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UC Berkeley CS PhD student here. I can definitely empathize with the UCSC strikers---housing costs are also insane here, although we get payed a bit more. CS
by bcsphd 7y ago
UC Berkeley CS PhD student here. I can definitely empathize with the UCSC strikers---housing costs are also insane here, although we get payed a bit more.
CS PhDs here have it relatively good, at about $55K / year before taxes, but it's still common for us to spend more than 30-50% of income on rent. (Even in shared housing, it's very difficult to find anything cheaper than $1.3K / month.)
I do know that for students in other departments, money is extremely tight, and they often have very limited options and periods of housing insecurity. As a side note, the homelessness problem in Berkeley has gone from bad to insane over the past few years that I've lived here. I essentially never leave my house, in a pretty posh part of Berkeley, without an uncomfortable interaction (homeless people in various states of undress, under the influence of drugs, talking to themselves, or screaming).
Meanwhile, the UCs (and UC Berkeley in particular) continue to expand a very expensive bureaucracy (I question how many $500K/year vice provosts we really need). It's not that they don't have the money to pay grad students more, but that they're not incentivized to allocate it towards making grad students' lives better.
Unfortunately, there's an apathetic attitude among many students on campus of, essentially, "doing your time and getting out," since they know, at least in STEM, that there's a pile of money waiting on the other side.
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months and whether the COLA campaign expands to other UCs. The UC administration is very fearful of union organizing (as evidenced by the many weird anti-union emails the university sent out in 2018, during the last contract negotiation).
- eli_gottlieb 7y agoThe trouble is that without overall housing growth, the university can "giveth and taketh away": "grant" a COLA of some nominal amount, while also running a campaign to weaponize towny NIMBYism against grad-students by accusing grads of taking housing that "rightfully" belongs to "real" Berkeley residents, rather than admitting that Berkeley isn't a damned bedroom community anymore and just building some dense, subsidized grad housing on campus property.
- traek 7y ago> while also running a campaign to weaponize towny NIMBYism against grad-students by accusing grads of taking housing that "rightfully" belongs to "real" Berkeley residents What? Why would UC Berkeley want to do that, to make itself less appealing as a destination for graduate studies? There’s zero incentive, this is such a silly hypothetical.
- throwlaplace 7y ago>CS PhDs here have it relatively good, at about $55K / year before taxes why did you quote it like that? take home stipend (not including tuition and fees) is 2250 per month for 9 months + ~13k for the summer. that comes out to 33,250 for the year.
- bcsphd 7y agoAre you talking about Berkeley CS PhDs? My take-home pay is closer to $2.7K / month, with double in the summer. That makes my take-home annual pay about $41K. $55K might be from the year I was on fellowship, payed at a slightly higher rate and without taxes taken out.
- peterhj 7y ago$2250/month was c. 2015-2016 for EECS GSRs (during the semester)
- sbierwagen 7y agoBecause salary is universally quoted as before-tax?
- jseliger 7y agoIt is also interesting to read the first sentence of the article: The 33-year-old single mother and third-year anthropology graduate student 30-year olds should not be starting anthro PhDs in almost any circumstances. Many grad students and adjuncts have made and are making bad life choices: https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjuncts-like-they-do-because-they-can https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjunc...
- whyenot 7y agoSometimes women choose to postpone their academic careers until after they start a family. Some of my best friends have had success doing that. It's not necessarily a bad life choice. You know what can be a bad life choice? Trying to get through grad school, and then finding a job, and then getting through tenure, all while your biological clock is ticking, ticking, ticking, waiting for that day when you can settled down and have kids, a day that in the end may never come.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoBut as a single mom or dad? I can see doing grad school on my own or maybe with a kid and the support of a partner, but not with a kid and no supporting partner.
- NotSammyHagar 7y agoLife comes at you and you have to deal with it. However I can say CS grad school was really hard just with me. I don't know how I would have handled a kid. We should support each other in life whenever possible.
- ethbro 7y agoA few of my female friends were in similar situations. Don't discount the drive that caring for a child you love can provide. (They're all superheroes, and I live in awe of the load they've carried, but I think their child definitely helped them get through some rough times)
- lmeyerov 7y agoLooks like it's gone up sizeably! I was making ~$20K/yr base at Berkeley as a EECS PhD ~7 years ago, and ~double that by interning at top R&D orgs every other summer. It wasn't great, but doable. (It also went +$5-10K/yr depending on when I had brought in some top gov+private fellowships and maybe TA'ships.) The housing thing is real. I lived frugally yet well, with most $ going to rent and then food: just biking etc. Places in broken real estate markets like Berkeley/Stanford/UCSF/etc. should make super high density grad housing: grad students know they'll have roomates anyway, and the univs already own crazy amounts of land, so either univs pay it in salary (they won't) or in subsidized real estate (cheaper for them!). Likewise, donors love paying for buildings. I know many top folks who turned down UCSF and Stanford b/c of this, and that trend has been going up, so it should be a top ~5 priority. I wouldn't be surprised if the cities are probably even more to blame here however for not letting folks build, which is esp. uphill for lackadaisical univ staff. It took forever for UCSF's mission bay campus to build up, and 10-15 years later, it led to an emerging neighborhood for young professionals... and is still not built up as much as it could be. On the plus side, that meant I learned how to live quite well in one of the most expensive US cities on a below median salary. Great skill for entrepreneurs here!
- Ar-Curunir 7y agoMostly agree, but berkeley CS PhDs do not make 55K per year before taxes; my info shows 33K for 2019. If you do an internship this might increase to your numbers, but that's not a given.
- irrational 7y agoOP said that he is a CS PhD, while you say that "your info shows..." Why would I believe your info (from who knows what source) versus someone who is actually in the position?
- Ar-Curunir 7y agoI am also a CS PhD at Berkeley...
- nika1975 7y agoIt is interesting to see so many homeless people in a very rich US state. A state governed by Democrats on multiple levels and full of virtuous people who are full of compassion for everyone (except Donald Trump of course).
- glangdale 7y ago> Meanwhile, the UCs (and UC Berkeley in particular) continue to expand a very expensive bureaucracy (I question how many $500K/year vice provosts we really need). This seems to be a problem everywhere with universities. You may have a bunch of people Talking Big about efficiencies (staff cutbacks, casualization) but meanwhile we seem to have sprouted an insanely large and well-paid layer of middle management. In Australia funding for teaching, research and administration (actually doing the work) seems like a constant battle yet there's always room for another Deputy Vice Chancellor of Something.
- yostrovs 7y agoIf you look at what the provost titles contain, you will find an urgent need to fulfill some political task or to be in line with some political trend. Education (learning how to think) is no longer the main goal of universities. The goal now is to have students be molded into the right shapes that match the political winds of the day (thinking what must be thought).
- polytely 7y ago>The goal now is to have students be molded into the right shapes that match the political winds of the day (thinking what must be thought). Do you have any examples? I feel like I've seen this sentiment expressed before but I can't get a clear image of what people mean when they say something like this.
- swiley 7y agoIt’s because of how universities have replaced vocational training. You want someone who will sit down and do what they’re told and only make noise if there’s a problem.
- Nasrudith 7y agoGenerally cynically it means "because they aren't biased towards my politics and assumptions it is political" regardless of the facts on the ground in a field. Really the closest to "molding" I have seen is more indirect from is a toxic culture of petty academic knife fights with obvious ulterior motives for trying to gin up scandals to get rid of competition for tenure. Like trying to oust a community college professor years later because he made Super Columbine Massacre RPG as a teenager as a satirical art game.
- malandrew 7y agoThose vice provosts are also driving up housing prices in and around the universities where they work.