"Problem is, “graduate students” are not students. They are workers."
Graduate students are both.
My students benefit heavily from me not necessarily treating them to the same standards as I would treat a full time research employee. And while they are the primary workhorses of research, there are large swathes of their graduate student careers where they are not particularly (or often negatively) productive.
I will take a chance on a promising student straight out of undergrad who seems like they might be interesting, knowing that it will take them some time to get their feet under them.
That would be very different if they were employees.
Should we build in more protection and better benefits for graduate students, both from the perspective of them being students and employees? Absolutely. But they are students.
As a current CS PhD in the US I find this sentiment aggravating. I am not a mere "student", I am a full-time employee. I do not take classes and I am not interested in taking classes. I would either like to teach or work on my research in a collaborative environment with other like-minded peers.
Many PhDs are in their late 20s/early 30s, coming from all swaths of life. They are not children. However, in the American education system they are treated as if they were. While this sentiment can have its perks, as shown in the OP, it also means PhDs do not get proper contracts, pay, benefits, or any voice.
Thankfully, I managed to maneuver myself into a position that is livable but I frequently talk to other CS PhDs from other American institutions. It is depressing to hear what people have to put up with in their degree. Sure, the PhD requires initial training, but the ramp-up is not so slow that it is necessary to be stuck in the same serf status for 5+ years.
Unfortunately, I think this is a systemic issue that is not easy to solve.
> I am not a mere "student", I am a full-time employee.
Isn't 'student' the preferable option here? I was proud to be a student when I was doing my PhD. (I said 'doctoral student' when I wanted to be more clear.) Why do you want to work for someone else, on their hours, answerable to them, doing their research and teaching their classes, instead of working on your own research?
I can't understand why you'd want to be an employee?!
>Why do you want to work for someone else, on their hours, answerable to them, doing their research and teaching their classes
Well, you are still forced to do all that. After all, you often depend on your advisor's funding or expectations. They can make or break you. You get "freedom", but with that freedom
1) you do not have an actual contract listing your hours or any sort of vacation policy.
2) vacations in general are not a thing (it is really important to submit that paper over Christmas).
3) health benefits and family support depend on the whims of the department, any sort of pension plan is unheard of.
4) you sometimes get paid, sometimes not (depending on whether some administrative clerk "forgets" to put you on payroll this term).
5) you are expected to find other work over three months in the summer (but at the same time must continue your research, there is that deadline we REALLY need to hit, do NOT waste your time trying to earn money).
6) as F1 student you are not permitted to find other means of income unless approved by your advisor or department. If they approve, they have to approve every single term (good luck with that).
7) you can try to pursue your own research but then you should also expect to be isolated, receiving no support or feedback from either your lab, peers, or advisor. This is one of the most common stories. Usually, these students just wither away or drop out.
These are not isolated issues, mind you. This is pretty common across the board from what I have seen. And all of these issues are tolerable, if you were at least paid a living wage. But commonly the pay you get barely covers the rent in the city you live in.
Thankfully, I am in a better position and I have an accommodating advisor, but I still think this is a depressing state of affairs.
I don’t disbelieve your post, I’m sure you’re speaking from experience, but this is a YMMV kind of deal.
1) I did have a contract listing hours, and the vacation policy was the academic calendar: a week in the fall, 5 weeks in the winter, a week in the spring, 3 months in the summer.
2) I didn’t experience any work whatsoever during Christmas
3) Didn’t have a pension plan, but the University did offer reasonable health benefits, and the ACA covered the rest of my family at a low premium.
4) I definitely got paid regularly through the University payroll system.
5) I was given summer contracts to continue doing paid research over the summer. This was a choice, I could have taken internships or a vacation.
6) This is more of an issue with US visas, not really something academics can control
7) I was definitely well supported by my lab, peers, and advisors when I pursued my own research goals. They were very eager to see my results.
I wouldn’t say that your bullet points really represent my institution, so “across the board” usually has a boundary at a specific department or school. I wouldn’t generalize your or my experience to all schools, as they can vary substantially.
Yeah, I fully believe OPs experience as I have heard horror stories but similarly my experience with an engineering PhD was that we were treated well. We had contracts, semi-reasonable pay, vacation, healthcare etc.
5) you are expected to find other work over three months in the summer (but at the same time must continue your research, there is that deadline we REALLY need to hit, do NOT waste your time trying to earn money).
Yeah, this is very true, and it's degenerate, because research is a 12-month job and deserves a 12-month salary.
It seems to me that academia takes advantage of extremely smart people (and delusional middling-smart people) because it knows they have nowhere else to go. If you're a legit 140+, you're at the level where corporate America becomes to become a non-option because you're just too different, if not necessarily from the other people, from what you are expected to be as a subordinate.
That's a union as in, we're students getting together to have fun.
