On May 12, Ben Powell argued in the Daily Bruin that UC graduate students are “unreasonable” to ask for raises in their salary, which the UCLA Graduate Division states as starting at $17,655 per academic year before taxes. The demand of a decent salary is substantially more reasonable than Powell’s arguments.
Powell contends that recruiting won’t be affected because of UCLA’s “long-established reputation.” This reputation was not enough for Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson, our star neuroscientists who brought millions of dollars in grants to UCLA, who accepted a superior offer from the University of Southern California earlier this month.
Graduate students are no different; UCLA needs talented students to perform the research that enables it to obtain new grants and fund itself. That’s why our faculty approved a June 2012 Academic Senate statement that “UC must improve the competitiveness of its graduate student support” and that competitive graduate student salaries are “a vital investment to protect and enhance the core of the University and the future of the state.”
In recruitment, our reputation means nothing if it comes with relative poverty while USC’s and Stanford’s reputations don’t. If our recruitment fails, our academic success declines and eventually our reputation suffers. Should we offer people a reasonable salary now, or wait until we have to in order to gain back our reputation?
The monthly TA salary for a UC Ph.D. student is $1,961.67, or $17,655 per academic year.
In the information box accompanying Powell’s column, UCLA TA compensation is compared to the $1,688 monthly salary (or $15,192 per academic year) at the University of Illinois, where a furnished on-campus studio apartment costs $720 per month (or $8,640 per full year), compared to UCLA’s furnished studio rate of about $1,350 (or almost $16,200 per full year).
After paying rent, an Illinois student puts about $6,552 of his or her income toward taxes, food, transportation and child care (if needed), whereas a UCLA student can spend only about $1,355, leaving almost nothing after income tax is paid. And this is a comparison cherry-picked to make UCLA’s wages appear favorable; Powell could just as easily have compared UC wages to that of the University of Texas, whose website states TAs make $2,634 per month.
Low salaries are indeed the norm for graduate students, but UCLA’s salaries are not just low; they are inadequate to cover even the most basic human necessities. While prospective graduate students ordinarily don’t make their decision based on salary differences, they certainly will if their university of choice doesn’t offer enough to pay rent and buy groceries.
Powell further defies logic by contending that this does not matter because teaching assistantships are not meant as “a way to pay the bills.” Teaching assistantships are guaranteed to prospective graduate students as the sole source of their funds.
The university even expressly forbids graduate students from having a second job because it expects them to do half of the teaching of its undergraduates and perform research in the time they are not teaching. If graduate students do not work their 20 hours per week of teaching, as well as their 20 (or often 60) unpaid hours per week of research with their faculty, they are of no use whatsoever to the university. There is in most cases no secondary source of funds to “pay the bills.”
Lastly, Powell likens teaching assistantships to an internship providing career preparation. He fails to realize that in many fields our experience in teaching is next to worthless to hiring committees.
Although many of us enjoy teaching, it is almost universally the case that our time would be better spent on research, which we need in order to be successful in an incredibly tough job market against dozens of other graduate students competing for only a couple of $60,000 a year faculty positions.
The imminent problem facing the UC can be addressed only by action, not by pretending this is normal and graduate students are immune to financial difficulties.
Gunter is a graduate student in psychology.
It’s also more often the case that graduate students are not employed year round as TAs. Usually we are only paid from November-July and left without pay in August, September, and October.
Thank you, Ben Gunter! Also note that those salaries above are for part-time TA positions. At my UC, and perhaps others, with budget cuts, part-time positions are being replaced with quarter-time positions. Because a quarter-time TA is only supposed to and able to work 10 hours per week, short answer and essay exams are being converted to multiple choice. Final papers are being shortened in length and TAs are less able to give quality feedback. Paying TAs well and protecting their part-time employment will make for a far richer and challenging educational experience for undergraduates.
I will also add that students who are from low-income backgrounds not only cannot rely on their parents to supplement their income, at times they are required to provide for their families. This TA salary would make something like that very difficult. Providing a decent salary is not a luxury, but a means to social equality in cases like this.
UCLA also had no problem hiking up the price of grad housing by nearly
200$ within the past year or so. Now incoming grad student are faced
with a lovely “recruitment package” in which their stipend is roughly 1830$
after taxes, $1200 of which UCLA takes right back for a
room in a weyburn apartment. Ugh, the mind REELS. How one is supposed to eat, clothe themselves, own a cellphone, and pay for bills, much less do
anything else in one of the most expensive cities in America on the
measly remnant is beyond logic. No wonder these people will choose USC or CalTech for their pHd studies, especially if they have kids… This has got to be the most short-sighted policy by UC admins!!!