
Graduate Students, the Laborers of Academia - jseliger
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/graduate-students-the-laborers-of-academia?mbid=rss
======
howandwhy
it should be written as "Cheap Labor". I can vouch this as I went to graduate
school where I worked for 5 years at 8-10 hours/day including Saturday and
Sunday for $12,000/year to get a PhD in Biological Science. And it was in one
of the most expensive state in US. So could not afford to start a family
because of perpetual state of sharing apartment and not enough money and time
to go out and find a partner. And at the end I was very delighted to get a
post-doc position for $40,000 year at a small town. After working for few
years I was burn out due to constant pressure/stress of writing grant to bring
money instead of doing real research so ended of quitting science. Now working
in a completely different field with much better work-life balance and great
salary. Now a days every time I meet an aspirant scientist ready to jump for
PhD, I have just one suggestion to them. If you can get into top 2-3 school
then go. Else do not waste your time and energy.

~~~
danieldk
_I can vouch this as I went to graduate school where I worked for 5 years at
8-10 hours /day including Saturday and Sunday for $12,000/year to get a PhD_

Well, then don't do your PhD in the US. I did my PhD in the Netherlands, had a
reasonable salary and a good work-life balance. I now work as a habilitant in
Germany (roughly the equivalent of an assistant professor), it's the same:
good salary, good balance.

The primary problem in the Western/Northern European academic environment is
getting a permanent position. So, I might end up in industry in the end ;).

~~~
killaken2000
Are you an American citizen and did you know the language before you went.

I would be interested to know what the process was to move from the US to the
Netherlands for a PhD.

~~~
dragandj
Most PhDs in Netherlands accept English speakers, and they all have many
international students. When you find a position advertized, you can ask them
about the procedure for non-EU citizens.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
This is also true for Scandinavian countries (and trivially true for the UK).
I would guess most of Europe, really. But you probably need to learn a small
bit of the local language just to shop for groceries etc.

The country I would be most hesitant about is France, they _really_ don't like
speaking English, and most French PhD theses are still written in French. This
is really idiotic, all it does is slow down the dissemination of research;
some acquaintances who did their PhD in France were looking hard for a non-
French external examiner of their PhD, which is the easiest loophole if you
want to write the thesis in English.

~~~
dragandj
This is only partly true, but even then, I wouldn't it call it idiotic. After
all, can you defend your thesis in the US in French? You can't. So, why would
it be idiotic for the French to expect theses at their unis to be defended in
French, which is btw also an international language? It is not very pragmatic,
for sure, but it has sense.

~~~
danieldk
_After all, can you defend your thesis in the US in French? You can 't. So,
why would it be idiotic for the French to expect theses at their unis to be
defended in French_

Because English is the lingua franca of most academic fields? If you are
publishing in English conference proceedings and journals, isn't it reasonable
to write your thesis in English as well?

(Note that English is the default language of theses in many European
countries.)

~~~
dragandj
Lingua Franca literally means The Language of the Franks, ie French language
(pun intended)...

------
makecheck
A couple of anecdotes that really drive me crazy.

One, the amount of money universities can shovel at athletics _is insane_. It
cannot be justified, I don’t care how many reasons you come up with. They pay
_millions_ to build stadiums, pay coaches, etc. while throwing chump change at
people doing academic work. I have also seen hundreds of thousands of dollars
thrown at things like ugly artwork and statues.

Two, the “chump change” I spoke of doesn’t even come close to scaling with
cost of living. I don’t even know _how_ there can be students in cities where
housing costs are out of control, unless they are the children of
millionaires.

~~~
harryh
At least for schools with successful football or men's basketball teams
athletics are generally run as basically break even programs. The money
brought in by those two sports funds everything else.

And that doesn't even take into account the large alumni donations that big
time sports programs can bring to a school.

Here, for example, is the University of Michigan 2015 budget (the first one I
found googling):

[https://record.umich.edu/articles/michigan-athletics-
present...](https://record.umich.edu/articles/michigan-athletics-presents-
fiscal-year-2015-budget)

Revenues: $151 million

Expenses: $145.9 million

