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Most PhD courses are essentially book-keeping exercises like "Preparing for Qualifying Exams" or "Dissertation Research." These classes, which have no instructo
by mattkrause 9y ago
Most PhD courses are essentially book-keeping exercises like "Preparing for Qualifying Exams" or "Dissertation Research." These classes, which have no instructor and never actually meet; they exist to maintain the students' "student status" so they can get a degree, remain on health insurance, etc. They're worth much closer to $4/yr than $40k/yr.
That said, I do (slightly) disagree with @Fomite. These high (nominal) tuition rates do subsidize the university because they can be charged to outside funders, but this is very, very different from subsidizing the students directly.
The idea that graduate students are receiving too much largesse at the tax payer expense, though, would be hilarious if it weren't so scary.
- Fomite 9y agoI honestly agree with your middle sentence - it can be used to make outside funders cover students (though I'd argue part of this is actually correct, as there's no promise a funded student is in the 'pure research' phase - indeed, none of the three students funded on my current grants are).