4 ms·

> I didn’t find any of this to be true Any of what? You felt with the union that you could change your advisor on a dime? How many of your fellow students did

> I didn’t find any of this to be true Any of what? You felt with the union that you could change your advisor on a dime? How many of your fellow students did so? > the university would not be able to provide the same level of service without graduate student TAs Just factually not true. The difference between a senior and a first year PhD student is quite literally one year. Plus, graduate student TAs are not the university's only source of TAs. At $100k/year, there would be many former PhDs willing to work at the university full time. That's what I meant by full time equivalent. My stipend as a PhD student was $35k plus subsidized housing. That's already pretty aggressively close to the upper bound.

dls2016 5y ago
At my institution the 9-month pay was less than $25k per year (from 2010-2016) with subsidized housing (still pretty expensive) and family on MediCal when my wife worked part time. How are you going to replace 50 TAs with full time employees? Class sizes were already 700 students in basic calculus and up to 300 in engineering calculus.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  I made 16-19k/yr as a chem TA 09-11 there IIRC
  - dls2016 5y ago
    The housing situation has become insane since I left!
- hervature 5y ago
  The median household income in California is $77.5k [1]. I'll emphasize household. Your 9-month pay was for 20 hours, that means $25k is actually $66.6k annualized which does not include your subsidized housing nor for inflation. The economics just simply is not there. Sure, students might be able to squeak 10-20% in wage increase at the cost of all other university voluntary support such as student group support and things like free gym memberships. Furthermore, I can very easily see one "professional" TA replacing 5 grad students. Just use HN search to find how many people's advisors told them that teaching does not win Nobel prizes. To be frank, most (not all) grad students do the job poorly. First, the professional TA automatically is 2 grad students because they can devote twice as much time, but then there is economies of scale where they can teach the same stuff multiple times in the larger classes. Again, the number of people would would be signing up to be a professional calculus TA for $100k would be very high. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSCAA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSCAA646N
  - polygamous_bat 5y ago
    Sure, you switch out four calculus TAs for calculus with professional TAs. Who is going to TA deep reinforcement learning, or under-actuated robotics, or any of the major-specific courses that takes a lot of relevant knowledge to actually teach properly? Any of the people out there who has the insights to TA these classes thoroughly enough are gonna point and laugh at you if you offer them anything below $200K. Also, seems like you are completely ignoring the actual "labor" that the graduate students provide for their research labs. The number of professors in Computer Science at MIT who actually writes code at least once a week may shock you, but the truth is, for MIT to be on the top of the food chain someone needs to keep the wheels turning.
    - hervature 5y ago
      > Who is going to TA deep reinforcement learning Funny aside, did you find my thesis? :D. > Also, seems like you are completely ignoring the actual "labor" But I'm not, you are literally not paid for that (unless you are a research assistant). That is "studying" which I keep pointing out is the whole issue. Which feeds back to your point about highly-specific knowledge TAs. The implicit agreement is that the university provides you with the training required to TA these classes in exchange for being a TA. They normally call this waived tuition. That is, they are supplying you with a +50k benefit for free which is how they draw many people to begin with.
      - polygamous_bat 5y ago
        > Funny aside, did you find my thesis? :D. Not particularly, I gave that example because I was TAing that class last semester. Incidentally, it seems we have more in common than I thought! > But I'm not, you are literally not paid for that (unless you are a research assistant). This may be a difference in experience and expectation, but in my experience I've always seen graduate student salaries paid out to Ph.D. students employed by the university as an RA or a TA. If you are neither of those, then you do have to pay tuition to the university. > That is, they are supplying you with a +50k benefit... Which is another problem with not having a union -- the university unilaterally sets these price stickers without anyone challenging them, and then "waives" it and appearing generous. Without a union, MIT is free to inflate the sticker price of a graduate "education" by 20% a year, thus giving students a 20% raise every year while their life situations don't improve at all. The current student body had no mechanism to prevent it or challenge the administration on shady practices, but hopefully this will change with the union. > The implicit agreement is that the university provides you with the training required to TA these classes in exchange for being a TA. Finally, most Ph.D. students after their second year won't even take a class but are already TAing, so by your definition the necessary training is already complete; but they are indentured to work for far below market rate for the three years left on their Ph.D., because...?

