13 ms·

Harvard University encourages grad students to go on food stamps

124 points by haltingproblem 3y ago

sacnoradhq 3y ago
That's rich for "Know your place, grad students. We, like Walmart, condone taking tax payer money (also known as "welfare for the poor for the rich") as indirectly part of your compensation." If you want to be rich, avoid being a grad student for very long or entirely unless it's pivotal to a tangible financial path where the opportunity cost is significantly worth it.
h2odragon 3y ago
Most of them probably aren't eligible. I've been told there's still only 3mo allowed every 3 years for families with non officially-disabled males resident.
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  There are work requirements, but working (at least 30 hours a week) USC, very low-paid singles are eligible. That’s the situation, as I understand it, with these Harvard’s grad students.
thowerasdf2342 3y ago
I feel for them. Groceries are prohibitively expensive right now. I typically only eat one meal a day now or not at all. My salary is on the higher end so I can't imagine what its like for those that are less fortunate.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Higher end for a grad student? Or higher end like a FAANG engineer? Because “higher end salary” and “can only afford one meal/day” isn’t something you hear often.
  - ikt 3y ago
    He's on the higher end but is paying a mortgage on a million dollar house and has a 150k SUV sitting in the driveway, it's tough out there right now :P
- tuukkah 3y ago
  I think one point is what you eat instead of the meals.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
My fault I didn’t read enough of the article before commenting
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  These are grad students. It’s very difficult to suggest they do not work for Harvard.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Soon grad students will be independent contractors bidding on research/lecture/grading tasks in VC funded apps!
    - oefrha 3y ago
      Actually in many universities grad students are already sort of independent contractors. The offer I got from Berkeley for instance didn’t guarantee funding beyond the first year, students are expected to secure their own funding (through advisor’s grant, personal grant, etc.).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zekrioca 3y ago
  The worse is people who had benefitted from social benefits defending these are not needed anymore.
alistairSH 3y ago
This is disgusting. For any institution and any job. If you can’t pay your people a living wage, you deserve to go out of business. Society should not be in the business of subsidizing businesses in this manner.
- ransom1538 3y ago
  In the nine states that responded about SNAP benefits — Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington — Walmart was found to have employed about 14,500 workers receiving the benefit, followed by McDonald's with 8,780, according to Sanders's team.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    All welfare for the working poor is corporate welfare in reality. Walmart doesn't pay a wage that would allow its employees to be housed, showered and fed as they report to work and yet, they get employees that are and all the benefits that come with it. They should be hiring exclusively from the homeless at the rate they wish to pay.
  - polygamous_bat 3y ago
    In a crony capitalistic world that makes perfect sense. Why not underpay people if the taxpayers will pick up the slack? Why not dump waste in the rivers if the taxpayers will clean it up? It's not like there is a penalty for doing so, beyond the occasional slap in the wrist.
  - tzs 3y ago
    In those 9 states Walmart has 312000 employees, so that's 4.6% on SNAP. As other comments have noted there are income limits for SNAP. A single person working at Walmart full time would make too much for SNAP. So would a family of two with both people working at Walmart. It looks like same for a family of two adults working at Walmart that has 2 kids (who do not work). A family of two adults with no kids with only one adult working would be right near the boundary. Without more information on the distribution of family size and type among Walmart workers the Sanders numbers aren't very useful. To illustrate how much family composition can matter, I've known Mormon families that would have qualified for SNAP if the working parent had taken an entry level engineering job at Google, and no one would ever seriously say that an entry level Google engineering job does not pay a living wage.
steveBK123 3y ago
For a college with a hedge fund, <excuse me>, I mean endowment of such magnitude, and PnL.. I mean returns that generally exceed program expenses.. this is pretty gross.
- gjvc 3y ago
  Harvard is a hedge fund which has an interest in education.
  - nceqs3 3y ago
    You do realize the endowment funds 1/3 of the operating budget at Harvard? Calling it a "hedge fund" proves you don't know what you are talking about.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - polski-g 3y ago
      Does the endowment increase or decrease year over year?
      - extra88 3y ago
        Most years it increases, some years it decreases, like in the Great Recession. The University's operating costs also increase basically every year because a large percentage of staff have union negotiated increases that are hard to counterbalance with cuts elsewhere.
    - leereeves 3y ago
      It seems fair to judge their priorities by the salaries they pay: "Top salaries at HMC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard, are always much higher than those of University employees. The organization manages the investment of Harvard’s endowment" https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/07/harvard-highest-paid-employees https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/07/harvard-highest-paid...
snowpid 3y ago
to put into perspective: phd graduants in Germany can earn 48k EUR per year in the beginning. (not every subject but certainly in CS), this is 10 % above average income in Germany and definitely decent. And yes, some phd student decided to stay in Germany because of these conditions.
