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PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

nature.com

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Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#91

Post by medvezhenok »

snarf21 wrote: post #45
natly wrote: post #3

Almost as if the STEM shortage wasn't a shortage in the first place hm..

Not all STEM is created equal. While there may not be thousands and thousands of jobs for a biology PhD, there are over 1 million open software/IT jobs. The good paying jobs are focused on what we value as a society. Clearly we value tweets and tiktoks and apps on mobile. We don't value teachers and nurses and lots of other essential jobs. If we want change, that is where we need to focus; find a way to value contrib…

The good paying jobs are focused on where there is a high return on capital (or at least perceived to be a high return).

The sad thing is that people start to think of returns to capital as « societal value » when the two are independent variables

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#92

Post by oefrha »

uberman wrote: post #39

While I agree that PhD students don't get enough cash on a weekly basis to get buy, they are certainly compensated well above what is quoted in the article. International PhD students by law cannot work more than 20 hours a week. Most institutions cap paid responsibilities at 20 hours a week. Most have 9 month appointments, most likely get the full cost of their tuition and fees waved. Most of the time waved costs su…

> effective compensation well above 75k per year

What are you even talking about? Are you counting the bullshit known as “tuition” in the compensation? PhD candidates are really employees, not students.

Even a Princeton postdoc’s comp doesn’t reach 75k. A bit more than 50k actually in the physics department (might have risen a bit in the past few years, not sure).

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#93

Post by muh_gradle »

Invictus0 wrote: post #75
prepend wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is all this tuition even going to? I have a family member who works in the “alumni relations” department of a small, regional public university. Probably ranked like #300 or something. There are like 5 people in the department. They make a magazine, email newsletter and schedule alumni events. It was really surreal when they explained their job and that the department exists. There’s an admin costs problem in…

You haven't presented enough evidence to show that there is a problem. If the alumni relations department is bringing in donations greater than their salaries, they are a net benefit to the university. Even if they don't bring in that amount every year, it might still be a net plus: it might bring in better students, spread the word about the university, and it might lead to big gifts later down the line.

Administrative bloat in higher education is well known at this point, and it's absolutely a part of where student money is going. All I see is a lot of "mights" in your post.

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#94

Post by didericis »

Invictus0 wrote: post #75
prepend wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is all this tuition even going to? I have a family member who works in the “alumni relations” department of a small, regional public university. Probably ranked like #300 or something. There are like 5 people in the department. They make a magazine, email newsletter and schedule alumni events. It was really surreal when they explained their job and that the department exists. There’s an admin costs problem in…

You haven't presented enough evidence to show that there is a problem. If the alumni relations department is bringing in donations greater than their salaries, they are a net benefit to the university. Even if they don't bring in that amount every year, it might still be a net plus: it might bring in better students, spread the word about the university, and it might lead to big gifts later down the line.

> Even if they don’t bring in that amount every year, it might still be a net plus

Or it might not.

Thats the root of the problem. The administrators are the people coming up with the metrics and arguments to justify their own existence.

I’m sure many of them believe they’re making a positive contribution, and the situation is more complex and tragic than just “these are the baddies” type arguments suggest, but there’s still an accountability problem that needs to be reckoned with.

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#95

Post by evolve2k »

Invictus0 wrote: post #75
prepend wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is all this tuition even going to? I have a family member who works in the “alumni relations” department of a small, regional public university. Probably ranked like #300 or something. There are like 5 people in the department. They make a magazine, email newsletter and schedule alumni events. It was really surreal when they explained their job and that the department exists. There’s an admin costs problem in…

You haven't presented enough evidence to show that there is a problem. If the alumni relations department is bringing in donations greater than their salaries, they are a net benefit to the university. Even if they don't bring in that amount every year, it might still be a net plus: it might bring in better students, spread the word about the university, and it might lead to big gifts later down the line.

I also reject the assertion they shouldn’t exist. The “Alumni network” is listed as one of the additional benefits when enrolling for a degree.

Further when the engineering firm you started after graduation with some of your classmates wines a National science award. Getting that profiled in the alumni newsletter could be unlocking a range of oppprtunities for your firm from grant funder interest to new commercialisation opportunity, all coming out of the alumni network.

Just cause the work is quiet doesn’t mean it’s pointless.