People here are talking about a union as in organized labor. Where you have a leadership who negotiates a contract with the university, where you're a dues paying member, where you go on strike when advisors systematically abuse students.
> Where you have a leadership who negotiates a contract with the university, where you're a dues paying member, where you go on strike when advisors systematically abuse students.
The NUS does all these things though. They have a leadership who negotiates with the university, they strike sometimes (a bit self-defeating - nobody suffers except their own education,) they take dues from you (via the university, so you don't see them.) They even campaign against politicians, and once made a concerted effort to get members of parliament unseated. That's more than most blue-collar unions do.
Except negotiate contracts, as you don't have a contract because... you're a student not labour - the crux of the issue under discussion!
But you're right I wasn't part of it - I opted out because as I say all they really achieved was running a mediocre cafe.
My son is currently working on his Ph.D. in CS. I've been working in industry for nearly 40 years. Let me address some of your points.
1. Many, many jobs don't have an actual contract listing your hours or any sort of vacation policy. Even for the jobs that do, there's no guarantee you'll actually be able to take your vacation, or take it when you'd like.
2. See (1). Vacations are almost always worked around projects. I grew up in an engineering environment and I can tell you that's just life in an engineering environment.
3. Many universities offer student health plans. And check your calendar - the year is 2022. Pensions don't exist anywhere - at least not for new employees.
4. I've experienced that working for a start-up too. It happens.
5. My son hasn't had a problem finding work over the summer - that's the bulk of his income. Yes, he also has to continue his research. But, working 60-80 hours per week for 3 months per year is pretty much normal at many places. Whether that should be the case or not is another issue, but I don't see the Ph.D. student getting hit particularly harder than anyone else.
6. The trick is to align your jobs with your research. My son hasn't had problems in that regard. Also, CS departments like to forge and maintain contacts in private industry. So there's research alignment and department alignment to think about.
7. Pursuing your own research that's not aligned with your department isn't smart. After all, you chose that department - weren't you into what they were researching? Hadn't you talked about what kinds of things you were interested in before they brought you on? This is a two-way street - there's things they're looking to get from you and there's things you're looking to get from them. Also, no person is an island - you're going to need help. No one is likely to help you if you're viewed as a maverick who isn't aligned with the department goals.
You are correct that the wages are barely livable. I can tell you from the experience my daughter had in pursuing a Ph.D. that the stipends for CS students are considerably higher than the stipends available for other fields in science. Plus the CS students have the opportunity to work over the Summer and make the "big bucks." Altogether you should be making $60K-$70K per year, which isn't a lot as far as CS grads go, but it's considerably better than subsistence living. That's the equivalent of making $30-$45 per hour which is a wage most Americans would find damn good, and can only dream about earning that kind of money.
All told, there's a lot you have to go through to get a Ph.D. and lots of it is politicking. That's why smart people hire Ph.D. grads - they know they're people who can work against the long odds and still come out successful. That's a desirable trait to have in the people you hire.
So yes, you can easily make double the money you're currently making, but you're never going to have the opportunity to research as you do now. Hopefully you chose your department wisely and are aligned with the kind of research they're into.
>You are correct that the wages are barely livable. I can tell you from the experience my daughter had in pursuing a Ph.D. that the stipends for CS students are considerably higher than the stipends available for other fields in science. Plus the CS students have the opportunity to work over the Summer and make the "big bucks." Altogether you should be making $60K-$70K per year, which isn't a lot as far as CS grads go, but it's considerably better than subsistence living. That's the equivalent of making $30-$45 per hour which is a wage most Americans would find damn good, and can only dream about earning that kind of money.
This is almost totally unique to CS students and frankly many advisors may not allow their students to skip the opportunity to do more research over the summer.
I'm not sure why you spent so much time defending the PhD system in the US which is frankly broken and borderline abusive.
I'm not sure why you spent so much time defending the PhD system in the US which is frankly broken and borderline abusive.
C'mon - the entire U.S. employment system is broken. What I'm saying is let's not pretend it's only the Ph.D. students getting screwed over. The implication was your life would be so much better if you just went to private industry. No it won't, at least not in the U.S. I guess all that is to say employment in general in the U.S. is broken and borderline abusive (though I'd argue there's no borderline - it's abusive). But hey - I can either emigrate to another country where I have few friends and no family (the bulk of my friends an all of my family is here in the U.S.) or you suffer through their game so you can put a roof over your head and food on the table. I think it's time we acknowledge the quality of life in the U.S. isn't all it's cracked up to be. Oh sure, it could be worse - and boy, don't they always remind you about that! - but it could also be a lot better, which is something they rarely talk about. I guess I'm supposed to be happy I can carry my gun anywhere without needing a concealed carry permit. Apparently none of our other problems matter.
Let me clarify that I do not have all these issues. I am doing well for myself. This is partially because of my own cynicism, partially because of good mentors, and partially because of plain luck.
