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99centstalepretzel t1_j9keaym wrote

Good for them. Increasing grad students' salaries from $19.5K to $21K is a joke, considering the work that they do for the Temple U. Some of the best teachers I had there were grad students, while their professors are fucking off doing whatever. Hell, even if grad students don't teach, they should be able to fucking live.

Just pay people properly, so they can afford things. It's not that deep!

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DitchTheCubs t1_j9kjylp wrote

Yea that’s basically $10 an hour. The Wawa near me advertises $15 an hour.

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99centstalepretzel t1_j9km631 wrote

Yup. This bullshit is why I left grad school halfway through - it was when I realized that people who go to grad school have supportive parents and/or money/generational wealth. I didn't, and the TA/research job that I had paid me about that much $10-15/hour (but I only worked 20 hours per week, and still had to work a second job to make ends meet). But somehow, I'm still supposed to produce some fucking spectacular work that only 4 professors will read and can have an impact on my career as an academic? FUCK THAT NOISE. It was one of the hardest decisions that I've had to make in my 20s, because *this is what I wanted to do*, and *what I wanted to do* is what everyone wants for themselves, right?! We have all these trite clichés that cover how we're all supposed to love our dream job or whatever, right????

Like, I enjoy learning things and I love the feeling of teaching others about the things that I was excited about - but I shouldn't be taking a vow of poverty to do it (I mean, I could go and be a nun, but at least I consented to doing that). I now work in the private sector as an admin-bot (and have been for about 10 years), but at least I get health benefits and I can afford rent, and I don't feel like a piece of shit every day from out-of-touch professors telling me how I'm supposed to "suck it up" because they did too (while their parents gave them a monthly salary, with the questionable wealth).

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TheeFreshOne t1_j9knhbb wrote

Couldn't agree more. This is also the reason there is so little diversity in academia, if you come from low income or working class family, these degrees are about 5x harder and take more time to become "profitable" in the long run. It's a combination of indentured servitude and professional hazing.

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99centstalepretzel t1_j9kp9l9 wrote

The whole "groveling as a form of hazing, and we hate you until you're utterly broken, and then *MAYBE, JUST MAYBE* we'll love you" straight up killed me.

I came up from one of the worst school districts in the area, and you want me to do WHAT? FOR WHY???????? Oh, bitch, you wouldn't last a second in a middle school fight, you can't be talking to me like that.

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Philodemus1984 t1_j9knag4 wrote

You’re absolutely correct that it’s easier to go to grad school if you come from wealth (of course it’s easier to do most things if you come from wealth). But there are a good number of grad students who earn their PhDs that come from working class or sometimes even impoverished circumstances. I know several here at temple. I myself am an academic who comes from more of a working class background. So not every successful grad student you meet was born with a silver spoon in their mouth. However, being upper class is obviously a huge advantage.

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99centstalepretzel t1_j9knzgm wrote

Yes, I know. There's one or two people from working-class background who make it. You know as good and well as I do that Academia (in its current form) doesn't seem to want more of them though.

Which, again, brings me back to my point: Pay these grad students properly, so they can live the dream that I had. Because things should be better now than when I found them. And the fact that we're still talking about the same shit that I had to deal with when I was in grad school is infuriating.

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Barmelo_Xanthony t1_j9kwdh9 wrote

$10 an hour if you’re assuming 40 hour weeks - most grad students are putting in significantly more time than that.

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threequarterturn t1_j9m5jzv wrote

Yep, I left grad school because my stipend was $12,000 a year in 2009, which was 20 hours on paper, but 40-60 hours in practice, and I wasn’t allow to work anywhere else. The math wasn’t mathing.

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Inevitable-Place9950 t1_j9o5zk7 wrote

Were any of those hours part of your own research for your final thesis/dissertation? Or was it all teaching/research and then you still had separate research to do for the degree?

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rtxj89 t1_j9o9i83 wrote

Yes it’s all of those combined

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Inevitable-Place9950 t1_j9oamrv wrote

That gets tricky in some fields because no one gets paid for their own research but I think especially in the sciences, there’s not really a bright line where the job ends and study begins. And that makes you guys easier to exploit.

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rtxj89 t1_j9oarw8 wrote

Uh they are absolutely paying us for our scholarship just not on paper. The research productivity would grind to a hauls with graduate funding.