~~~
ikeyany
Schools like Michigan are the exception. Try Oregon State, or UNLV, or a
school not known for resounding success in several sports.

~~~
dalke
Oregon State - 24% subsidized sports program -
[http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-
sco...](http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-
scorecards/oregon-state-university) .

UNLV - 55% subsidized -
[http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-
sco...](http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-
scorecards/university-of-nevada-las-vegas) .

Then there's Eastern Michigan University, 83% subsidized (at $24M/year) -
[http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-
sco...](http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/ncaa/subsidy-
scorecards/eastern-michigan-university) . With 13K undergrads, that's
$2,000/student/year.

That report points out that some 3/4ths of school have a 25% or more subsidy
on their programs.

------
pm90
From various anecdotal evidence and talking to other graduate students (and
going to Graduate School myself), it seems like the experiences vary a lot,
and they seem to depend a lot on the amount of funding a field or a professor
can attract.

For me personally, I had to teach one semester as a TA, but the Prof. I worked
with was extremely helpful, and would pitch in to help when the workload was
too much. After that, all my semesters were spent as an RA, which is a pretty
awesome job if you work in the lab of a good professor and on an interesting
project, which I did. And many of my friends pursuing graduate degrees in
engineering seem to be in a similar position.

~~~
danielmorozoff
As you said 'good professor'. It seems prestigious != good these days, even
though prestigious does bring in money and can simplify a number of problems.
From what I have seen in STEM at 'top' research institutions the true
delineating factor is the professor/group you work in, money/grants is a
second and project is 3rd.

~~~
_delirium
I agree, although I think that's always been true to some extent, so I don't
know if I'd add "these days". There are stories going back centuries of famous
professors who were also famously jerks and horrible mentors. Some people are
great at advancing math or chemistry (or [insert subject]) but really bad at
mentoring new students. Other people are great at teaching the current
knowledge and mentoring but not particularly amazing at advancing it. Others
are great at one-on-one mentoring _and_ research but kind of meh at teaching
in a big lecture-hall setting. Still others can give great, engaging lectures
to large audiences but are not so good at one-on-one mentorship. Top
universities of course want to claim they're full of the unicorns, professors
who are top-5% in all of: disciplinary research _and_ interpersonal kindness
_and_ large-classroom teaching _and_ 1-on-1 mentorship. But the odds are any
individual will not be equally good at all of those tasks.

~~~
danielmorozoff
Totally agreed. I have long been trying to figure out how an incoming graduate
student may assess the quality of a professor beyond his academic publications
and asking people who work with him. I have come to the conclusion that the
best predictor is reputation amongst peers. I may be wrong here, but from what
I have seen it usually is the most accurate. The issue is that there is no
review site for professors outside of their teaching inside of classrooms.
Would be very helpful in selecting mentors, imo.

Maybe even a matching market, much like medical residency in the US.

~~~
dbcurtis
Yeah. I think getting plugged into the current grad students' social network
and hearing about their profs is going to be good information. Of course, that
is hard to do if you are coming across the country to grad school.

Another thing to watch out for is to make a cold and cynical calculation about
whether or not the PI will still be there when you are done with your thesis.
My brother-in-law had his PI and another member of his committee leave 1 year
short of his thesis being done. Fortunately, they both made arrangements to
continue on his committee so that he could actually graduate, and he did, and
has maintained good relationships with them.

On the other side... I know a guy who was not nearly as far along. His PI
left, triggering others, and that sub-group in the department more-or-less
collapsed. He was on the opposite coast doing a summer internship while that
all went down. So.... "Heyyyyy, my internship is up in a couple of weeks, do
you think I could go full time?"

~~~
hibikir
It's not an uncommon story: My wife's PI got cancer. 3 years in. In her case,
she just abandoned the whole thing. A friend of mine's PI instead moved to
UCLA from San Antonio, and didn't raise pay a cent, or provide relocation
assistance, so people had to follow him. Given the fun rental agreements in
Texas, leaving a lease mid way still makes you have to pay for it unless
someone else occupies the apartment. This made my friend end up in a nice,
multi thousand dollar hole. She did get her Ph.D, but seeing the life of the
postdoc, she gave up on that route herself, and now teaches English in Japan,
crushed by student debt.

Between all the stories like that I have, and the relatively low improvement
in outcomes when things really work out, I am so very happy I ignored academia
and went straight to industry.

------
rubidium
I'd never heard of the 2-week grade strike at Yale. That's bold.

My experience at a state-school, tier 1 research university was that the grad
student TA workload varied greatly by department. I calculated I was making
just under $25/hr while there with the time I put into TA responsibilities. It
wasn't too bad.

Some friends in humanities were swamped though. Most because they cared a lot
and spent a ton of time grading carefully.

~~~
beachstartup
> _Some friends in humanities were swamped though. Most because they cared a
> lot and spent a ton of time grading carefully._

huh, strange. for undergrad i went to a "good" UC and this is the opposite of
what i saw in my humanities TAs. they either didn't give a shit and handed out
A's like candy or graded on a rubric (i.e. did student posit counter-argument
in paragraph N and support with primary sources in p. N+1) while paying little
attention to content.

either way they certainly didn't seem stressed... unlike the STEM ta's... who
were literally going gray in their mid 20s and clearly drank a lot.