- fabian2k 3y ago
  CS is a rare exception, the common case is 50-66% of that.
  - the_snooze 3y ago
    Yeah, CS PhD students have way more leverage than students in other fields. A CS student can realistically drop out, join industry, and make more than their advisor right out of the gate.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  So about the same as a Harvard grad student? The Graduate students in Germany get food stamps?
  - dublinben 3y ago
    Adjusted for local cost of living, the Harvard grad students are much worse off. The median income for Cambridge is $112k, so these grad students are earning around a third of that. Said German grad students are earning more than the area median income.
    - dfadsadsf 3y ago
      If said student is in Munich or Frankfurt his cost of living is very similar to student in Cambridge. Also while Cambridge median is high, 30 min drive gets you to the place where median is less than 50k.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      You also have to ask what the median income is for a 22-year-old in Cambridge and how that compares. It makes no sense to compare someone just starting their career to a median based on people that have been working for probably 20 plus years.
atsushin 3y ago
Really disgusting behavior, you'd hope that the richest educational institution would pay a living wage to the folks pushing innovation forward and teaching their students
- bandyaboot 3y ago
  I would generalize this to any extremely rich entity (looking at you Walmart).
fabian2k 3y ago
Do I understand that right that with a minimum wage for grad students of $40,000 they would still be eligible for food stamps in many cases? I don't have a good grasp of the living costs here, but it seems to me that this income is likely too high to qualify for SNAP based on a quick and rough search.
- TehCorwiz 3y ago
  Include a spouse and a child and it easily falls over the poverty line.
  - fabian2k 3y ago
    Which is likely not that common for grad students, at least in my experience. A grad student as the sole earner for a family is not the norm.
  - codedokode 3y ago
    If they are married and their partner works, then it doubles the income. Also if they have a small child there is probably some form of government support. And they should have tax deductions too.
- notjulianjaynes 3y ago
  Boston/Cambridge is a very expensive area to live, but this doesn't nessecarily factor into SNAP eligibility, afaik. A single person making $40k would not qualify for SNAP, but if they had a kid it looks like they likely could get it based on this eligibility chart: https://www.mass.gov/how-to/apply-for-snap-benefits-food-stamps https://www.mass.gov/how-to/apply-for-snap-benefits-food-sta...
qwertyuiop_ 3y ago
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2021/10/harvard-endowment-surges-11-3-billion-university-surplus https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2021/10/harvard-endowment-su...
jmclnx 3y ago
This is were the US Gov needs to do something. Especially for businesses doing the same, yes they exist and I am sure we all know one specific business. I do not know how graduate students work, do they pay tuition or does Harvard pay them for their work ? Also is it for only certain majors. For example do STEM/Law/Business majors get better pay if Harvard pays them ? In anycase, if Harvard pays these students, then yes they should get a livable wage or at least free housing.
- theGnuMe 3y ago
  Grad students are both apprentices and employees. Typically the university charges tuition which is waived if they TA (teaching assistant) or their research advisor (or department) funds them out of their grant or operating budget. I don't know for sure if this is the reason but it is a sleight of hand to either get more grant money into the operating budget. Grants typically allow some percentage overhead, I don't know if research associates are included in that or separate chargeable "line items". Anyway it is like this all across academia except for the "exceptional" students who are recruited. They tend to get everything paid for. UCLA, UCSC, all of them pay poverty wages. Grad students have started unionizing though to get better conditions. In reality grad school in the US is basically an immigration pipeline. We should import the best and brightest. The New York times says 80% of US grad students are foreign [1]. This is the reverse of 80% of all US college students being US citizens. That's absolutely crazy to think about. Why aren't more US citizens going to grad school? Either they are not qualified, which means we are not educating our college students to a sufficient standard, the poverty wages are so detrimental that only foreigners will put up with it. Something is clearly broken. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american-graduate-student-stem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american...
  - kilotaras 3y ago
    > Either they are not qualified, which means we are not educating our college students to a sufficient standard, the poverty wages are so detrimental that only foreigners will put up with it. The third possibility is of course that top 1% of the college students outside of US are better than 10th percentile of college students inside.
lapcat 3y ago
Other recent Harvard-related articles: "Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists" https://dynomight.net/harvard/ https://dynomight.net/harvard/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37076968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37076968 "How Jeffrey Epstein Captivated Harvard" https://www.thenation.com/article/society/jeffrey-epstein-harvard-summers/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/jeffrey-epstein-ha... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37090758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37090758
light_hue_1 3y ago
