4 ms·

Can I ask what it is that costs $350 per hour per student? There is one professor lecturing and a few TAs who work 20 hours a week at max. There are 60-100 stu

by anu7df 4y ago

Can I ask what it is that costs $350 per hour per student? There is one professor lecturing and a few TAs who work 20 hours a week at max. There are 60-100 students in all the major classes, 20-30 in more advanced ones. What exactly is the cost that leads to $350 per hour per student? Compute and infrastructure costs amortized over many students per year can't be it. Then what?

fsckboy 4y ago
maybe he meant "credit hours" which is a different thing, I think a 4 credit course means that classes meet 4 hrs a week, but the $350 is for the entire semester or the quarter.
elipsitz 4y ago
The largest classes (CS 61A and CS 61B) have roughly 1800 and 1600 students respectively during peak semesters. A 20 hour TA is paid ~$2250/mo for approximately 4.5 months per semester, plus ~$7000/semester in tuition remission (so ~$17k). $350 is the total cost for the whole semester per student. 17k/350 is about 50 students per TA, which sounds about right (and even that is a higher than ideal ratio). There are other costs too, but these are the some of the highest.
- idontwantthis 4y ago
  Are the TAs grad students? I got $10/hour and nothing else as an undergrad TA.
  - elipsitz 4y ago
    Some are, almost all in the introductory classes (including me) and many in the upper division classes are undergrads. (u)GSIs at Berkeley are paid particularly well compared to other schools, I think in large part due to the TA union (UAW 2865).
    - idontwantthis 4y ago
      Man, my university cost twice as much too.
- kkylin 4y ago
  Things being what they are in the USA, the cost of a grad TA may also include the cost of healthcare. Plus most grad students would be charged out-of-state tuition, which can be quite a bit higher than the in-state rate.
  - elipsitz 4y ago
    Ah yeah, I believe the student health plan is part of it, but I can’t remember the cost. For tuition remission, it’s only the in-state amount, even if you’re out of state.
  - wbl 4y ago
    Every grad student becomes a CA resident after the first year.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  That makes it look like that the cost of tuition is entirely the fault here. Lower that by half at least and numbers start to make lot more sense.
- anonymousDan 4y ago
  Wow, that is an insane number of students. I shudder at the thought of marking all those exams!
  - elipsitz 4y ago
    Grading was actually pretty fun. I kind of miss it! Exams are scanned and then graded electronically, which makes it less of a hassle. It’s still a lot of work, but you have an army of TAs to do it.
_e1bk 4y ago
It's $350 per student per semester, rather than hour. The course mentioned in the op-end is a 4 credit-hour course which typically means the class gets $200 per student per semester to host it Some significant costs come from the massive scales the classes are taught at. This semester, the first required CS lower division class has 1800 students (https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2022-fall-compsci-61a-001-lec-001 https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2022-fall-compsci-61a-0...) and an upper division DBs class has 600 students. (https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2022-fall-compsci-186-001-lec-001 https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2022-fall-compsci-186-0...). It takes a lot of TAs to handle student support, which doesn't scale well in practice. The class I teach publishes lots of videos and documentation about how to do the labs, projects, and homeworks, and we also have a forum where students can (to a reasonable extent) help each other out with common questions. However, the classes teach a lot of stuff really fast and you need a lot of TAs doing things like office hours to help students who didn't understand the speedy lecture, or have a particularly nasty time trying to debug an error. One particularly difficult thing about this scaling is that students typically need TA help all at once. Office hours right before midterms and project deadlines have many students and more bodies are needed just to have good handling of "peak" times Another aspect of TA cost is that TAs are paid significant amounts of tuition remission for their work, and the department has somewhat of a mandate to ensure any graduate student who wants to TA can get full tuition remission from a 10 hour position or higher (I'm guessing this is somewhat of a symptom of skyrocketing tuition and inadequate aid being foisted on the department to deal with). The department used to get around this by hiring tons of undergrads at an 8 hour level so they wouldn't get remission, but they were sued and paid out millions in backpay as well as paying all TAs a scaled remission based on their hour count. (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/01/16/arbitrator-says-uc-berkeley-owes-its-computer-science-tas-5-million https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/01/16/arbitrator-sa...). Generally an 8-hour TA gets paid around $40 an hour after remission and a 20-hour TA gets paid around $50 an hour. [very rough math read the other comment for harder numbers] -Am a TA, speaking for myself
- anu7df 4y ago
  Wait $350 is for the whole semester? So, if a student takes 5 courses per semester it will cost $3500 per year. Why can't the $15000 instate and $44000 out of state pay for this? If even 20% of the tuition is not going for class expenses there is something messed up somewhere
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Yes colleges should break out Tuition into salaries of faculty and administration.

