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> UC can hire a college-educated, generally high achieving, generally highly motivated researcher, in California, for $34k/yr

That's not exactly how it works.

The faculty receives a funding, from a public source such as NSF/NIH, or private source, maybe Google/Facebook, or donation. Roughly 50% of that goes to the the university in lieu of overhead, admin, facilities etc. expense (this should sound an alarm bell to anybody reading). Roughly 25% covers tuition expense- again to the university. The remainder is that $34k you are reading about.

So yes, the NIH/NSF will grant more than $100k of the taxpayer money for one student, but the university takes 75% or more of that and peanuts are left for the grad student workers. If someone is in a good place, they might have $1500-2000 take home every month. If a they are in a bad place, it could be lower than $1000 a month. Basically you'd make make less than half of what a fast food worker makes. But without you, grading, research and all other critical higher education activity will stall.

I think you’re agreeing with me. The university pays the student some absurdly small amount of money. Even ignoring the actual value added by that student, the university collects enough money for doing so that it comes out ahead.

Note that this may not be the case for teaching assistants. One can get a teaching assistantship without being attached to any particular grant. This money actually comes from the university (but the university may still charge fees to the student).

As a bit of trivia, the NSF GRFP is not a normal grant — it’s a highly prestigious grant directly to a graduate student. And it, at least historically, didn’t put up with this nonsense. GRFP gave the student a stipend and the university a smallish, fixed fee. This fee was well below the normal graduate fees. However, hosting NSF students is considered a privilege, most research groups want them (they’re free from the PI’s perspective), and as a result, the universities simply eat the “loss” and waive the balance of the fees.

How is your comment different than what the parent comment is saying?

It makes you wonder how 50% goes to admin costs. That feels like a lot of overhead

I was a student in a CSU (California state university) and a professor nominated me for a award from industry which was valued at $1000. To pass me the check, the university took 20% of the award!

This sounds like very bad behavior, sorry this happened to you.

What did the institution claim the justification was?

Taking an extra cut from a student, a group who are already generally pretty poor, is peak scumbag.

It's called indirect cost overhead. Universities take anywhere from 0-100% (yes, you read that 100% right) of money they take in.

It’s not that bad. They take 0-100% overhead on top of money charged to grants. That means they take 0-50% of the money coming in.

I think that's really bad. I've never seen that high of overhead working private sector.

I'm skeptical of the accuracy of those numbers. I feel like there's oftentimes little accountability in the nebulous academic bureaucracy.

An extreme case from earlier this year, in which a university employee was caught stealing: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089525660/a-former-yale-empl...

How much of this happens on a per-employee basis? What is the expected value of loss if everything is tallied and reconciled?

High end universities regularly mark up most expenses charged to research grants by about 75%. This is the result of negotiations between the university and the government.

Nongovernmental grantors will sometimes negotiate much lower overhead. I suspect the negotiation goes “here’s $1M to a prestigious professor, and you may not touch it. We’ll give you $100k to make you feel better. Take it or leave it. By the way, if you leave it, we will happily offer the same research group $1M if they pack their bags and move to a different university.”

Wise professors with grants with differing overhead schedules will, of course, allocate charges to minimize the university’s cut.

If the donation is structured as an unrestricted gift, many universities take <5% as overhead. The nature of such gifts is that they cannot have, well, restrictions. So you can’t ask for deliverables or any other guarantees that might go along with a normal contract.

In FS2017, the overhead at my department (top 5 ECE program in the US) included the following:

- Library 2%

- Admin & General 9.4%

- Departmental Admin 26.6%

- Plant Maintenance 24%

- Interest on Financed Bldgs 4.6%

- Equipment Depreciation 11.6%

- Building & Improv. Depreciation 11.3%

- Sponsored Programs Admin & GTRC 8.4%

- Student Services 2.1%

Why does this system even exist? Grad students shouldn't even really be students, but rather junior level employees who can switch employer at will if they get better offers.

I did my graduate work in Europe, and I think it is crazy how a bunch of unqualified/ semi-qualified students without their doctorates are teaching in US universities. We had exactly 0 doctoral candidates teaching classes, whereas it is widespread to have masters candidates teaching in US universities - many of which are not cheap at all. They should be students and researchers first and foremost, until they can complete their learning.