It's easy to blame Harvard and other universities. But if you focus on Harvard you ignore the plight of all other graduate students around the country who don't have a university with a massive endowment. This is fault of the federal government. We are not evil. We want to pay students more. We lived as students and it was terrible financially. Our grants from the federal government are just not large enough to pay students well. And the federal government ties our hands. Graduate student salaries are limited by the NIH cap. https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-22-132.html https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-22-1... The NIH limits you to $56,484 per student. Out of this come taxes, some fees, etc. Even if I decide that I want my students to live better and hire a few less (which by the way would hurt my ability to get future grants), I am not allowed to pay them more than that out of NIH grants! Most grants (NSF, DoD, industry and foundation grants) are calibrated to the NIH benchmark. I wish these articles would blame the real problem: federal science funding has fallen off dramatically. Even 20 years ago we used to spend about 0.9% of GDP on science. Now, we spend about 0.5%. 20 years ago, about 5% of the spending of the federal government was on science, now it's about 2.5%. We need the federal government to step up science funding if we want students to be able to lead normal lives.
- stefantalpalaru 3y ago
  [dead]
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  That is some grade A BS. Blaming the government. Harvard is a private entity. They can pay whatever they want. The link you posted, and description, is for the portion the government will pay. The portion they will pay for research. It isn't some salary cap placed on the university like it's the Yankees. The University can pay on top of that.
  - meetingthrower 3y ago
    Amen
- o1y32 3y ago
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Late Stage Capitalism is Socialism. Capitalism drives wealth distribution to the Top. The wealth moves from the masses to the few. Then, the poor get so poor that society starts to break down. The 'workers' can no longer afford to live where the work is. But this upsets the rich -> "why can't I hire dishwashers? why can't I hire house keepers". So, the Rich start actually supporting 'socialist' type programs like 'food stamps' in order to keep some bare minimum of surviving population to serve them. If a population is starving, then it is can quickly turn into violent revolution. The Rich would rather chill and have a nice lunch, so they allow a limited amount of re-distribution of the wealth back to the poor (socialism), but just at the minimum needed to reduce the poor's desperation enough to keep them from turning into the violent revolution. The growing trend of vast numbers of people with full time jobs that also need welfare to eat, is the indicator that society is reaching the end game. They are no longer employees, there is no longer a free market for the supply/demand of labor, it is all supply, and all are reduced to slaves. Just happily ignorant of it, because just enough money is allowed to trickle down. But it isn't earned money, labor no longer has value, it is a determined measured trickle down, that is just enough to keep people working.
- sacnoradhq 3y ago
  Socialism* *for the rich, and social Darwinian abject poverty for everyone else. Occasionally, crumbs are thrown to mollify the unresolved grievances. (Social Security was just a big crumb, and Medicare isn't single-payer and is for-profit considering how it's structured.)
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Not sure why there is disagreement. It is clearly happening. https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/walmart-mcdonalds-largest-employers-snap-medicaid-recipients https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/walmart-mcdonalds-larges... I'm not pro Socialism, or Capitalism. I'm saying they are part of the same system. The rich use "socialist" type programs as another means of control. To support the system that benefits the rich. In this case, Harvard (the Rich) benefits from the Government subsidizing the Harvard workforce with welfare (Socialism).
- 3y ago
mtlynch 3y ago
This seems like a rewrite of better reporting by Motherboard: https://www.vice.com/en/article/93kwaa/harvard-tells-grad-students-to-get-food-stamps-to-supplement-the-unlivable-wages-it-pays-them https://www.vice.com/en/article/93kwaa/harvard-tells-grad-st...
TaylorSwift 3y ago
personal experience..in one of the school systems i went to (grade K-12), i had to pay $2.50 for lunch because my parents had a certain income. $2.5 was still a lot to me, so i rather not eat and felt really bad for using my parent's income. i think about it from ($2.5 * 5 days a week) for a whole school year. most of my friends didn't have to pay as their parents didn't meet the income threshold. they just have to show a certain ID for school lunch and get a pass. i remember, i did have some sort of resentment...and the smell of food that my friends ate during lunch even made me more hungry!
ck2 3y ago
There have been several articles over the years showing most Walmart employees are also on food stamps. It's the American way, privatize the profits by paying as little as possible, socialize the costs by making everyone get on income supplementation for necessities like food. Food prices have doubled, so has rent prices, but minimum wage, general income, that certainly has not doubled.
amelius 3y ago
Yes, we should probably get used to the idea of rationing. In a world where resources are getting increasingly scarce it would be foolish to assume we can let the market solve scarcity issues, and let the rich have all the fun without repercussions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing
- krapp 3y ago
  I feel like the more productive answer here would be to simply not allow the rich to own all the resources and have all the fun. Americans aren't on food stamps because there's a shortage of food, but a shortage of access to food due to wage and value theft by the capitalist class.
Sparkyte 3y ago
I can understand a person who is only able to work part time but the FTE of part time + part time should equate to some level of full time compensation. That includes a livable income. If something isn't livable it is because there is a race to the bottom which is happening now because company greed ensures profits above a fluid economy. The economy needs to flow not stagnate to ensure everyone has enough money.
