You seem to be trying hard to not get the point. The work that most PhD students do would be paid (and paid better) if they were not students. Undergrads don’t get paid to be students, but if an undergrad works as a research assistant they do get paid for that. In the case of most PhD students, the university has them do work that they would have to pay a non-student more to do. For instance, when I was a grad student I could have been paid over twice as much for the same research if I was a non-student.
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No, see, he’s just pointing out that researching and writing isn’t REAL work that REAL workers do… /s
Yeah. I beg to differ. I’m making far less now than I was as a phd candidate. But I probably didn’t try hard enough to get a full time position or spend the last 4 years traveling across the country to get 2 year VL positions to show that I’m willing to be shit all over for a full time position somewhere. /angry, bitter S
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That really sucks, and definitely an area that the humanities are shit on worse than the sciences. Science departments also screw teachers really badly, but there is enough grant funding that lab work always gets paid better
A national college teachers union (all job titles and school types included) is way past due.
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If this statement represents your knowledge of the university system and higher education as a whole, why are you still posting in this thread?
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Or we could not have two simultaneous forever wars, and use that money to subsidize college education instead
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Yikes!
Et tu, California?!?!?
Somewhat surprised re: South Dakota, esp. considering what I know about state government priorities there.
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Yep. Note it’s most states that do this, not just us backwood hicks in the south. Shows our collective priorities and how fucked up they are… It’s frustrating.
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As I see over and over again, power and pay (salaries) flow toward the profit centers of any business, no matter how morally objectionable the revenue model. It’s not just “college athletics” bringing in the dough, of course. That’s just the biggest, shiniest, most raucous and public slice on a college’s or university’s income pie.
Science departments’ reliance on grant monies and outside–typically corporate–funding come to mind as well.
Nailed it.
Putting a monetary value on Knowledge is complicated.
Putting a monetary value on the training of knowledgeable critical thinkers is… sheesh, it’s difference between life and death of any healthy culture’s longterm viability. For some of us, colleges and universities were the only place to learn that skill.
When I read that article in The Guardian I was seriously tempted to start a thread in the… I dunno… General category… called “Stay Human” and use it as a first post. It feels like it’s getting harder and harder to stay human in a culture that does not reward us for doing so. Perhaps that is the point.
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That is my general understanding of the US and UK university system. Am I wrong about payments to undergraduates? I know we have grants for room & board (or in the US loans), but that isn’t a salary. It’s tied to the purpose and not considered income.
(I agree with and applaud all of your comment, and would only suggest that slight edit. 
)
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In the US, the difference is that graduate students are expected to do work that benefits the university, while undergraduates are not. The latter sometimes do low-level work, and get paid for that (again, very little), while those pursuing a PhD are expected to do it. When they teach, which they’ve increasingly done, they get paid a miniscule amount compared to professors, often while taking on the forms of teaching that require far more work and time.
As universities move ever closer to a profit-seeking business model, they shift more teaching to such underpaid workers, including recently minted PhDs, who again are expected to toil at starvation wages in the hopes of maybe, some day, winning the tenure track job lottery. PhD students now tend to take on as well massive student loans, which they might finally pay off when they reach their fifties or sixties.
Is there some part of this increasingly exploitative mess that you don’t understand?
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I completely and utterly get that point. And I say it is worth discussing. My point is that the current scheme started as a way to provide support to poor students and has become a form of indentured servitude. That is worth discussing. Not this woman’s particularly bad story. She could have turned down the lecturer status and made more money as a barista at Starbucks, granted at a cost to her future academic standing. She could have studied in the US, she could have gone to the University and said, “you’re closing my dorm for renovations, please provide an alternate”.
In terms of your personal story - while you could have been paid more if you were a non-student, were you paying to be a student or were you receiving a huge tuition benefit for free? I’ve worked the other side of Academia where I got paid less than the “real world” but I got free tuition as a benefit.
And, of course, we’re turning out too many PhDs. I’ve got friends with PhDs in history and philosophy who cannot find gainful employment in their fields. Not really surprising. If a history department with 8 professors is turning out 3 PhDs per year, where are they going to go? Someone’s looking for 20-30 years of employment in their academic field and new PhDs are being minted at about 10 times the replacement rate. Some will go into non-university teaching, some will find employment outside of academia, but academia isn’t growing 100% every 10 years, so there’s still too many.
I did not dismiss your work. Of course there are differences. But being a university student is a choice and privilege in any setting. Whether it is undergrad or graduate in the newest STEM research, English Lit, or studying the Bible, it is a lot to expect someone else to pay you to do it. And God forbid you choose an advanced degree in something like law, medicine, or business, you’ll actually be expected to pay for it yourself.
I truly hope that after all your hard work, you have found gainful employment in academia or in a manner that puts your advanced studies to good use.
What I’m saying is let’s first separate the study from the paid employment. Then look at how the university provides for advanced degree students, especially in disciplines that might not lead to rich remuneration.
For many grad students, the study is the work. It’s not sitting in classrooms receiving instruction but producing original research. It’s a completely different dynamic.
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So wrong it’s difficult to repair that level of misunderstanding.
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Education, YES EVEN AT AN ADVANCED LEVEL, is a critical aspect of modern society if you expect it to be democratic. The university system here and in the UK has been more diverse in history. In the US, more POC and more women, and across classes, have been getting advanced degrees since the 1970s. As privileged as I am, I did not come from privilege. You don’t know shit about me, so maybe don’t make assumptions.
If you don’t understand that we NEED people in the humanities, than you need to wake the fuck up.
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Agree 
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“people”
“humanities”
The irony here: soooooo painful…
I think I will go spend some time AFK now.
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Like there is an acute shortage of lawyers or MBAs…
I didn’t pay for my university education.
(Except for a small administrative fee every semester, roughly the equivalent of $100-150, which included using public transport in my area for “free”, subsidized meals at the canteen, stuff like that.)
I could have gotten a grant, but the way things worked out I started working in the field I was studying from my second semester on. Which prolonged the time it took getting my degree, but meant I already had considerable work experience when I did.
My degree got be well-paying jobs and the taxes I have paid on my salary mean that the state recouped the money it had invested in my education (from primary school to uni) many times over. Giving it the means to invest in the next generation of students.
From where I sit this is a win-win situation.
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