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#97

Post by prepend »

Invictus0 wrote: post #75
prepend wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is all this tuition even going to? I have a family member who works in the “alumni relations” department of a small, regional public university. Probably ranked like #300 or something. There are like 5 people in the department. They make a magazine, email newsletter and schedule alumni events. It was really surreal when they explained their job and that the department exists. There’s an admin costs problem in…

You haven't presented enough evidence to show that there is a problem. If the alumni relations department is bringing in donations greater than their salaries, they are a net benefit to the university. Even if they don't bring in that amount every year, it might still be a net plus: it might bring in better students, spread the word about the university, and it might lead to big gifts later down the line.

The alumni donations total about $50k/year and I think there’s only like 200,000 alumnis that exist. The department is five years old and the growth is minimal as donations were like $30k with no department at all.

My anecdote wasn’t intended as evidence.

But there’s definitely a problem. You can look at official sources [0] for evidence showing that admin expenses are 21% at public, four year schools.

I found this article while looking for the official stats [1] that claims the average university in the US has 45 people in DEI. DEI is very important, I think, but 45 employees boggles the mind and seems to be more of a symptom of runaway costs and lack of controls that would allow for so many admin staff on a single topic.

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75 [1] https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/administrative...

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#98

Post by abhgh »

david38 wrote: post #33
FunnyBadger wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely do in engineering - USC and UCLA had most of its PhD students working full time in industry and only part time in their PhD program and grad school generally. I know because I was one of them.

I have never heard of this for computer science. I went to UIUC so I am only talking about the Midwest. How would you have time to finish? A full time PhD works a LOT. I can’t imagine doubling the time to a PhD.

I did a part-time PhD (not in the US, so I am only responding to the latter part of your comment). It's hard, exhausting and can occasionally be frustrating. I gave up most of my weekends during the time. My sleep hours were less than what they should have been - and I did this for years. If you're wondering, it did lead to some health problems (esp. my back), thankfully not major, most of which I've recovered from.

Do it only if research really interests you - this was my case, so the sense of gratification from learning and finding out things offset many of the negatives. Also, having a patient advisor and good friends helped a lot.

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#99

Post by Dma54rhs »

tombert wrote: post #76
BeetleB wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many students do community college for the first two years, and then finish at a university, and end up on the order of ~$30,000 of debt. For people in many European countries, this is an absurd amount of debt to get a university degree. Edit: For context: About 20 years ago, my university's annual fees was $15000/year for out of state students, and $4600 for in state - in today's dollars. Now that university charg…

That's entirely fair, I'm a big proponent of making colleges either free, or extremely heavily subsidized by the government. I completely agree that it's still ridiculous to leave with $30,000 of debt. I'm just saying that, for someone working an engineering job, that is not generally a life-ruining amount of money, especially in comparison to the increased earning potential that a degree affords you (which is, I sus…

Are dormitories / living expenses included in those American debt numbers or you take them as separate?

Re: PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs

#100

Post by throwawayboise »

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #16
tombert wrote: post #7

It's a bit of a shame that the US doesn't really allow part time PhDs (at least not in any of the schools that I asked). If they did, conceivably a lot of these students could get a relatively well-paying job in engineering or a lab or something, and as such the schools could get away with paying less. Part of the reason that I didn't bother trying to pursue the CUNY PhD in mathematics was specifically because the st…

Where is all this tuition even going to? Schools in the US charge an absurd amount of tuition compared to schools in Europe/Asia and yet these colleges are also systematically underpaying PhD students, Teaching Assistants, etc. College Professors don't exactly make the big bucks either. Yet, universities in the US have made put many Americans in lifelong debt. These colleges are all "nonprofit" (and get significant t…

> Where is all this tuition even going to?

Administrative staff, which has ballooned over the past several decades. Many of these people have mediocre ability, don't really do much, but once a position is created it is hardly ever eliminated.

Buildings and renovations. Ever seen a modern student dorm? They are luxurious compared to what they were in the 1980s. It's a constant competitive war as students will actually choose a school based on the living accomodations over the education.

Programs to assist students who should really not be there, and other programs that don't seem to recognize that college students are adults and should be expected to manage their lives by themselves. Do they really need the university to arrange coloring book time to help with the stress of mid-terms?

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