remote_phone 3y ago
One of my friends told me at one of the FAANGs, some of the employees were openly asking on financial-planning internal mailing list in how to qualify their kids for financial aid or grants because they made too much.
- sacnoradhq 3y ago
  Biggest hack: go work for Stanford for enough years as an FTE. https://cardinalatwork.stanford.edu/benefits-rewards/tgp/benefit-points https://cardinalatwork.stanford.edu/benefits-rewards/tgp/ben...
- alistairSH 3y ago
  That's true, there's a niche business for consulting on gaming tuition and aid (as well as college admissions in general). FAANG engineers certainly earn enough that gaming the system isn't necessary, but "don't hate the player, hate the game" applies. For normal middle-class families, planning for future tuition is a massive undertaking.
codedokode 3y ago
Why is there a need for food stamps? Food is not expensive. Isn't a rent the largest expense? So wouldn't it make more sense to give a Rent Stamps instead? I am sure people need free rent, not a free food.
- twoodfin 3y ago
  Indeed, it would likely be better for all concerned if TANF (and Section 8 housing vouchers, i.e. “rent stamps”) were simply cash benefits. But like with the tax code, the government (with no small influence from the voters) prefers to keep some measure of control—no candy bars! extra benefits at farmers markets! Though as you might imagine that control is illusory given most spending is fungible.
  - dublinben 3y ago
    Not being cash, housing vouchers are also difficult or impossible to apply towards a roomshare situation. As mentioned in the article, this is a common solution for students to afford housing, by splitting the rent with multiple roommates. A voucher could easily cover the cost of a bedroom in a large shared house, but will never allow you to secure a studio or 1-bed on your own.
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  Be careful next you're advocating for social housing like a communist.
  - jmoak3 3y ago
    The gov subsidizing rentee's housing payments to existing landlords en masse is the landlords' wet dreams. Not only do they get to capture the income of the rentee's, but also their tax dollars! The fundamental bargaining position will remain unchanged! Before you say "that's why the gov should build the housing", it's important to remember that centrally planned things are generally worse than market planned ones, it's a bitter lesson but history shows it time and time again. Instead of rentees choosing how to spend their money the gov, who only cares in an indirect way, will be making that decision for them. Inevitably someone in this compulsory taxation-gov-built-housing loop will realize their bargaining position and create insurmountable corruption. What would a rentee do, swap local govs to pay taxes to in their city? If you want your gov to help your situation, use the gov to allow people to build more housing. If that's not an option, you gotta start new somewhere else.
mcpackieh 3y ago
Harvard is a very poor university, they only have a $50 Billion endowment. They could not possibly afford to give their students a tray of free cafeteria slop three times a day.
juujian 3y ago
I'm split on this. Yes, a university as rich as Harvard should adequately support it's students. But other than that, there should not be any stigma associated with accepting any form of government support. Students sounds like the ideal group that the government should really support.
- blululu 3y ago
  There should be no stigma for people in need taking help, but there should definitely be a stigma for wealthy people taking government support. Welfare is to help people who can’t get by one their own. Not to pad the pockets of the wealthy. Nobody is criticizing grad students for taking food stamps, they are criticizing Harvard for not paying a living wage and instead taking yet more federal welfare to bolster their massive pile of tax free cash.
  - yowzadave 3y ago
    Should wealthy people feel a stigma for attending public school? The problem with food stamps is that they are designed to attach stigma to whoever uses them. The best way to sort out inequities in who receives a benefit is not through means-testing, but on the tax side.
  - salawat 3y ago
    ...Except at a certain scale, it becomes productive to incorporate the Welfare mechanism into your compensation scheme. Or have people forgotten how both Walmart and McDonalds encourage their employees to utilize food stamps and other forms of welfare? https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/11/18/taxpayers-subsidize-poverty-wages-walmart-mcdonalds-other-large-corporations-gao https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/11/18/taxpayers-s... Say it with me: "Any system I implement to help the little guy will be abused or otherwise utilized to subsidize the big guy unless I specifically address that possibility." It's positively disgusting behavior; but alas, here we are.
extraduder_ire 3y ago
From how this is treated by commentators, I wonder how Chèque Repas systems common in Europe would be received. (basically, a lunch voucher that's part garnished-wages, part employer contribution, and mostly a tax-deduct from the government. in a €1/€2.4/€5 ratio) It's only visibly similar though, since they're meant to be used on prepared food, and everyone tends to get them from the c-suite to interns.
oefrha 3y ago
It’s not just grad students, postdoc pay is crap too. Back when I was at Princeton a few years ago, postdoc salary in the physics department was a bit above $50k IIRC. It really sucks to be in a field where you’re expected to do at least two stints of postdoc after getting your PhD (when you’re already 27 or older).
frankreyes 3y ago
Like the Simpsons episode where Bill Gates buys Homer's company. Bill says: I didn't get rich writing checks.
Cerium 3y ago
Just like with immigrant visa sponsors, any source of full time engagement should be liable for recovery of any public assistance money. Why should an individual be liable but an institution such as Harvard or Walmart not?