However, not everyone has that luxury. The list I gave is a list of problems I personally witnessed friends/colleagues go through. I also have worked a fair bit of industry, so I know that these patterns are not normal or in any way acceptable.
And yes, with clever strategizing you can find your way around being exploited. However, my point is that this should not be normal. Contractual working conditions would at least give you baseline protection.
And of course, there are always worse conditions to be in in the US (except maybe the students whose immigration status depends on the whim of their advisor) but we should hold universities to higher standards than that.
>Plus the CS students have the opportunity to work over the Summer and make the "big bucks." Altogether you should be making $60K-$70K per year, which isn't a lot as far as CS grads go, but it's considerably better than subsistence living. That's the equivalent of making $30-$45 per hour which is a wage most Americans would find damn good, and can only dream about earning that kind of money.
Just want to point out that this depends. For example, if you are an F1 student you will have to get your internship approved. This can be a lengthy, uncertain process. Some departments/advisors also expect you to not do internships at all as they prefer you to do research instead. Now 60k is also not guaranteed. In NYC universities for example, a full year of funding will net you a ~40k salary before taxes, iff you manage to acquire funding over the summer. Students are thrifty and typically find a way to finance themselves (e.g., move home, find other sources of income), but again, this should not be normal.
But you're opting into them having more control over you. If you're an employee they can set your hours. They can't as a student. You're opting into a HR-managed vacation system instead of managing your own time.
Health insurance, behaviours, retirement, etc I guess so.
> If you're an employee they can set your hours. They can't as a student. You're opting into a HR-managed vacation system instead of managing your own time.
The PhD students I knew did not managed own time. They worked when mandated by supervisor, they worked long hours and vacation meant still working. And they could not go to vacations whenever either.
Being an employee makes it easier to demand fair treatment. As a "student" people can say "of course your pay and benefits are low and hours are terrible, you are a student and are paid in coaching." If you are instead understood to be an employee then suddenly the comparison between working at Target and working as a graduate student becomes harder to ignore and the abusive practices become more clear.
There are downsides, like it being important to be able to fire low performers in employee/employer relationships. But thinking of graduate students as skilled knowledge workers makes it easier to agitate for better conditions.
>Why do you want to work for someone else, on their hours, answerable to them, doing their research and teaching their classes, instead of working on your own research?
Did you actually do a PhD? You ought to know that you are completely beholden to your advisor, what they want you to work on, what papers they want you to write, the classes they want you to take etc.
As an employee you actually have rights, benefits and fairer pay and are under basically identical working circumstances.
Anecdotes aren't very useful but in my department it was pretty clear that most of your work was going to be derivative of your advisors at least tangentially if not directly.
Also I think the article and most of the discussion so far has been around experiences in the US' PhD system so I'm not sure experience in the UK is equivalent.
Yeah, it is supposed to be that in theory. But in practice, I had to be trained through multiple research positions doing work for other people, none of whom had managerial experience or training. It was very chaotic and I rarely had time to work on my own research until dissertation.
A PhD should be, at least in theory. Whether it is or not is a question - and "until dissertation" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Importantly, a staff scientist position will never be. If you cannot tie your project to one of my grants, you are losing me money. For a student, that might be acceptable. For a staff scientist, it's not.
That’s the way it works and will probably always work. Profit, prestige, and power are the driving factors, even for the most equity-minded individuals.
The problem, I think, stems from the fact that a doctoral advisor, because he influences your reputation in all of academia rather than just one company, is even more of a career SPOF than a corporate manager.
The good news is that your advisor is safe (tenured, or at least likely to make tenure) in most circumstances, so he's not going to fuck you over unless he's a truly terrible person, and 90 percent of people aren't, as opposed to the corporate world where the pressure of constantly watching your back turns that middle 80% into bad people as well. The bad news is that he does have this extortive power over you, if he wants to use it.
There's also a conflict of interest when it comes to delayed graduations. If the advisor's getting cheap or free grunt work, and delaying your graduation for another year can get him more of said work, then he has an incentive to do so. Of course, this can't be continued forever, because eventually he'll get a reputation for his students taking too long and not doing well... but in the short term, it is an option for him, and it is sometimes exercised.
> If the advisor's getting cheap or free grunt work
This is a huge misconception. Yes, as a grad student you aren’t paid well. That doesn’t mean you are cheap for a PI. They have to pay your tuition, as well as university overhead related to your stipend. You don’t see a lot of that money in your bank account, but it is leaving the PI’s research grant nonetheless.
The most productive students are those who are about 3 years in when they are done with classes. The least productive ones are those about to graduate; they typically have a serious case of “senioritis”, and are often busy making contacts in industry and planning a career. Keeping them around makes them less productive, not more.
Professors want to graduate them to free up resources and to bolster their promotion portfolio.
You want to be a PhD employee so that you don't have to pay college out of your own pocket.
