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Comment by kevindong | Hacker News Reader

> Given the hours they work, it is still most common for them to be on the books as part-time employees (0.49 full-time) which cuts off access to employee sponsored health care that is mandated under the ACA. In almost all cases they have no benefits outside of tuition payment.

As far as I'm aware, all reputable American colleges will do the following for graduate students who are teaching assistants: 1) waive tuition 2) pay for the majority of a health insurance plan 3) issue a modest living stipend that's enough to live on, albeit not very comfortably. I know this is the case for Purdue.

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These are precisely the kinds of things that unions will fight for though.

Just assuming that the university (out of its goodwill?) will do any of those things is kind of ludicrous. At my university, we had to fight tooth and nail (we had a union) to get the university to improve our health insurance and full waive our tuition (They did a tricky thing where they would waive all people with 50% TA-ships, and then they gave everyone a 49% one. Universities are not noble, altruistic actors. Far far from it)

These things come at a cost. If the cost of grad students goes up, we'll see some combination of the following:

1 - Less grad students.

2 - More undergrads doing the work of grad students.

3 - More adjuncts doing the work of grad students.

4 - Grad students being asked to do more.

The irony is this is happening at the great home of Price Theory!

The cost could be offset by administrators not taking a huge cut. Quite literally these administrators do nothing of worth; it's the work of grad students and not-yet-tenured professors that keeps universities rhnning., Not the endless circles of bureaucrats

Won't unionizing ultimately increase that bureaucracy with union reps, compliance officers, and frequent renegotiations?

Then they can simply be fairer to their employees and they wouldn't need a union.

Will we?

Grad students are major drivers of funding and research for universities. Cutting them will reduce that funding further and make them look worse nationally as an institution.

Perhaps undergraduates SHOULD be welcome to do more of the work? I see no problem with offering cheap workstudies to help grad students and professors getting the little things done while they research and learn.

Adjunct professors might be a good thing-many tenured professors disdain teaching and it shows.

Grad students won't be asked to do more than they agree to because they have a union.

Grad students are already the cheapest, and universities are flushed with cash and can't outsource so while they may cut a bit on the numbers mostly they will have to suck it up.

Many won't pay for health insurance, or if they do, it is the health insurance that only gets you access to the student health center, which is basically just a dispenser of tylenol and condoms. Most will waive "tuition" but won't waive "fees" which can still be substantial (10% of your take home pay, in my case). This was at a top-10-for-CS grad program.

That was the case at VCU and every other state school I looked at in VA. Only for Science/Engineering though. All other subjects had very few if any TA/RA positions and a ton of people competing to get them.

About 10 years ago the stipends were around 25-35k/year. Plenty to live off of in Richmond or Charlottesville.

My masters program offered really affordable health care to students (both undergrad and grad). That was around 2005 though. Not sure if that's still the case.

My experience in my CS MS was that there was ~50% discount on tuition, a subsidized health insurance plan, and not quite enough to live on.

MS is often a different deal that PhD or MS/PhD.

Indeed, in my field, terminal Masters students are a profit center.

Top tier usesally doesn’t have terminal MS. MS means you didn’t cut it or you want out. In either case they pay you.

I think that's not completely accurate. In physics and math and probably other hard science disciplines, yeah, you are correct, a masters means "thanks but you're not gonna make it to a PhD".

I have a masters in Computer Science from UW-Madison and I had nothing to do with the PhD track. I just wanted more learning and the CS department was happy to provide it. There was no stigma associated with a masters degree there and it's definitely helped me in my career.

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