That's rich for "Know your place, grad students. We, like Walmart, condone taking tax payer money (also known as "welfare for the poor for the rich") as indirectly part of your compensation." If you want to be rich, avoid being a grad student for very long or entirely unless it's pivotal to a tangible financial path where the opportunity cost is significantly worth it.

h2odragon 3y ago

Most of them probably aren't eligible. I've been told there's still only 3mo allowed every 3 years for families with non officially-disabled males resident.

bradleyjg 3y ago
There are work requirements, but working (at least 30 hours a week) USC, very low-paid singles are eligible. That’s the situation, as I understand it, with these Harvard’s grad students.

thowerasdf2342 3y ago

I feel for them. Groceries are prohibitively expensive right now. I typically only eat one meal a day now or not at all. My salary is on the higher end so I can't imagine what its like for those that are less fortunate.

alistairSH 3y ago
Higher end for a grad student? Or higher end like a FAANG engineer? Because “higher end salary” and “can only afford one meal/day” isn’t something you hear often.
- ikt 3y ago
  He's on the higher end but is paying a mortgage on a million dollar house and has a 150k SUV sitting in the driveway, it's tough out there right now :P
tuukkah 3y ago
I think one point is what you eat instead of the meals.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

My fault I didn’t read enough of the article before commenting

jncfhnb 3y ago
These are grad students. It’s very difficult to suggest they do not work for Harvard.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Soon grad students will be independent contractors bidding on research/lecture/grading tasks in VC funded apps!
  - oefrha 3y ago
    Actually in many universities grad students are already sort of independent contractors. The offer I got from Berkeley for instance didn’t guarantee funding beyond the first year, students are expected to secure their own funding (through advisor’s grant, personal grant, etc.).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zekrioca 3y ago
The worse is people who had benefitted from social benefits defending these are not needed anymore.

alistairSH 3y ago

This is disgusting. For any institution and any job. If you can’t pay your people a living wage, you deserve to go out of business. Society should not be in the business of subsidizing businesses in this manner.

ransom1538 3y ago
In the nine states that responded about SNAP benefits — Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington — Walmart was found to have employed about 14,500 workers receiving the benefit, followed by McDonald's with 8,780, according to Sanders's team.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  All welfare for the working poor is corporate welfare in reality. Walmart doesn't pay a wage that would allow its employees to be housed, showered and fed as they report to work and yet, they get employees that are and all the benefits that come with it. They should be hiring exclusively from the homeless at the rate they wish to pay.
- polygamous_bat 3y ago
  In a crony capitalistic world that makes perfect sense. Why not underpay people if the taxpayers will pick up the slack? Why not dump waste in the rivers if the taxpayers will clean it up? It's not like there is a penalty for doing so, beyond the occasional slap in the wrist.
- tzs 3y ago
  In those 9 states Walmart has 312000 employees, so that's 4.6% on SNAP. As other comments have noted there are income limits for SNAP. A single person working at Walmart full time would make too much for SNAP. So would a family of two with both people working at Walmart. It looks like same for a family of two adults working at Walmart that has 2 kids (who do not work). A family of two adults with no kids with only one adult working would be right near the boundary. Without more information on the distribution of family size and type among Walmart workers the Sanders numbers aren't very useful. To illustrate how much family composition can matter, I've known Mormon families that would have qualified for SNAP if the working parent had taken an entry level engineering job at Google, and no one would ever seriously say that an entry level Google engineering job does not pay a living wage.

steveBK123 3y ago

For a college with a hedge fund, <excuse me>, I mean endowment of such magnitude, and PnL.. I mean returns that generally exceed program expenses.. this is pretty gross.

gjvc 3y ago
Harvard is a hedge fund which has an interest in education.
- nceqs3 3y ago
  You do realize the endowment funds 1/3 of the operating budget at Harvard? Calling it a "hedge fund" proves you don't know what you are talking about.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - polski-g 3y ago
    Does the endowment increase or decrease year over year?
    - extra88 3y ago
      Most years it increases, some years it decreases, like in the Great Recession. The University's operating costs also increase basically every year because a large percentage of staff have union negotiated increases that are hard to counterbalance with cuts elsewhere.
  - leereeves 3y ago
    It seems fair to judge their priorities by the salaries they pay: "Top salaries at HMC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard, are always much higher than those of University employees. The organization manages the investment of Harvard’s endowment" https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/07/harvard-highest-paid-employees https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/07/harvard-highest-paid...

snowpid 3y ago

to put into perspective: phd graduants in Germany can earn 48k EUR per year in the beginning. (not every subject but certainly in CS), this is 10 % above average income in Germany and definitely decent. And yes, some phd student decided to stay in Germany because of these conditions.

