How do universities have all these endowments and not pay more?
>> $16,800
This is like 5 weeks of work at minimum wage... You would have been better off with a side hustle at macdonalds.
>> We need better PhD student and postdoc wages.
Living wages would be a start, then better.
EDIT: I fat fingered the 2... that was supposed to be 25... Do note that I live in CA so macdonalds is 20 bucks an hour now here.
Some people live in a bubble.
Also, a general rule of thumb is that postdocs and grad students cost the same! That's because whoever is paying the grad student (either a research grant or a department teaching stipend), also has to pay their "tuition", which basically doubles the cost.
[1] https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/salary-cap-stipen...
In my case, I on-paper only worked 19 hours/week so they didn't have to pay me health insurance.
To address this bit - the problem is (and I think you're actually trying to make this point) - we need biologists. We need physicists. We need material scientists. SaaS is sucking all the oxygen out of the room because the alternatives pay so much less. By the time this thing equilibrates, there will insufficient American institutional knowledge in core sciences.