🚀 go-pugleaf

There seems to be some confusion regarding graduate student wages.

In the sciences, graduate students are essential members of any
universty laboratory research team.  Because of this, their
departments specify certain minimum monthly salaries that the
grad students should receive.  Many have grants, many get paid
off their supervisors' grants, and many do TA work for their
department.  As a TA, although you are needed because of your
research time, you are paid for time spent teaching.  Because
nothing would get done if you taught all day long, hourly wages
are set according to what will give you about $900 per month while
allowing you to work about 3/4 time in your lab.  So while TAs
at UBC make around $21 per hour of teaching, they don't get paid
for their laboratory time, and wind up with around $900 per month.

Back when I was a TA, I was putting in about 10 hours per week
teaching and another 40-50 hours per week of lab work.  This doesn't
include time spent reading.  I would say that this is typical of
most graduate students in my position (final year.)  So I
ended up with an actual hourly wage of about $4.00 per hour.

While it is questionable whether departments are justified in
paying thier graduate students poverty-line salaries, it is
unquestionable that the payment scheme should be changed.  Grad
student salaries ought to reflect the value of the work that
they actually do.  And their most valuable work is research.

Any comments, grad. students out there?

Michael Kyba