fabian2k 3y ago
CS is a rare exception, the common case is 50-66% of that.
- the_snooze 3y ago
  Yeah, CS PhD students have way more leverage than students in other fields. A CS student can realistically drop out, join industry, and make more than their advisor right out of the gate.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
So about the same as a Harvard grad student? The Graduate students in Germany get food stamps?
- dublinben 3y ago
  Adjusted for local cost of living, the Harvard grad students are much worse off. The median income for Cambridge is $112k, so these grad students are earning around a third of that. Said German grad students are earning more than the area median income.
  - dfadsadsf 3y ago
    If said student is in Munich or Frankfurt his cost of living is very similar to student in Cambridge. Also while Cambridge median is high, 30 min drive gets you to the place where median is less than 50k.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    You also have to ask what the median income is for a 22-year-old in Cambridge and how that compares. It makes no sense to compare someone just starting their career to a median based on people that have been working for probably 20 plus years.

atsushin 3y ago

Really disgusting behavior, you'd hope that the richest educational institution would pay a living wage to the folks pushing innovation forward and teaching their students

bandyaboot 3y ago
I would generalize this to any extremely rich entity (looking at you Walmart).

fabian2k 3y ago

Do I understand that right that with a minimum wage for grad students of $40,000 they would still be eligible for food stamps in many cases? I don't have a good grasp of the living costs here, but it seems to me that this income is likely too high to qualify for SNAP based on a quick and rough search.

TehCorwiz 3y ago
Include a spouse and a child and it easily falls over the poverty line.
- fabian2k 3y ago
  Which is likely not that common for grad students, at least in my experience. A grad student as the sole earner for a family is not the norm.
- codedokode 3y ago
  If they are married and their partner works, then it doubles the income. Also if they have a small child there is probably some form of government support. And they should have tax deductions too.
notjulianjaynes 3y ago
Boston/Cambridge is a very expensive area to live, but this doesn't nessecarily factor into SNAP eligibility, afaik. A single person making $40k would not qualify for SNAP, but if they had a kid it looks like they likely could get it based on this eligibility chart: https://www.mass.gov/how-to/apply-for-snap-benefits-food-stamps https://www.mass.gov/how-to/apply-for-snap-benefits-food-sta...

qwertyuiop_ 3y ago

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2021/10/harvard-endowment-surges-11-3-billion-university-surplus https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2021/10/harvard-endowment-su...

jmclnx 3y ago

This is were the US Gov needs to do something. Especially for businesses doing the same, yes they exist and I am sure we all know one specific business. I do not know how graduate students work, do they pay tuition or does Harvard pay them for their work ? Also is it for only certain majors. For example do STEM/Law/Business majors get better pay if Harvard pays them ? In anycase, if Harvard pays these students, then yes they should get a livable wage or at least free housing.

theGnuMe 3y ago
Grad students are both apprentices and employees. Typically the university charges tuition which is waived if they TA (teaching assistant) or their research advisor (or department) funds them out of their grant or operating budget. I don't know for sure if this is the reason but it is a sleight of hand to either get more grant money into the operating budget. Grants typically allow some percentage overhead, I don't know if research associates are included in that or separate chargeable "line items". Anyway it is like this all across academia except for the "exceptional" students who are recruited. They tend to get everything paid for. UCLA, UCSC, all of them pay poverty wages. Grad students have started unionizing though to get better conditions. In reality grad school in the US is basically an immigration pipeline. We should import the best and brightest. The New York times says 80% of US grad students are foreign [1]. This is the reverse of 80% of all US college students being US citizens. That's absolutely crazy to think about. Why aren't more US citizens going to grad school? Either they are not qualified, which means we are not educating our college students to a sufficient standard, the poverty wages are so detrimental that only foreigners will put up with it. Something is clearly broken. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american-graduate-student-stem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american...
- kilotaras 3y ago
  > Either they are not qualified, which means we are not educating our college students to a sufficient standard, the poverty wages are so detrimental that only foreigners will put up with it. The third possibility is of course that top 1% of the college students outside of US are better than 10th percentile of college students inside.

lapcat 3y ago

Other recent Harvard-related articles: "Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists" https://dynomight.net/harvard/ https://dynomight.net/harvard/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37076968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37076968 "How Jeffrey Epstein Captivated Harvard" https://www.thenation.com/article/society/jeffrey-epstein-harvard-summers/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/jeffrey-epstein-ha... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37090758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37090758

light_hue_1 3y ago

It's easy to blame Harvard and other universities. But if you focus on Harvard you ignore the plight of all other graduate students around the country who don't have a university with a massive endowment. This is fault of the federal government. We are not evil. We want to pay students more. We lived as students and it was terrible financially. Our grants from the federal government are just not large enough to pay students well. And the federal government ties our hands. Graduate student salaries are limited by the NIH cap. https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-22-132.html https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-22-1... The NIH limits you to $56,484 per student. Out of this come taxes, some fees, etc. Even if I decide that I want my students to live better and hire a few less (which by the way would hurt my ability to get future grants), I am not allowed to pay them more than that out of NIH grants! Most grants (NSF, DoD, industry and foundation grants) are calibrated to the NIH benchmark. I wish these articles would blame the real problem: federal science funding has fallen off dramatically. Even 20 years ago we used to spend about 0.9% of GDP on science. Now, we spend about 0.5%. 20 years ago, about 5% of the spending of the federal government was on science, now it's about 2.5%. We need the federal government to step up science funding if we want students to be able to lead normal lives.