by anu7df 4y ago

fsckboy 4y ago

maybe he meant "credit hours" which is a different thing, I think a 4 credit course means that classes meet 4 hrs a week, but the $350 is for the entire semester or the quarter.

elipsitz 4y ago

The largest classes (CS 61A and CS 61B) have roughly 1800 and 1600 students respectively during peak semesters. A 20 hour TA is paid ~$2250/mo for approximately 4.5 months per semester, plus ~$7000/semester in tuition remission (so ~$17k). $350 is the total cost for the whole semester per student. 17k/350 is about 50 students per TA, which sounds about right (and even that is a higher than ideal ratio). There are other costs too, but these are the some of the highest.

idontwantthis 4y ago
Are the TAs grad students? I got $10/hour and nothing else as an undergrad TA.
- elipsitz 4y ago
  Some are, almost all in the introductory classes (including me) and many in the upper division classes are undergrads. (u)GSIs at Berkeley are paid particularly well compared to other schools, I think in large part due to the TA union (UAW 2865).
  - idontwantthis 4y ago
    Man, my university cost twice as much too.
kkylin 4y ago
Things being what they are in the USA, the cost of a grad TA may also include the cost of healthcare. Plus most grad students would be charged out-of-state tuition, which can be quite a bit higher than the in-state rate.
- elipsitz 4y ago
  Ah yeah, I believe the student health plan is part of it, but I can’t remember the cost. For tuition remission, it’s only the in-state amount, even if you’re out of state.
- wbl 4y ago
  Every grad student becomes a CA resident after the first year.
Ekaros 4y ago
That makes it look like that the cost of tuition is entirely the fault here. Lower that by half at least and numbers start to make lot more sense.
anonymousDan 4y ago
Wow, that is an insane number of students. I shudder at the thought of marking all those exams!
- elipsitz 4y ago
  Grading was actually pretty fun. I kind of miss it! Exams are scanned and then graded electronically, which makes it less of a hassle. It’s still a lot of work, but you have an army of TAs to do it.

_e1bk 4y ago

It's $350 per student per semester, rather than hour. The course mentioned in the op-end is a 4 credit-hour course which typically means the class gets $200 per student per semester to host it Some significant costs come from the massive scales the classes are taught at. This semester, the first required CS lower division class has 1800 students (https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2022-fall-compsci-61a-001-lec-001 https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2022-fall-compsci-61a-0...) and an upper division DBs class has 600 students. (https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2022-fall-compsci-186-001-lec-001 https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2022-fall-compsci-186-0...). It takes a lot of TAs to handle student support, which doesn't scale well in practice. The class I teach publishes lots of videos and documentation about how to do the labs, projects, and homeworks, and we also have a forum where students can (to a reasonable extent) help each other out with common questions. However, the classes teach a lot of stuff really fast and you need a lot of TAs doing things like office hours to help students who didn't understand the speedy lecture, or have a particularly nasty time trying to debug an error. One particularly difficult thing about this scaling is that students typically need TA help all at once. Office hours right before midterms and project deadlines have many students and more bodies are needed just to have good handling of "peak" times Another aspect of TA cost is that TAs are paid significant amounts of tuition remission for their work, and the department has somewhat of a mandate to ensure any graduate student who wants to TA can get full tuition remission from a 10 hour position or higher (I'm guessing this is somewhat of a symptom of skyrocketing tuition and inadequate aid being foisted on the department to deal with). The department used to get around this by hiring tons of undergrads at an 8 hour level so they wouldn't get remission, but they were sued and paid out millions in backpay as well as paying all TAs a scaled remission based on their hour count. (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/01/16/arbitrator-says-uc-berkeley-owes-its-computer-science-tas-5-million https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/01/16/arbitrator-sa...). Generally an 8-hour TA gets paid around $40 an hour after remission and a 20-hour TA gets paid around $50 an hour. [very rough math read the other comment for harder numbers] -Am a TA, speaking for myself

anu7df 4y ago
Wait $350 is for the whole semester? So, if a student takes 5 courses per semester it will cost $3500 per year. Why can't the $15000 instate and $44000 out of state pay for this? If even 20% of the tuition is not going for class expenses there is something messed up somewhere

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Yes colleges should break out Tuition into salaries of faculty and administration.