> Graduate students are students. >> Yes, they are. This case is not about that, as it is not in dispute. I do actually think this is disputable. As a late sta

> Graduate students are students. >> Yes, they are. This case is not about that, as it is not in dispute. I do actually think this is disputable. As a late stage PhD candidate, I'm not sure that what I do for a living looks anything like "studying". I and my colleagues work on research problems with variable amounts of input from our advisors. We typically don't take classes after 2 years. I work 9-9 6 days a week on building experimental setups and tackling scientific questions that will be beneficial to both my employer (more papers + more grants = more overhead money for the University and more research funding for my advisor) and to my career. Yes, academia doesn't have a commercial output, but what I do isn't that dissimilar to what being a data/research scientist at a small company would do. People (successfully) pursuing a PhD are almost by definition not "studying" anything; they're advancing the state of the art in their field. To me calling them students seems like a mechanism to depress salaries.