stefantalpalaru 3y ago
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FrustratedMonky 3y ago
That is some grade A BS. Blaming the government. Harvard is a private entity. They can pay whatever they want. The link you posted, and description, is for the portion the government will pay. The portion they will pay for research. It isn't some salary cap placed on the university like it's the Yankees. The University can pay on top of that.
- meetingthrower 3y ago
  Amen
o1y32 3y ago

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

Late Stage Capitalism is Socialism. Capitalism drives wealth distribution to the Top. The wealth moves from the masses to the few. Then, the poor get so poor that society starts to break down. The 'workers' can no longer afford to live where the work is. But this upsets the rich -> "why can't I hire dishwashers? why can't I hire house keepers". So, the Rich start actually supporting 'socialist' type programs like 'food stamps' in order to keep some bare minimum of surviving population to serve them. If a population is starving, then it is can quickly turn into violent revolution. The Rich would rather chill and have a nice lunch, so they allow a limited amount of re-distribution of the wealth back to the poor (socialism), but just at the minimum needed to reduce the poor's desperation enough to keep them from turning into the violent revolution. The growing trend of vast numbers of people with full time jobs that also need welfare to eat, is the indicator that society is reaching the end game. They are no longer employees, there is no longer a free market for the supply/demand of labor, it is all supply, and all are reduced to slaves. Just happily ignorant of it, because just enough money is allowed to trickle down. But it isn't earned money, labor no longer has value, it is a determined measured trickle down, that is just enough to keep people working.

sacnoradhq 3y ago
Socialism* *for the rich, and social Darwinian abject poverty for everyone else. Occasionally, crumbs are thrown to mollify the unresolved grievances. (Social Security was just a big crumb, and Medicare isn't single-payer and is for-profit considering how it's structured.)
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Not sure why there is disagreement. It is clearly happening. https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/walmart-mcdonalds-largest-employers-snap-medicaid-recipients https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/walmart-mcdonalds-larges... I'm not pro Socialism, or Capitalism. I'm saying they are part of the same system. The rich use "socialist" type programs as another means of control. To support the system that benefits the rich. In this case, Harvard (the Rich) benefits from the Government subsidizing the Harvard workforce with welfare (Socialism).
3y ago

mtlynch 3y ago

This seems like a rewrite of better reporting by Motherboard: https://www.vice.com/en/article/93kwaa/harvard-tells-grad-students-to-get-food-stamps-to-supplement-the-unlivable-wages-it-pays-them https://www.vice.com/en/article/93kwaa/harvard-tells-grad-st...

TaylorSwift 3y ago

personal experience..in one of the school systems i went to (grade K-12), i had to pay $2.50 for lunch because my parents had a certain income. $2.5 was still a lot to me, so i rather not eat and felt really bad for using my parent's income. i think about it from ($2.5 * 5 days a week) for a whole school year. most of my friends didn't have to pay as their parents didn't meet the income threshold. they just have to show a certain ID for school lunch and get a pass. i remember, i did have some sort of resentment...and the smell of food that my friends ate during lunch even made me more hungry!

ck2 3y ago

There have been several articles over the years showing most Walmart employees are also on food stamps. It's the American way, privatize the profits by paying as little as possible, socialize the costs by making everyone get on income supplementation for necessities like food. Food prices have doubled, so has rent prices, but minimum wage, general income, that certainly has not doubled.

amelius 3y ago

Yes, we should probably get used to the idea of rationing. In a world where resources are getting increasingly scarce it would be foolish to assume we can let the market solve scarcity issues, and let the rich have all the fun without repercussions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing

krapp 3y ago
I feel like the more productive answer here would be to simply not allow the rich to own all the resources and have all the fun. Americans aren't on food stamps because there's a shortage of food, but a shortage of access to food due to wage and value theft by the capitalist class.

