🚀 go-pugleaf

Taro M Inoue wrote:

> Wow, Michael, I'm shocked.  I figured that you'd be the last person in the
> world to push such a position.  You seem to advocate salaries that reflect some
> inherent value in work, rather than the dynamic amount the market is willing
> to pay.

What someone is willing to pay IS inherent value.  My point is that graduate
students are in effect being paid to do research.  That their paycheck says
the money is for teaching doesn't change this fact.  If teaching were separated
from research, we would see TAs hired who were not grad students.  Heck, $21/hr
is not a bad wage.  But the system is set up so that only graduate students
can take these positions.  Why?  Because we need to pay graduate students in
order to keep them on campus doing research.

The system is cockeyed.  We are paying people for doing one thing but expecting
them to do another.

> Here's a little reality check:  Grad students, we hope, are in a
> University because they enjoy research, and the ro^le of grad student is the
> first (or so) step in a career in academia.

That's true, and is no doubt why there are so many of us here making so
little money.  Unfortuantely, this reasoning is one of the big reasons for
Canada's brain drain.  The good students can all leave the country and get
paid well to do graduate research in the States.

Michael Kyba