~~~
karmajunkie
At least these days, most grad students and adjuncts depend heavily on student
feedback for their continued jobs. It creates a perverse incentive for sure.

~~~
jseliger
A _very_ perverse incentive: [https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/13/what-
incentivizes-profess...](https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/13/what-incentivizes-
professors-to-grade-honestly-nothing/). It also creates an incentive to avoid
anything that could be considered remotely controversial, as I discovered the
hard way a while ago. I was fine, but I didn't have to be.

------
ben_jones
At the University of Oregon it seems almost a yearly occurrence that grad
students strike, usually a week or two before finals need to be graded. I'm
apathetic to the ordeal because whether its administrators, professors, or
grad students, getting payed, I'm still stuck paying an egregious tuition.

That said in every department except for the Math department both professors
and GTFs (graduate-teaching-fellows) have been top notch and gone above and
beyond their duties to educate.

~~~
mac01021
Egregious?
[http://financialaid.oregonstate.edu/review_costofattendance](http://financialaid.oregonstate.edu/review_costofattendance)

~~~
ben_jones
Egregious.
[http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl...](http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=755)

~~~
mac01021
Sorry. I got the wrong Oregon.

They're priced about the same, though, it seems to me. I'm left wondering what
you think a reasonable price is. Unless you're from out of state. Those prices
are could very well more than the education is worth.

------
jrkelly
Getting a PhD was one of the best decisions I ever made. You have your whole
life to go optimize for making $ if you want afterwards. At a top research
school in the right lab you get a 1:1 apprenticeship with a world-class expert
in an area of science you are passionate about. They take 1 or 2 new
apprentices a year. It's a unique experience and changed me dramatically for
the better. Postdocs are a different story (only do that if you are sure you
want to be a professor) but I recommend getting a PhD to anyone passionate
about an area of bleeding edge hard science or engineering.

~~~
dluan
Your view is a bit rare these days. Nearly all my friends who started PhD's
who've dropped out or quit early with a master's wasn't because they didn't
get this experience. They all loved doing the science, that's the fun part.
It's just that as a young scientist it's so clear looking down at the end of
the tunnel that the light keeps stretching further away. Grants, tenure, and
politics are the new extracurriculars needed to show you're capable of being a
scientist.

Being at a top research school probably helped, but the majority of grad
students in this country are not at those types of homes.

~~~
jrkelly
Agree the professor track is tough but a PhD is a great idea even if you don't
want to be a professor. It's just a unique experience that both gets you deep
in a specific area of science and teaches you how to conduct open-ended
research in general.

------
_lpa_
I haven't regretted doing my PhD in the slightest. I've learned a huge amount,
in a wide variety of areas. However, the system in the UK is a bit more
favourable regarding funding. Having said that, the funding doesn't scale with
location. I live in one of the most expensive cities in the UK (outside
London), and am funded to the same level as everyone else outside of London.

The bigger problem I have is in deciding to leave academia. There are still
questions I would like to know the answer to (and I expect there always would
be). It just doesn't seem to make sense to take that path. Low pay, high
competition, and the likelihood of being on a series of 18month contracts for
the majority of your career. Indeed, in my specific field (Bioinformatics) the
career path isn't even that well defined, and you can more easily get a job at
a software company who will pay several multiple of what you could expect as a
postdoc. It just doesn't make sense to do it.

------
chrisbennet
Question: How can it possibly be illegal to get together with others to
bargain? What is the rationale?

If I and my fellow students/etc want to boycott something, compare notes on
pay, share legal actions, or protest shouldn't that be protected by law?

I'm not a fan of unions or political parties but it blows my mind that the
legality of organizing with others is even a question.

~~~
bo1024
I think unions involve a lot more than that. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) For
instance, the decisions a union makes or negotiates for may affect all other
workers even if they aren't part of the union.

~~~
chrisbennet
OK, that make sense.

------
cup
I've always thought that PhD students should band together and refuse to run
experiments for one week. The shock that might have on the current academic
system, when administrators, managers, supervisors and project leaders start
to realise that their careers depend on a constant supply of dependent serfs
might shake things up.

~~~
twblalock
There is no shortage of delusional people eager to sign up for this kind of
serfdom.