Sure, most would prefer to be rich, or have their parents be rich, or having gotten a full ride or some other stipend. But that's not the norm for most PhD students. For most, the alternative to not being a PhD student employee is to leave college and become an employee employee.
Or, you know, unionize like regular workers. (Former UAW-represented PhD student, here.)
I then spent some time in the Swiss system as a postdoc... night and day! I went from the "American Riviera" (UCSB) to the "Swiss Riviera" (EPFL), and so living costs were about the same. But PhD students were paid more than twice what I was paid in the US.
Also much less teaching at EPFL, but that was probably due to differences in the "type" of institution.
> And while they are the primary workhorses of research, there are large swathes of their graduate student careers where they are not particularly (or often negatively) productive.
Um, hello. This happens in industry as well. It's called training, learning, whatever. It's an investment on the part of the company in the future of its workforce. Why should academia expect to only pay employees who are "fully educated" and require no non-productive time to learn things?
As someone who has been there, academica is so f*cked up and those in it seem completely out of touch with the reality outside of it.
But the expectations are different. "Well, what do you want to work on?" and tailoring a four or five year program to meet those needs is something I'm very unlikely to do for a staff scientist, but something I discuss with every one of my graduate students.
Rarely is this salary guaranteed. It often requires TAing to supplement research funding and graduate students are often required to be deeply involved (or even solely responsible) for sourcing their own research funding. Stipends are also often poverty wages or even lower when you consider that stipends are usually only for 3/4 of the year and you are usually expected to continue research during the summer.
I know some folks who did PhDs in non-engineering fields at state universities who had to TA every single semester, often TAing multiple classes, just to earn ~$20,000 per year.
This is true in computer science, but not in all sciences, and certainly not in the humanities. Getting a TA-ship is considered undesirable in CS, but getting a TA-ship as a history PhD is considered rare and special.
There are a lot of problems, though. Your funding isn't guaranteed; you can be basically kicked out of the program (because very few people can afford to self-fund) for reasons that have nothing to do with you or your performance, and if this happens in your 4th or 5th year, you're fucked.
The other ugly fact is that even if you're not paying tuition, your advisor is. This means there's less money to send you to conferences or fund his lab, and it means he's under tighter financial constraints than he really should be. Your advisor gets his budget docked $80,000, and only $20,000 goes to you (the rest, to tuition). That's a bit ridiculous, especially because you're no longer taking many classes or using university resources except to do work on their behalf. There's no good reason you can't be paid $50,000 and your advisor has $30,000 more to fund his lab.
Agree 100%... in tech, specifically, almost everyone is junior in at least some parts of your stack... by OP's standards we are all "students", which is true in some sense as we're always learning even after 20 years in the industry... but that doesn't mean a 20-year career veteran should be considered a "student" and given a different treatment because he/she never used Kafka or k8s and has to learn those from scratch. I really don't see how it's any different in research (I have no Phd, but I was with my wife through her whole Phd so I know how things go in that world).
The standards for junior employees are much higher. I have encountered several PhDs in computational fields who barely knew how to code when they were first admitted to their grad programs. They would not have been hired as junior software engineers at any decent company.
Computational fields are not software engineering. In order to be productive, you need expertise in the field you are studying, as well as in at least two of CS, software engineering, statistics, and mathematics. Undergraduate degrees are too short to teach all that, which is why people must continue learning basic skills during PhD (and postdoc).
>you need expertise in the field you are studying, as well as in at least two of CS, software engineering, statistics, and mathematics
There are some very talented undergraduates with expertise in several of the above. They generally end up being the most successful PhD students, since they are immediately productive from the get-go. (Or, they work as a junior quant at Jane Street.)
>people must continue learning basic skills during PhD
Hence why they’re considered trainees, and not junior employees. Junior employees may have rudimentary skills in certain areas, but not so rudimentary that their productivity is zero (or negative!)
>and postdoc
No postdocs should still be learning basic skills. The (ostensible) purpose of a postdoc is a final step to prepare very talented PhDs for a faculty position. People who are faculty material should have mastered all relevant skills during their PhD. Sadly, the postdoc has been perverted to become a holding tank to absorb excess PhDs with no other career options, since, as the article points out, postdocs are a source of cheap experienced labor.
I’m all for treating grad students and postdocs as real employees, but we need to acknowledge that doing so would dramatically raise standards for admission, which I’m also all for.
> No postdocs should still be learning basic skills. The (ostensible) purpose of a postdoc is a final step to prepare very talented PhDs for a faculty position. People who are faculty material should have mastered all relevant skills during their PhD.
That attitude is very bureaucratic.
Computational research is always interdisciplinary. Administrators organize universities into departments according to the needs of undergraduate curricula, but those administrative boundaries have little to do with the skills needed in research. The skills you learn during PhD are probably enough for your PhD research, but then you may need new skills when you start a new project as a postdoc. And again when you start a new project as a junior faculty member.
