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US universities have been running an interesting scam with grad students for several decades. This is how it works. * Professor obtains a grant to fund some r
by fooker 4y ago
US universities have been running an interesting scam with grad students for several decades.
This is how it works.
* Professor obtains a grant to fund some research.
* The university takes ~80k USD from the grant per year per PhD student.
* The student gets ~30k USD per year.
* The rest is 'tuition', health insurance and other various fees ('international student fee', 'mandatory fee', 'differential fee', some university facilities fees, etc).
PhD students have bogus course requirements just to make this scam justifiable.
Contrast this to the system in most European universities where the student gets a significantly larger fraction of this money. (2x-3x in general, sometimes all of it!).
This is not really a solvable problem because a PhD is the most reliable path to US emigration for Indian and Chinese students, so there’s always going to be a demand
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoI think you just explained the cause. The demand for a US PhD is higher than a European one internationally. Supply and demand. Edit: downvoted for stating a fact that shows US relatively better lol
- fooker 4y agoYou are right, a US PhD degree is in more demand in general. There is a reason our economic systems are not pure supply and demand though, because in that case workers/environment eventually end up being exploited. The US would look very different without minimum wages, environmental protections, and a bunch of other regulations which limit supply and demand based exploitation.
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoAgreed. I am just describing reality not what it ought to be. Also, supply and demand is universal and incentives for exploitation by suppliers increases when demand increases.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- leoh 4y agoThis is wild and when you lay it out on terms of dollar amounts and percentages it really looks like a machine with graduate students coming in and administrative salaries coming out