~~~
flowereaterz
Probably not too dissimilar to the delusional early employees who sign up for
a startup hoping to make millions from their shares...

~~~
twblalock
That depends. Are the grad students making six-figure incomes while they
suffer through the experience, as the startup employees do?

~~~
flowereaterz
They are not. But are startup employees doing something meaningful, or
building their own reputations and expertise?

And since you're talking about software startup employees, probably the
closest comparison is CS phd students, who are nowhere near suffering. The
vast majority of graduate students are at least as satisfied as a developer,
otherwise whole programs would have disappeared decades ago from inability to
recruit. New admits always ask current graduate students what it's like. There
seems to be this dissonance between people here on Hacker News believing that
everything is like the horror stories of grad students being abused by
psychopathic advisors and at best will get poorly paid adjunct positions
before burning out, and what's really happening.

~~~
kernelbandwidth
There's a lot of variation, both due to school and due to department. When I
did my PhD, I found the Biosciences department to be rather brutal. Drinking
and misery poker (and Magic the Gathering) were the standard pastimes, and
long, tedious hours were the norm. On the other hand, the CS department was
much more laid back, with much more time put into 'cerebral' work. It's not
that the CS students were smarter, I knew a number of brilliant biologists,
but the nature of subject matter and the culture. Biology experiments are
inherently physical, and can fail or die if not attended to properly, putting
a pretty tight time constraint on the experimenter. CS work is much more
forgiving, and much more of it (proportionally) happens in the mind. Biology
is also a much more grind-centered culture, perhaps in part because it lacks a
strong history of internal tool building, while tedious work in CS tends to
inspire attempts to build automation and higher level methods. I think some of
this is the difficulty (tools in Biology are just harder to make), and some of
this is purely culture. I would argue that the somewhat bizarre field of
Biophysics is, historically speaking, the tooling culture of Biology that was
severed off when Molecular Biology became a field in it's own right and the
tools were commoditized, and it's partially this split that's responsible for
the culture there.

All of which is to say, grad school is horrible. Sometimes. Sometimes it's
awesome, and YMMV.

------
vthallam
Glad the NLRB gave decision in favor of the student unions. Though it is true
that unionization in universities "would threaten to undermine the primary
relationship, that of student to professor, advisee to mentor" , the grad
students wouldn't have had to do this if the private universities with
billions of dollars in endowments refused to provide basic and reasonable
incentives.

NYU, for example only recently increased min pay to $15 per hour up from $10
after the union fought for like 2 years. It's a double edged sword to allow
unions in universities, but given the state now, perhaps it's wise that they
allowed them.

~~~
pnathan
A barely-adequate salary for a BS in CS in some rather awful location is 50K.
The _top end_ salaries for grad students are about 30K nationally. Most are in
the 15-20K range. Many times, grad students can qualify for _food stamps_ and
other forms of welfare.

I would suggest that "professional median salary for holder of degree with 0-3
years experience" is the rubric that should be applied for compensation. More
for relevant experience.

Of course, that would entirely shatter the entire US academic system, since it
is, today, built on the backs of grad students working in penury (often having
a blast, it must be said). The _entire_ current system is built around VERY
cheap willing labor.

a remark: grad students working for nil and startup employees working for nil
have a facially similar appearance. The difference is the startup employees
should have some fat options to compensate. The grad students don't have any
upside...

------
finid
Here's where I stand on this:

Without the opportunity I was given to serve as one of those "Laborer of
Academia" during my time, I'd still be paying student loans.

Three years of grad school and I didn't owe a dime at the end.

------
rahulnair23
Grad students are absolutely that.

During my grad student days in a STEM program at a large state university,
professors were occasionally able to "buy-out" of their regular course load
and forfeit a percentage of their salary. The department head would then hunt
for the next best thing - usually an unsuspecting grad research assistant to
cover the offering.

~~~
pgbovine
That's not exactly how it works. Professors can use grant money to buy out of
teaching; they are not forfeiting their base salary. That money will be
(indirectly) used to fund other instructors, which may be grad students. It's
not like the department head forces an unsuspecting grad student to teach; if
they choose to teach, they will be paid for their teaching (tuition + stipend)
so that they do not need to be funded by their advisor's grants. The money has
to come from somewhere.

~~~
mountaineer22
So, the student gets the class at a discount?

~~~
Kephael
Typically the student gets their classes for free, plus a stipend on top of
that.

~~~
microDude
I think they meant, "Does the 'undergraduate' student get a discount for a
class that is being taught by a Graduate Student rather then the original
faculty staff".

As everyone here knows, NO.