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Inevitable-Place9950 t1_j9oifqi wrote

They don’t pay for students’ own research for their final projects; those in teaching or administrative assistantships get paid the same as researchers because the stipend is paid for the labor and studies for the final projects are on their own. But plenty of times the researchers choose (or I’m guessing are pushed into, I never signed up for a research one) a topic a professor is already working on to do their own project’s research and that’s where the line that’s clear for teaching and administrative assistants blurs for research assistants.

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BlackJoeGatto t1_j9tih46 wrote

Yeah but is Wawa offering tuition remission on top of that? This is a vital piece people are overlooking

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saintofhate t1_j9l1b1u wrote

I love how Temple has lost the plot of why it was started as an university but still pays the same.

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99centstalepretzel t1_j9l23tp wrote

I mean, it's REALLY good money...

...if you were an employee in 1884 (The year that Temple U was founded). smh nobody wants to work anymore.

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ogavs t1_j9l3ddj wrote

I was a graduate student in chemistry 10 years ago at a much smaller university and department in the Philly area and my TA stipend was ~$21K. It's absurd to me that that is what Temple offers. Also, just dug through my email for other places I had applied to at the time and those stipends were all in the mid-20s basically a decade ago. They don't really have an excuse especially if they actually want to maintain decent graduate programs.

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BamH1 t1_j9m5j0s wrote

Chem pays more. The whole of the college of science and technology pays ~$30k in order to be competitive with other programs.

The minimums cited here apply to non science and technology grad programs predominantly.

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cygnoids t1_j9mpynp wrote

I can say their bioengineering department was offering 20k in 2018, which is fucking laughable

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Gravityletmedown t1_j9lbd17 wrote

Listen, they have to ensure the Poors can’t get their PHDs somehow! /s

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ConcreteThinking t1_j9l5tid wrote

Along with the $21k are they also getting paid tuition for their degree, paid fees, or a housing allowance? Or just $21,000 salary and they have to pay tuition and fees too?

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Philodemus1984 t1_j9m3xmn wrote

Despite what OP is telling you, it’s standard for tuition to be waived for accepted PhD students in PhD programs in the US, whether elite or otherwise. There’s exceptions but if the program isn’t waiving your tuition, that’s rare and a huge red flag. Professional schools like law school and medical are a different story.

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ConcreteThinking t1_j9o8199 wrote

That's kind of what I thought. I know people that went to Purdue and Connecticut and they basically paid some fees and that's all. The salary they got covered housing and some expenses. I think their out of pocket was less than $5000 a year.

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99centstalepretzel t1_j9l6hz3 wrote

For most graduate programs in the US? It's the latter. Anything outside of very few elite universities and very specific programs (civil engineering is one of the few exceptions to this truism), you'd still have to pay some tuition, if not all of it.

I suspect that at best, it hasn't gotten any worse (in terms of dramatic changes in quality of education) from 10 years ago for graduate students. And that's exactly the problem - it hasn't gotten any easier for them, either.

Thinking of the gutting of funding in US universities, along with bloating the admin budgets that we've seen in the past few decades, it has only gotten worse for grad student funding in the US. In my grad school experience, I know a handful of folks who took their chances at being an international grad student at a university overseas and having to pay full tuition as international students (le gasp!), which still worked out than less than however much they would have owed here, in the States. And their degrees are still just as good, if not better, than some of the US universities.

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neuroguy t1_j9lcdwr wrote

I’m 100 percent in support of the striking TAs, but that is incorrect in regards to tuition in PhD grad programs. Tuition remission in PhD programs is a nearly universal “benefit” for all schools elite and non. However, Masters and professional doctoral programs like psyD do not generally have remission.

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99centstalepretzel t1_j9ldv27 wrote

Even if you do get paid as a Ph.D. student and/or a postdoc, more often than not the stipend that they get is still a small amount of money to live on. Lots of folks still have to eat/provide for their families, and that money has to come from somewhere, whether it's family or other sources.

College athletes get tuition remission, too, but there were cases of students going hungry and not being able to take care of themselves - that's why the NCAA allowing students athletes to make money from their likenesses is a BFD. I suspect grad students fall into this category, too. Tuition remission means jack shit when you can't afford to live.

People just don't go on strike for funsies.

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neuroguy t1_j9lhrtn wrote

Did you actually read what I wrote?

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Miamime t1_j9kzjup wrote

Not that $21K is enough to live off of but they also get tuition reduction and free health insurance, along with other benefits offered to students.

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Angsty_Potatos t1_j9n4x64 wrote

The real kicker is that even if they win, they STILL aren't paying a living wage to the grad students. Like the university is acting like they are asking for 600,000 per year, when they are actually asking for literally slightly better but still poverty wages

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