I think you may be taking this wrong. The problem is that universities are severely underfunded and always have been. They simply don’t have the money to pay a living wage to grad students. When forced to do so, some universities have simply dissolved student positions as a response.
The problem isn’t the university or this professor. The problem is why we aren’t funding these better so that they can pay a reasonable wage.
Stanford is private with an endowment over $35 billion and charges $25 grand per semester for graduate programs. I’m not interested in my tax dollars funding a private college primarily for rich assholes.
It’s an endowment, they can’t just empty that pool of money they take around 4% of the money each year that they get from investments which ends up being around 10% of their budget
They also have 12.8 square miles of campus to maintain… which requires a lot more than just the 2300 professors. They also have adjunct professors, lab managers, researcher techs, facilities, and a ton of other expenses that are required from an R1 research university.
The grad students while they don’t get a “livable wage” do get their tuition comped and get a housing stipend. Like we can always do better but undergrad students are being done much dirtier than grad students as they are going into huge amounts of debt to try and even afford tuition
Those all fall into the underpaid category too. Adjunct professor is particularly abused.
$2.5B from tuition and endowment, $2.2B in sponsors and $1.6B in donations. $6.3B a year income. 27.4k total employees. If each and every employee was paid $100k, that’s $2.7B for salaries.
There are interesting expenses in there. Like $178M spent for travel and food. I wonder how many teaching assistants and adjunct professors get private jets and private chefs like the President and his executive staff and all the Deans and their staff. I had a friend 10 ago who applied for the job to be the private chef for a dean in a medium college.
They get regularly audited which is why the scandal was caught, they still can’t misuse tuition funds either. Travel and food expenses mimics gsa travel expenses but then they also have multiple dining halls and catering. Why are you trying so hard to make mountains out of mole hills it’s like you are begging for everything to be a giant conspiracy
You and I are the only people in this thread with actual experience at a university. The rest are just looking for places to project their anger and general malaise.
I worked at a university, did research at a university and was a student. There is obviously waste and definitely some amount of grift but the auditing requirements in place to prevent grift are arguably so strict that they cause as much or more waste as they save in grift.
You have to understand that the teaching assistants can’t teach effectively unless the Dean gets his $50k/year mortgage paid for by the university along with a new car.
I think you may be taking this wrong. The problem is that universities are severely underfunded and always have been. They simply don’t have the money to pay a living wage to grad students. When forced to do so, some universities have simply dissolved student positions as a response.
The problem isn’t the university or this professor. The problem is why we aren’t funding these better so that they can pay a reasonable wage.
Stanford is private with an endowment over $35 billion and charges $25 grand per semester for graduate programs. I’m not interested in my tax dollars funding a private college primarily for rich assholes.
Billions of your tax dollars already go there to fund research. That is how universities work, public or private.
I’m aware, that doesn’t mean I agree with it or support more money being siphoned from the working class to the elite.
lol elite. Most students are just surviving
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/stanford-university
Lol, please do tell me more about Stanford’s lack of money.
It’s an endowment, they can’t just empty that pool of money they take around 4% of the money each year that they get from investments which ends up being around 10% of their budget
That’s still 1.4B a year. They get $1.1 B in tuition a year. That’s $2.5B. They have 2300 professors. At $200k salary that’s only $0.4B of the $2.5B.
They also have 12.8 square miles of campus to maintain… which requires a lot more than just the 2300 professors. They also have adjunct professors, lab managers, researcher techs, facilities, and a ton of other expenses that are required from an R1 research university.
The grad students while they don’t get a “livable wage” do get their tuition comped and get a housing stipend. Like we can always do better but undergrad students are being done much dirtier than grad students as they are going into huge amounts of debt to try and even afford tuition
Those all fall into the underpaid category too. Adjunct professor is particularly abused.
$2.5B from tuition and endowment, $2.2B in sponsors and $1.6B in donations. $6.3B a year income. 27.4k total employees. If each and every employee was paid $100k, that’s $2.7B for salaries.
You know you can just look at their budget right?
https://budget.stanford.edu/budget-plans
Great link. Thanks!
There are interesting expenses in there. Like $178M spent for travel and food. I wonder how many teaching assistants and adjunct professors get private jets and private chefs like the President and his executive staff and all the Deans and their staff. I had a friend 10 ago who applied for the job to be the private chef for a dean in a medium college.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Stanford_Research_Scandal
Those perks didn’t end when the scandal was exposed. They only changed to take the money for perks from tuition instead of the government.
They get regularly audited which is why the scandal was caught, they still can’t misuse tuition funds either. Travel and food expenses mimics gsa travel expenses but then they also have multiple dining halls and catering. Why are you trying so hard to make mountains out of mole hills it’s like you are begging for everything to be a giant conspiracy
You and I are the only people in this thread with actual experience at a university. The rest are just looking for places to project their anger and general malaise.
I worked at a university, did research at a university and was a student. There is obviously waste and definitely some amount of grift but the auditing requirements in place to prevent grift are arguably so strict that they cause as much or more waste as they save in grift.
That’s great, these sound like basic details that their budget should take into account when considering how many people they can employ!
This statement is not based on any facts.
You’re right, we need to continue concentrating the salaries in the administration department!
You have to understand that the teaching assistants can’t teach effectively unless the Dean gets his $50k/year mortgage paid for by the university along with a new car.
https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2017/05/25/examination-growing-number-perks-and-bonuses-college-presidents-essay
Good point!!
The problem is definitely all things mentioned.