Postdoc is also the career stage where many people switch fields. For example, a background in X or even computational X is often insufficient for some research topics in computational X. You need to hire people who got their PhDs in CS, mathematics, or statistics, and then those people must learn X before they can contribute. And once they start contributing, they may have to learn software engineering to turn the methods they have developed into useful tools.
Is it expected that a junior employee will remain as such for 5-10 years? Of course not. Junior employees are promoted and given more responsibility, or they are fired quickly if they are not performing well.
Do companies let junior employees work on whatever they want? Manage their time as they want? No, one of the key indicators of an employee status is that their time and work is managed by their employer.
If a junior employee works on some passion project related to their work but on their own time, do they own the intellectual property of that work? Probably not; many employers demand that all IP created by the junior employee belongs to the company.
I think this is a case of “be careful what you wish for”.
What's notable here is not that academia is so great, but that becoming an employee has become so bad.
In the Bell Labs days, before our economy got taken over by criminals, smart employees really were treated as researchers-in-residence who could mostly pick and choose their projects. They didn't have as much freedom as tenured professors--they still had to work on things the company cared about--but they had a level of autonomy that, these days, doesn't really exist.
You cannot generalize how good working conditions were in the “good old days” by using Bell Labs, which was literally exceptional, as a point of comparison.
It depends where. Both the article and the responses throw everything in the same basket, as if it all universities are the same and all education systems are the same. The bologna accords sure tried to make all higher-ed work in the same fashion and it has been a disaster.
There is no doubt that in the US in a lot of universities graduate students are a cheap workforce that reinforces corporate interests through research that is funded by them to sway public opinion in certain directions.
To some extent this is due to the sheer amounts of money that flow into academy and the amount of money that you need to stay competitive. So you can't piss off your patrons.
For a long time at least the fact that graduate students in europe received a steady subsidy that is enough to comfortably live and universities received fixed amounts that are not dependent on industry push allowed universities to stay independent for the longest time. Although that too is changing.
There is a fair share of critique on the latter system, but in general it allows for more independent research institutions.
"There is no doubt that in the US in a lot of universities graduate students are a cheap workforce that reinforces corporate interests through research that is funded by them to sway public opinion in certain directions."
Citation is needed for this subject. Large amount of research in University is funded by NSF or the Federal Government. While industrial interest also contribute significantly to research fund, it is excessive to accuses a lot of universities to be a crony in a corporate-academic-complex.
It was my understanding the vast majority of research funding in the US was either from the NSF, DARPA or similar, or the University. Corporations are a single digit percentage, no?
Agreed 100%. As a grad student, I made so many mistakes, destroying expensive equipment in the process. I took a 3 year leave of absence to join a startup and was taken back without question when it failed. I went on intellectual flights of fancy on a whim when I found things interesting without telling my PI, wasting precious time and missing deadlines. I took classes and then dropped them when I got too busy, wasting my PI’s grant money. I was given tasks to accomplish and failed them miserably.
He tolerated all of it because I was a student and the expectations were set accordingly.
As a professor today, I take the same attitude toward my students, and I think it’s for their benefit. If they want to be treated as employees, the bar for admission becomes a lot higher, and the expectations do as well. The capacity for mistakes goes down, and the latitude and freedom afforded to them to explore their interests goes away entirely.
Employees do what they’re told when they’re told it, and they are paid accordingly. I’m not sure that’s what many PhD students actually want when they say they want to be treated as employees.
They are trainees or apprentices. Our job as supervisors is to show them how the thing is done, and then provide them conditions to do it themselves. Like with any trainee, it is true that productivity is initially not great, because they need training and experience.
Apprenticeships are sometimes looked down upon because they tend to be associated with professions considered unglamorous, but that’s what a PhD is.
They have a student status with the implicit acknowledgment that they would not be as productive as accomplished professionals but their job is not to study as in high school or undergrad, it’s to learn the job by doing it supervised.
A number of them are also just flat out students in that they take non-trivial amounts of coursework. In my program at least, as well as the one I went through, they were still paid.
It's simple, much of Europe has already figured this out. Pay PhD students appropriately, and give them full benefits. The idea that they are only contributing work worth the equivalent of minimum wage in the US is completely absurd and ensures only students with particularly forgiving attitudes or ones from wealthy backgrounds can reasonably complete PhDs here. I recently saw PhD stipends at UNC Chapel Hill advertised at 20000 per year and this comes with virtually 0 benefits which for a major research university is frankly shameful.
University of Amsterdam for example:
"Included Benefits:
University of Amsterdam PhD candidates are fully-funded for four years and earn competitive salaries. The salary will be in accordance with the University regulations for academic personnel, and will range from €2,325 to €2,972 (salary scale P) gross per month. This is excl. 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% end of year bonus. The Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities is applicable.