You're confusing "teaching assistants" with teaching a class.

A typical setup would be to have a professor give 3 lectures a week, along with open office hours, and design the curriculum. Then to have an assistant or two who are graduate students (people who have a bachelor's degree or master's degree in the subject) who help grade homework, set up lab work, and answer student questions in a 1-hour recitation/discussion meeting.

That's not the case in many places (including prestigious universities - and due to their research orientation, perhaps it happens more, the more prestigious it is).

It is virtually impossible to get into a teaching position post-doctorate in the US if you have not been teaching as a doctoral candidate. I have taught in Unis where there was an entire team of doctoral candidates (and a couple master's candidates) teaching a big chunk of the classes offered to undergrads - not as assistants, just as the listed "professor".

I have also followed open courses online where the "Prof" gives two or three classes in the semester, and the "assistant" teaches the rest.

As far as I know and have experienced, what you are describing is less true every year.

I don’t understand how I, a grad student in the UT system make 37k a year in salary (and was offered something similar by another UT school) when my peers in California make so much less.

What happened to the UC system?

Depending on your department and funding period, this may not be a like-for-like comparison. The 34k is an academic-year minimum; the CS stipend at Berkeley is $50k over the full year [1] (of course, to be fair, it is Berkeley). That said, I do think other UCs pay considerably less and do not guarantee summer funding

[1] https://jeffhuang.com/computer-science-open-data/#verified-c...

> What happened to the UC system?

Same thing that happened to the state and all its institutions - it became culturally and morally corrupt.

Don't Stanford TAs get $100/h for running classes though? Are the wages you mentioned total or just base with a large variable portion?

Narrowly speaking, $100/hour is probably true. However my arrangement as a chemistry phd student at UCSD included the following conditions:

To be eligible to earn $100/hour, you must be a grad student who:

* only earns at that rate for 20 hours per week

* is forbidden to work any other job for pay

* pays $20k/year in "tuition" despite the fact that you don't take classes after the first year or two of your 5+ year program

* also works at least 30 hours per week for $0/hour in your research lab (otherwise your advisor will drop you)

So, when you include those conditions, the situation is really "work 50-80 hours per week for $30-35k/year in an expensive california city". Which people were fine to do until phd student stipends started falling behind the cost of living in these cities for the past 10 years.

Speaking of just other schools, that sounds like that would be without a tuition waver. Typically when these super low stipends are talked about, it is with full tuition paid for. Although I think I have heard that Stanford's PhDs don't get automatic tuition waiving and need to get grant money

"Tuition" is a bit nebulous for PhDs because most of your time is not actually spent doing coursework: my program had students take 4-5 classes the first year, and 2-3 more at some point in the next four years.

You were otherwise registered for placeholder courses like "Dissertation research" and expected to be full-time in the lab. There were plenty of educational opportunities (journal clubs, seminar series, the occasional workshop), but certainly nothing like a full undergrad course load.

You do have to pay tuition for those "thesis" and "dissertation" classes.

In the 1990s-early 2000s, when I was a gradual student at UT Austin, I worked for the university, but not as a TA or RA; as staff, I had to pay for my tuition. At the time, just the "dissertation" class was about $1000 per semester.

do they also get tuition wavers? 34k + free 20k tuition aint bad as a student

Yes but it's not guaranteed every quarter at a UC school.

At least in my department, you have to re-apply on a quarter-basis for TA positions, which are generally highly sought after for its material compensation (no tuition, fee remission, and a small stipend). For research positions, contingent on you being able to 1) produce results, 2) the duration that the research proposal runs. Unless you're a PhD student/PostDoc/PI with a compelling research narrative that is novel and impactful, it can be hard to land grants (many individuals from many schools each competing for the same dwindling pool of funds).

So I completely understand young people striking for more benefits, but truly, it has to come out of the university administrations' pockets. Professors and PIs are like cash strapped entrepreneurs who have no way of raising additional funds for students unless they leverage industry connections. EDIT: I don't have any visibility on the "under-the-table" finances of PIs and professors, however.

If you're a PhD student, you're probably only taking classes for around 2 years out of your 5-6 years there.