Sparkyte 3y ago

I can understand a person who is only able to work part time but the FTE of part time + part time should equate to some level of full time compensation. That includes a livable income. If something isn't livable it is because there is a race to the bottom which is happening now because company greed ensures profits above a fluid economy. The economy needs to flow not stagnate to ensure everyone has enough money.

remote_phone 3y ago

One of my friends told me at one of the FAANGs, some of the employees were openly asking on financial-planning internal mailing list in how to qualify their kids for financial aid or grants because they made too much.

sacnoradhq 3y ago
Biggest hack: go work for Stanford for enough years as an FTE. https://cardinalatwork.stanford.edu/benefits-rewards/tgp/benefit-points https://cardinalatwork.stanford.edu/benefits-rewards/tgp/ben...
alistairSH 3y ago
That's true, there's a niche business for consulting on gaming tuition and aid (as well as college admissions in general). FAANG engineers certainly earn enough that gaming the system isn't necessary, but "don't hate the player, hate the game" applies. For normal middle-class families, planning for future tuition is a massive undertaking.

codedokode 3y ago

Why is there a need for food stamps? Food is not expensive. Isn't a rent the largest expense? So wouldn't it make more sense to give a Rent Stamps instead? I am sure people need free rent, not a free food.

twoodfin 3y ago
Indeed, it would likely be better for all concerned if TANF (and Section 8 housing vouchers, i.e. “rent stamps”) were simply cash benefits. But like with the tax code, the government (with no small influence from the voters) prefers to keep some measure of control—no candy bars! extra benefits at farmers markets! Though as you might imagine that control is illusory given most spending is fungible.
- dublinben 3y ago
  Not being cash, housing vouchers are also difficult or impossible to apply towards a roomshare situation. As mentioned in the article, this is a common solution for students to afford housing, by splitting the rent with multiple roommates. A voucher could easily cover the cost of a bedroom in a large shared house, but will never allow you to secure a studio or 1-bed on your own.
WeylandYutani 3y ago
Be careful next you're advocating for social housing like a communist.
- jmoak3 3y ago
  The gov subsidizing rentee's housing payments to existing landlords en masse is the landlords' wet dreams. Not only do they get to capture the income of the rentee's, but also their tax dollars! The fundamental bargaining position will remain unchanged! Before you say "that's why the gov should build the housing", it's important to remember that centrally planned things are generally worse than market planned ones, it's a bitter lesson but history shows it time and time again. Instead of rentees choosing how to spend their money the gov, who only cares in an indirect way, will be making that decision for them. Inevitably someone in this compulsory taxation-gov-built-housing loop will realize their bargaining position and create insurmountable corruption. What would a rentee do, swap local govs to pay taxes to in their city? If you want your gov to help your situation, use the gov to allow people to build more housing. If that's not an option, you gotta start new somewhere else.

mcpackieh 3y ago

Harvard is a very poor university, they only have a $50 Billion endowment. They could not possibly afford to give their students a tray of free cafeteria slop three times a day.

juujian 3y ago

I'm split on this. Yes, a university as rich as Harvard should adequately support it's students. But other than that, there should not be any stigma associated with accepting any form of government support. Students sounds like the ideal group that the government should really support.

blululu 3y ago
There should be no stigma for people in need taking help, but there should definitely be a stigma for wealthy people taking government support. Welfare is to help people who can’t get by one their own. Not to pad the pockets of the wealthy. Nobody is criticizing grad students for taking food stamps, they are criticizing Harvard for not paying a living wage and instead taking yet more federal welfare to bolster their massive pile of tax free cash.
- yowzadave 3y ago
  Should wealthy people feel a stigma for attending public school? The problem with food stamps is that they are designed to attach stigma to whoever uses them. The best way to sort out inequities in who receives a benefit is not through means-testing, but on the tax side.
- salawat 3y ago
  ...Except at a certain scale, it becomes productive to incorporate the Welfare mechanism into your compensation scheme. Or have people forgotten how both Walmart and McDonalds encourage their employees to utilize food stamps and other forms of welfare? https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/11/18/taxpayers-subsidize-poverty-wages-walmart-mcdonalds-other-large-corporations-gao https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/11/18/taxpayers-s... Say it with me: "Any system I implement to help the little guy will be abused or otherwise utilized to subsidize the big guy unless I specifically address that possibility." It's positively disgusting behavior; but alas, here we are.

extraduder_ire 3y ago

From how this is treated by commentators, I wonder how Chèque Repas systems common in Europe would be received. (basically, a lunch voucher that's part garnished-wages, part employer contribution, and mostly a tax-deduct from the government. in a €1/€2.4/€5 ratio) It's only visibly similar though, since they're meant to be used on prepared food, and everyone tends to get them from the c-suite to interns.

oefrha 3y ago

It’s not just grad students, postdoc pay is crap too. Back when I was at Princeton a few years ago, postdoc salary in the physics department was a bit above $50k IIRC. It really sucks to be in a field where you’re expected to do at least two stints of postdoc after getting your PhD (when you’re already 27 or older).

frankreyes 3y ago

Like the Simpsons episode where Bill Gates buys Homer's company. Bill says: I didn't get rich writing checks.

Cerium 3y ago

Just like with immigrant visa sponsors, any source of full time engagement should be liable for recovery of any public assistance money. Why should an individual be liable but an institution such as Harvard or Walmart not?