Additional comprehensive benefits include paid vacation, sick leave, disability insurance, maternity and parental leave and pension contribution. The mandatory Dutch health insurance is not included, but is very affordable (~€100 per month). Relocation costs (within reason) will also be reimbursed."
>The EU is in many ways worse. You have the same problem except that your PhD is worth much less.
This is debatable.
>PhD students in the EU make less than students in the US! And virtually all of them in the US get full benefits.
This is completely false. The absolute highest stipends in the US are at places like Stanford or Columbia and even then only reach something like 45000 per year and both Palo Alto and NYC are much more expensive than Amsterdam. They also do not receive anywhere near the same benefits as in UVA.
>You just said good salary, and listed University of Amsterdam as offering 27900-35000 per year.
With +16% in bonuses, paid vacations, paid sick days, etc.
With bonus the salary is 32364-40600 Which is more than 90% of US stipends.
>At UNC, minimums are: bio $33k, chemistry $28k, CS $25k. And North Carolina is far cheaper than Amsterdam.
Also false. I encourage you to do the math for yourself but Amsterdam is about as expensive to live in as Chapel Hill.
Also the stipends in Netherlands are more or less the same across the country so at Utrecht, Maastricht, Leiden etc. which are much less expensive than Amsterdam.
>PhDs in the EU live often in much more expensive areas and make less than PhD students in the US.
>> PhD students in the EU make less than students in the US! And virtually all of them in the US get full benefits.
> This is completely false.
Then you don't know the US system. As evidenced by the fact that you say:
> With +16% in bonuses, paid vacations, paid sick days, etc. With bonus the salary is 32364-40600 Which is more than 90% of US stipends.
Every PhD student at every university I've ever seen has paid vacation, paid sick days, etc. Conference travel all around the world, at levels that EU universities can't match. As a PhD student my program basically paid for vacations in: China, 4 different EU countries, 5-6 different US states + Hawaii + Alaska, Japan, etc. There are plenty of bonuses and perks.
> The absolute highest stipends in the US ... They also do not receive anywhere near the same benefits as in UVA.
I'm at one of these places. In terms of benefits, we far outstrip the EU. The flexibility we have to spend money on travel, equipment, perks, is incomparable.
But let's take a step back. You started by saying that this problem is solved in the EU and now you backtracked to arguing about +/-10% salary. Big deal.
The EU is expensive, it pays poorly. You want to argue the US is a little worse. But your statement that this problem is solved in the EU couldn't be further from the truth.
>Then you don't know the US system. As evidenced by the fact that you say:
I've been in it, stipends in my department were ~$18,000 per year with medical insurance and some funding for conference travel. No Vacation days, no sick days, nothing else.
>I'm at one of these places. In terms of benefits, we far outstrip the EU. The flexibility we have to spend money on travel, equipment, perks, is incomparable.
Find me Stanford's list of benefits showing they offer paid vacation.
>But let's take a step back. You started by saying that this problem is solved in the EU and now you backtracked to arguing about +/-10% salary. Big deal.
I didn't backtrack at all. You're the one ignoring the fact that Amsterdam is the same cost as Chapel Hill but offers up to 15k more in salary and much better benefits and there's an even bigger delta in cheaper Dutch cities.
So you can make up numbers all you want and pretend that conference travel is somehow better than Bonuses, PTO, Sick days and Pension plans but no one buys that.
Fun fact, your own page shows that the the minimum at Columbia is higher than the max at University of Amsterdam!
The idea that EU PhD students are paid better than US PhD students is just as absurd now, as it was when you stated it first.
> No paid time off, no sick days
There's a lot of confusion here. People look at lists like this and they assume they are comparable to their EU counterparts. In the EU the university tends to be king and sets the rules for departments. In the US departments are far more autonomous and many things are more informal. The university sets lower bounds that departments add to.
But again. You need to drop your narrow EU bureaucratic view of things. I have never applied to vacation as a grad student. Never, among my 50+ grad students so far as a single grad student applied for vacation. Not one of them has ever applied for vacation time. Grad students just tell me "Hey, I'll be gone these 3 weeks." And I say "Enjoy". That's it. Same with sick leave.
You cannot interpret US rules from the EU point of view. It's nonsense.
> I didn't backtrack at all. You're the one ignoring the fact that Amsterdam is the same cost as Chapel Hill but offers up to 15k more in salary and much better benefits and there's an even bigger delta in cheaper Dutch cities.
You have no idea about the cost of housing in UCN vs Amsterdam. Or what cheap means.
You can rent, right now, a 2 bedroom / 2 bath with a pool for $1100-1200 in Chapel Hill that's an easy walking distance to the university. That's without searching and at literally the worst time of the year to rent anything in a college town. And that's walking distance. If you want to drive to stay in a "smaller town" you can pay $800 for a 2 bedroom.
The US is far more sparsely settled than Western Europe. Cheap small towns here are far far cheaper.
