for money) with *Graduate Student* (produces research to earn advanced degree). You can be a GSI and “merely†take classes here (e.g. a Masters student or Med School student).
That is absolutely true. But research universities keep grad students around largely because they do research. Researchers are often funded by teaching assistantships. It’s true that non-researchers sometimes are as well. But the economics of how universities work is simply more complicated than “they work 20 hours a week for this salary and this tuition waiver.” (I highly recommend the blog How the University Works.)
I was a GSI in computer science at U of M and it was probably the cushiest job I’ve ever had.
Offline, I would be really interested to know what class it was.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 27th, 2008 at 10:03 am“I was a GSI in computer science at U of M and it was probably the cushiest job I’ve ever had.”
In math 115/116 the instructor is only contact for about 30 students (if memory serves me right). There’s also a coordinator who writes the syllabus and the exams and does a lot of other management. I think a more talented or experienced teacher would find that instructor position a relatively light load, but as a graduate student teaching for the first time I found it pretty difficult.
So positions vary a lot, and the fraction calculation probably can’t always be completely accurate.
Departments and advisors vary a lot too, of course–some can regularly pull together summer funding to supplement gsi stipends, some can’t. Some have lots of gsi positions to fill, some don’t. And of course some grad students are working in disciplines where time to degree is pretty low and almost every decent graduate will earn a high salary soon after graduation, so they may be able to justify taking on more debt. In other disciplines that’s not practical.
posted by Bruce Fields on March 27th, 2008 at 12:16 pmBruce is right, there’s really no uniform standard. And I should point out that GSI positions, at least in my experience, are given first to students who are guaranteed five-year funding — a determination made on research potential. There are rarely any slots left for master’s students, no matter how good they are at teaching. Of course, the situation may be different in different areas (I’m thinking of science and engineering.) But this sets the precedent that GSIs are mainly researchers who happen to be funded by picking up teaching work.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 27th, 2008 at 1:11 pmAAIO, you are right about the pecking order, and that GSI stipends at least partially subsidize Ph.D. research. However, I still think the News’ writer described the issue accurately & succinctly. C’mon, who in this town *doesn’t* know what “working on advanced degrees” entails? Maybe I could get invited to those parties (egghead-free zones).
Thanks for the link above, BTW.
posted by mcammer on March 27th, 2008 at 2:06 pmmccammer is absolutely right about separating GSI from graduate student. And where else can you find a part-time job that pays $15+ per hour, plus benefits? That doesn’t even include the value of the tuition waiver!
No one in the “real world” gets a 9% raise to do the same job; even with inflation around 4%, most folks are lucky to get a 2% or 3% cost-of-living increase.
posted by cmadler on March 27th, 2008 at 9:06 pm“That doesn’t even include the value of the tuition waiver!
No one in the “real world†gets a 9% raise to do the same job; even with inflation around 4%, most folks are lucky to get a 2% or 3% cost-of-living increase.
posted by cmadler on March 27th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
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If a program wants to be ranked and attract good students than providing tuition is necessary. In my field I wouldn’t consider going to a university without a tuition waiver. If I am lucky after graduation, I can sit on the job market for two years unemployed or underemployed, hoping to start at ~40K. That’s sure worth going into debt to pay for tuition. If you take away tuition waivers, yeah, students will still want to come. Those willing to take on debt or who have money in the bank. These, may not be the best students, they may not be the best researchers. Less people writing and getting grants, less skilled GSI, less great research — see how many years it takes for the reputation to tank. Should tuition waivers even be included in the salaries?
As far as the cost of living increase compared to that of our friends in the real world, I have put my earning potential on hold til my 30s. I wish some one had slapped me, and said what do you think you are doing? Oh wait, they did. We’ve made our bed.
posted by christina on March 28th, 2008 at 10:45 pmThe U is a business. It has employees, who support the workings of that business. Those employees generate massive revenue for the U. The U pays them very low wages. Never forget that nonprofit does not equal not interested in increased revenue - why else would the U have such a massive IP portfolio?
The assertion that 20 hours a week should not equal 15-20K is very thin, given that these people are guaranteed to be at least college grads, and mostly MA+. It’s very easy in A2 to make 30-40K with that level of education. It’s easy enough to make twice that. So why wouldn’t they ask for more?
It’s also worth noting that by and large the work hours for a GSI are irregular. Factor in overtime and things go even wonkier.
posted by David on March 31st, 2008 at 11:13 pm