It's okay to be ignorant about how weird things work, but sharing opinions about things you don't know about should be avoided. A PhD "student" isn't really a student. They're an employed researcher at a research institution, working under more senior researchers who are able to attract grant money.
To use an analogy to the trades, the PhD students are the apprentices, the senior researchers / professors are the journeymen. Do not misunderstand, the PhD students are doing labor for the benefit of the university, and getting paid to do so. The problem arises from uninformed people who ask exactly your question, operating on the misguided assumption that graduate school is just more, harder undergraduate school.
Yeah, I was a grad student in physics for 6 years, so feel free not to offer opinions on things you don't know about.
Grad students are getting an education and a big bump to their future earning potential, often at significant taxpayer expense. What entitlement do they have to have a free ride, much less make living wage on top of that?
Many career paths include a steady increase in future earning potential. As for entitlement, they are entitled to a share of the value they bring to their employer. Or at least, if Stanford doesn’t think so, it can fire them.
I disagree. You are entitled to what you can negotiate as your market value and what you accept in exchange for your labor and talents. If grad students are lined up the door willing to work for less because a PhD from Stanford gives them a ticket for the rest of their life, why should Stanford or any employer have to give them a share of value? That's not how most employment works. Or at least not O(n) proportional to the value they create.
Organizing and demanding pay collectively seems to help in negotiations, so good for them for taking this approach. It's not like Stanford can move its grad programs to Mexico like a US car maker and its factories.
Didn’t say that. I think that grad students are reasonably paid a small salary to be able to live modestly on, so that more students can be taken into programs. Requiring a living wage to the tune of $50k/yr at UC Berkeley as the standard is not reasonable as a matter of spending university $ wisely, or as a matter of what the role of grad school is.
You obviously have absolutely no clue how research PhDs work.
Most PhD students are pretty much done with classes after the first year or two. They get their PhDs through research (often writing their own grants) or the vital function of teaching. They are workers. It is disingenuous to view them as students. If PhD students were not able to make a living, very, very few people would ever be able to enter science.
> You obviously have absolutely no clue how research PhDs work.
Somehow my 6 years of PhD in physics begs to differ.
As I said in another comment, grad students are going to grad school and getting a big bump to their future earning potential, subsidized often by the state. I don't think it's an entitlement that they get to do that for free, much less claim a right to earn living wage level on top of that.
Maybe you were doing a CS PhD or something, but PhDs in most fields are not a good good way to maximize earning potential, especially when taking into account lost potential wages and the time value of money.
> PhDs in most fields are not a good good way to maximize earning potential, especially when taking into account lost potential wages and the time value of money.
Nobody made anyone get a PhD in a field that doesn't pay, and so that doesn't mean they're entitled to high pay.
It's not hard to google "starting pay for major x" before making a choice. Nobody should be surprised at what the pay is, especially for someone capable of getting a PhD.
As someone who also spent six years in grad school, I’m entitled to say grad students are generally remarkably unproductive. Much of their ‘research’ work after the 2-3 years of classes is best considered continuing education. Most of them suck as TAs too. They don’t need to make a living either - They just need to get by for 5 years by living with roommates and eating ramen. It’s what I did.
(And it’s not true grad students ‘often’ write their own successful grants. The vast majority of STEM grad students are supported on stipends from their advisor’s research grants or do a TA-ship when desperate.)
But still, I doubt you would have found many grad students who were independently wealthy before unionization. Or at least, in the field where they were lobbying the hardest for unionization, is probably where the most independently wealthy students were.
in addition, many professors and departments discourage PhD students from taking separate jobs, and sometimes its even part of the funding agreement that you don’t take a separate job