> So you can make up numbers all you want and pretend that conference travel is somehow better than Bonuses, PTO, Sick days and Pension plans but no one buys that.
Your own numbers completely refute your story. And even the simplest Google search shows that perks in the US are actually far better than perks in the EU. That vacations are good, conference travel is not "business travel" in the US, that you get paid time off, etc.
But you don't want to look even at the evidence you find. You want to believe what you believe. I'm out!
>But again. You need to drop your narrow EU bureaucratic view of things. I have never applied to vacation as a grad student. Never, among my 50+ grad students so far as a single grad student applied for vacation. Not one of them has ever applied for vacation time. Grad students just tell me "Hey, I'll be gone these 3 weeks." And I say "Enjoy". That's it. Same with sick leave.
Yeah sure, as a boss, you're going to keep insisting you're One of the Good Ones whenever someone sticks up for your workers to have formal rights.
>Fun fact, your own page shows that the the minimum at Columbia is higher than the max at University of Amsterdam!
NYC is far more expensive than Amsterdam. Salary at UVA is higher than the majority of US stipends. Period. This isn't debatable. It's probably higher than stipends at almost every Public university in the US and many Private ones outside the Ivy+ group.
>Grad students just tell me "Hey, I'll be gone these 3 weeks." And I say "Enjoy". That's it. Same with sick leave.
It's unfortunate that your Stockholm syndrome has led you to beliefs like having guaranteed PTO is not as good as hoping your advisor lets you take a break.
>You have no idea about the cost of housing in UCN vs Amsterdam. Or what cheap means.
Take your pick of sources. You're just pulling numbers out of thin air.
>Your own numbers completely refute your story. And even the simplest Google search shows that perks in the US are actually far better than perks in the EU. That vacations are good, conference travel is not "business travel" in the US, that you get paid time off, etc.
Maybe get your eyes checked?
Pretty sure 40,000 is higher than 25,000 but maybe I'm wrong there.
Your idea of what constitutes perks is some kind of hellish capitalist nightmare.
> Every PhD student at every university I've ever seen has paid vacation, paid sick days, etc. Conference travel all around the world, at levels that EU universities can't match. As a PhD student my program basically paid for vacations in: China, 4 different EU countries, 5-6 different US states + Hawaii + Alaska, Japan, etc. There are plenty of bonuses and perks.
Conference travel and short-term research visits have nothing to do with vacation. They are just business travel, where you rarely have enough time to do anything interesting.
I did my PhD in Finland and finished about a decade ago. During that time, I made business trips to Australia, Chile, Colombia, Denmark (x2), Germany, Italy (x2), Turkey, and the US. I also had the time and money to travel on my own, and I visited Iceland (x2), Kenya, Morocco, Nepal, Peru, and Tanzania, in addition to 6 or 7 trips to various European countries. Some of my friends didn't travel as much, but they bought a house, because doing a PhD was a middle-class job.
Also, this branch of the discussion was not about the EU but about "much of Europe". That usually refers to the West/North European countries that remained free after WW2. Large parts of Europe suffered under communism and other totalitarian governments during the Cold War, and their standard of living is still lower because of that.
> Conference travel and short-term research visits have nothing to do with vacation. They are just business travel, where you rarely have enough time to do anything interesting.
That's the European view for sure. In the US it's perfectly normal for PhD students to take a week off at the conference destination and enjoy. While the university pays for all of the flights, and the stipend paid during the conference is enough to cover the expenses of the vacation.
> I did my PhD in Finland and finished about a decade ago. During that time, I made business trips ...
Except that I got to take 1-2 weeks off at those places after every conference. As do many US PhD students.
> Also, this branch of the discussion was not about the EU but about "much of Europe". That usually refers to the West/North European countries that remained free after WW2
Sure. The example given was that of University of Amsterdam. Where students are not better off than in the US, and in many ways are much worse off (job-wise).
Ok, I missed that. Combining business travel with vacation is better than nothing, but it severely restricts what you can do with your vacation. I did that a couple of times as well, but it was rarely worth the effort. Flights were cheap, and I usually wanted to go somewhere else. Kilimanjaro instead of NYC, Everest Base Camp instead of Istanbul, and so on.
I've lived in four countries during my academic career: Finland, Chile, UK, and US (California). The standard of living for grad students was generally the highest in Chile. Cost of living was low, and academic jobs in good universities had relatively high status, which was reflected in salaries. Finnish grad students had lower domestic purchasing power, but they could afford internationally priced things like tech and travel better. With two incomes, buying a house and having kids was also a perfectly reasonable life choice as a grad student. Life in the UK was more austere: the salaries were lower, the cost of living was higher, and the regulations were stricter.
Today in California, grad students live in poverty. Their standard of living reminds me of undergrads in Finland, except that they can't afford to rent a whole apartment. Only the ones with a decent side gig (such as consulting) can afford something resembling the lifestyle of Finnish grad students 10-15 years ago.
