Hacker News Reader

Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I was a grad student in physics for 6 years, so feel free not to offer opinions on things you don't know about.

Grad students are getting an education and a big bump to their future earning potential, often at significant taxpayer expense. What entitlement do they have to have a free ride, much less make living wage on top of that?

View on HN

Many career paths include a steady increase in future earning potential. As for entitlement, they are entitled to a share of the value they bring to their employer. Or at least, if Stanford doesn’t think so, it can fire them.

I disagree. You are entitled to what you can negotiate as your market value and what you accept in exchange for your labor and talents. If grad students are lined up the door willing to work for less because a PhD from Stanford gives them a ticket for the rest of their life, why should Stanford or any employer have to give them a share of value? That's not how most employment works. Or at least not O(n) proportional to the value they create.

Organizing and demanding pay collectively seems to help in negotiations, so good for them for taking this approach. It's not like Stanford can move its grad programs to Mexico like a US car maker and its factories.

Your perspective on taking 6 years to do a PhD is that you feel you should have paid for it?

Didn’t say that. I think that grad students are reasonably paid a small salary to be able to live modestly on, so that more students can be taken into programs. Requiring a living wage to the tune of $50k/yr at UC Berkeley as the standard is not reasonable as a matter of spending university $ wisely, or as a matter of what the role of grad school is.

OK. How would you suggest that students cover $50k/year for six to eight years?

I don’t understand your sentence.

I have two examples of how living modestly as a grad student at Stanford may be difficult.

• There is a University-sanctioned monthly food bank for students. https://rde.stanford.edu/food-pantry-pop-up

• After securing an apartment community specifically for postdocs, the minimum income required for many rentals was set higher than minimum postdoc funding. https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/23/postdocs-say-theyre-fin...

Do I have hard numbers? No, but I’m not going to take the time to gather hard numbers for this site.

Also, telling postdocs (and grad students) to simply live off campus would be detrimental to the University, given it’s relationship with the County.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com