dls2016 5y ago

At my institution the 9-month pay was less than $25k per year (from 2010-2016) with subsidized housing (still pretty expensive) and family on MediCal when my wife worked part time. How are you going to replace 50 TAs with full time employees? Class sizes were already 700 students in basic calculus and up to 300 in engineering calculus.

selimthegrim 5y ago
I made 16-19k/yr as a chem TA 09-11 there IIRC
- dls2016 5y ago
  The housing situation has become insane since I left!
hervature 5y ago
The median household income in California is $77.5k [1]. I'll emphasize household. Your 9-month pay was for 20 hours, that means $25k is actually $66.6k annualized which does not include your subsidized housing nor for inflation. The economics just simply is not there. Sure, students might be able to squeak 10-20% in wage increase at the cost of all other university voluntary support such as student group support and things like free gym memberships. Furthermore, I can very easily see one "professional" TA replacing 5 grad students. Just use HN search to find how many people's advisors told them that teaching does not win Nobel prizes. To be frank, most (not all) grad students do the job poorly. First, the professional TA automatically is 2 grad students because they can devote twice as much time, but then there is economies of scale where they can teach the same stuff multiple times in the larger classes. Again, the number of people would would be signing up to be a professional calculus TA for $100k would be very high. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSCAA646N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSCAA646N
- polygamous_bat 5y ago
  Sure, you switch out four calculus TAs for calculus with professional TAs. Who is going to TA deep reinforcement learning, or under-actuated robotics, or any of the major-specific courses that takes a lot of relevant knowledge to actually teach properly? Any of the people out there who has the insights to TA these classes thoroughly enough are gonna point and laugh at you if you offer them anything below $200K. Also, seems like you are completely ignoring the actual "labor" that the graduate students provide for their research labs. The number of professors in Computer Science at MIT who actually writes code at least once a week may shock you, but the truth is, for MIT to be on the top of the food chain someone needs to keep the wheels turning.
  - hervature 5y ago
    > Who is going to TA deep reinforcement learning Funny aside, did you find my thesis? :D. > Also, seems like you are completely ignoring the actual "labor" But I'm not, you are literally not paid for that (unless you are a research assistant). That is "studying" which I keep pointing out is the whole issue. Which feeds back to your point about highly-specific knowledge TAs. The implicit agreement is that the university provides you with the training required to TA these classes in exchange for being a TA. They normally call this waived tuition. That is, they are supplying you with a +50k benefit for free which is how they draw many people to begin with.
    - polygamous_bat 5y ago
      > Funny aside, did you find my thesis? :D. Not particularly, I gave that example because I was TAing that class last semester. Incidentally, it seems we have more in common than I thought! > But I'm not, you are literally not paid for that (unless you are a research assistant). This may be a difference in experience and expectation, but in my experience I've always seen graduate student salaries paid out to Ph.D. students employed by the university as an RA or a TA. If you are neither of those, then you do have to pay tuition to the university. > That is, they are supplying you with a +50k benefit... Which is another problem with not having a union -- the university unilaterally sets these price stickers without anyone challenging them, and then "waives" it and appearing generous. Without a union, MIT is free to inflate the sticker price of a graduate "education" by 20% a year, thus giving students a 20% raise every year while their life situations don't improve at all. The current student body had no mechanism to prevent it or challenge the administration on shady practices, but hopefully this will change with the union. > The implicit agreement is that the university provides you with the training required to TA these classes in exchange for being a TA. Finally, most Ph.D. students after their second year won't even take a class but are already TAing, so by your definition the necessary training is already complete; but they are indentured to work for far below market rate for the three years left on their Ph.D., because...?