>Today in California, grad students live in poverty. Their standard of living reminds me of undergrads in Finland, except that they can't afford to rent a whole apartment. Only the ones with a decent side gig (such as consulting) can afford something resembling the lifestyle of Finnish grad students 10-15 years ago.
Who needs benefits like affording to live in a home when you can have Conference Travel instead! Woo!
When did my PhD in a Southern European country -- I completed it 15 years ago -- I was getting 800 euros a month after taxes. Right now, PhD students get no more than 1000 euros a month after taxes. It is peanuts, difficult to live on that salary, almost impossible to have a family. Difficult to say if it is too little or too much, on the one hand it is a student position, on the other we are talking about skilled graduates with possible important contributions to offer.
I did my PhD at UNC Chapel Hill. I was able to live without debt, pay for flights to see my (at the time) long distance girlfriend, and I got medical insurance when I needed it.
> My students benefit heavily from me not necessarily treating them to the same standards as I would treat a full time research employee.
Aren't PhD students working long hours already? I really dont see where is the supposed additional slack they are having.
> I will take a chance on a promising student straight out of undergrad who seems like they might be interesting, knowing that it will take them some time to get their feet under them. That would be very different if they were employees.
"Aren't PhD students working long hours already? I really dont see where is the supposed additional slack they are having."
They are - but I rarely impose my preferences for when they work, don't check to see if they've accrued enough vacation time, etc.
There's also slack that's not just "hours worked". A PhD student going down an intellectually stimulating but ultimately tangental rabbit hole that doesn't tie itself to a grant aim but might spawn a side project is something I'd encourage. I would not do the same for a staff scientist.
Depends highly on the field. I knew some materials science PhD students who were relatively well-funded to work in the lab (~$35k per year), but often spent nights and weekends baby sitting experiments. But there was no undergraduate materials science program, so no teaching!
I was in the mathematics department where most people worked as teaching assistants for $22k per year (summer work available) but otherwise did as they pleased. I would maybe meet with my adviser for a few minutes per week? And after you've taught calculus five times, you can kind of coast.
In the US you can enroll in either a master's program or a PhD program after obtaining the bachelor degree. Both count as graduate programs. The PhD program then usually takes as long as getting a masters degree and then a PhD in Germany, for example. PhD programs in natural sciences in Germany take around 3 years (can be longer), but the PhD program in the US for bachelor graduates takes 5-6 years.
Doing a masters in between is usually I'd say a big waste of time and very inadvisable. If you're strong enough to start your PhD then just start it.
And to literally answer your question - you don't need any kind of prior degree at all to start a PhD. I was recently investigating getting a gifted engineer onto a PhD programme without an undergraduate, and it was possible.
This depends on both the field of study and the country in question. In the US, for example, nobody gets a masters in math except as a terminal degree (sometimes, perhaps usually, a masters is a failed PhD attempt). In Canada, it is relatively rare for somebody to skip straight from undergrad to a math PhD.
I know many people outside the US who did a PhD without any kind of masters. I did mine with a masters but no bachelors. It's even possible to be a full professor but not have any PhD. There's lots of options - don't force yourself to fit an arbitrary pipeline.
The thing is, if you don't have top grades or an exceptional background, most universities will expect you to have a Master's, instead. But if you do have top grades, or an exceptional background, then you can probably go straight into a PhD from high school, or anyway many universities will accept you.
It matters a lot whom you have impressed with your skills, your knowledge and your dedication, it goes without saying, and by how much. Like in chrisseaton's comment above, they were investigating about a "gifted engineer" and I'm guessing they would have written a strong letter of recommendation for that candidate.
So it may not be possible for everybody in practice, but in theory, it's possible.
Well, I wouldn't mind doing another PhD. I don't reckon I'll ever have the same degree of freedom to follow my intellectual interests, study what I want to study, and produce what I want to produce, ever again.
I still had some restrictions (e.g. I had to publish on the schedule determined by publication deadlines, even if I wasn't quite ready) but even so, the freedom I enjoyed just doesn't compare to any kind of job I had before.
I studied AI and I think it would go great with entomology. A double PhD in AI and entomology, maybe with a third one in robotics... At the very least that would give me a unique background, now wouldn't it?
Oh. Sure, I know. I enjoyed my PhD and the freedom I found during it but I think this is not even very common for PhD students. I was lucky in having the right supervisor.
Graduate students are both.
My students benefit heavily from me not necessarily treating them to the same standards as I would treat a full time research employee. And while they are the primary workhorses of research, there are large swathes of their graduate student careers where they are not particularly (or often negatively) productive.
I will take a chance on a promising student straight out of undergrad who seems like they might be interesting, knowing that it will take them some time to get their feet under them.
That would be very different if they were employees.
Should we build in more protection and better benefits for graduate students, both from the perspective of them being students and employees? Absolutely. But they are students.