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Comment by anoncoward111 | Hacker News Reader

When I look at the grad school system, I am really confused. I really, really wanted to go to grad school at a top 10 history program, where I also did an undergrad honors' thesis. I was prepared to accept $18,000 a year as a living wage, and I was excited to be an adjunct for $35,000 a year with crazy hours and no health benefits in a small college town.

Now I am paid usually $45,000 - $60,000 per year to talk on a phone to people who need help filling out a web form in order to buy something. It's a bit absurd. I don't mind this work and it is good money. It keeps me and my girlfriend fed and sheltered.

Why is the university system so negligent and abusive towards those who invent new ideas and teach new inventors?

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>"Either millions of students are overpaying every year, or the system provides some value."

Its the former, except the government is paying for it...

EDIT:

I say this as someone who got paid by the government via academia to torture rodents for no reason for years.

I can guarantee you that the $30,000 I wired from my bank account to my student loan company was not given to me by the government.

The government of course gave me the loan for inflated price of attending uni, but goddamnit I paid for it myself with my own blood and tears.

I had a scholarship.

Grad school, in academic research not engineering and MBAs, is mostly done on scholarships/grants. Your tuition is paid by your PI using a grant from the government (or sometimes a private foundation or company).

No worries, we are talking about two different things.

I'm saying that when a grad student or adjunct teaches a class, they get paid a few thousand dollars. The students in that class are paying 100x that amount in tuition.

I'm implying that grad students should be paid more for this service, instead of the money going to administrator salaries and football stadiums.

Oh I agree. It's just if you're doing grad school and you're paying with student loans, not the government, you're doing it wrong.

Yes 100%. Sometimes it works out profitable for "professional schools", but definitely not for history majors or even sometimes biology majors.

>"Why is the university system so negligent and abusive towards those who invent new ideas and teach new inventors?"

Have you considered the possibility that academia is paying researchers/etc what they are worth on average? Its just that the majority of people being paid are generating near zero, or negative, value to society.

I've definitely considered it. However, interestingly, to attend university in the USA usually carries a pricetag of $20,000 to $30,000 per year minimum after all the smoke and mirrors of "grants and financial aid".

So, you have consumers (students and their parents) paying real money for a real education that they are hoping will result in gainful employment. Either millions of students are overpaying every year, or the system provides some value.

Now, the ones delivering that value (grad students) are receiving maybe $8,000 per semester while teaching 100 students lets say, while the students are paying collectively nearly $1,000,000 for 4 months of tuitoon.

Where does the other $992,000 go, besides administrator salaries and football stadiums?

Besides administrators and sports programs, glamorous campus amenities and affirmative action admittees.

“Besides administrators and sports programs, glamorous campus amenities and affirmative action admittees.” Is affirmative action really that expensive?

I believe in funding affirmative action but yes it is expensive, the university accepts the students into the school and covers much of the cost of their housing and tuition. The actual cost isn't $60,000 per year like the sticker price says, but it is certainly around $8,000-12,000 in operational costs.

When you talk to your boss about salaries, you'll quickly find out that your salary isn't determined by what value you bring to the firm, it's by whatever the market will bear.

If you got balls, you can try to extort your replacement value. If you come with unique skills it may be much higher than what your resumee looks like.

That requires rational thinking and accounting skills on part of management, both are often in short supply, just look at the current Elon Musk meltdown... mission-hostile management is a thing.

The value you bring to the firm is a factor in that it is a cap on what you'll get paid. Value is also relative, if a monkey can provide 90% of your value then you'll get paid a little more than peanuts.

If a monkey can provide 90% of your value, but there's a shortage of people who can provide the other 10%, you might still get paid well.

I mean, if the monkey doing the can generate 900k of value per year, but a human doing is can generate 1MM per year, then it would be better to hire the human for anything up to 96k/year (assuming peanuts cost less than 1k/quarter).

Of course your value is relevant to your salary. It sets the upper limit.

In capitalism it's better to create a small amount of value that you can capture, than a large amount of value that you can't. You will be more rewarded if you can say I made those people buy $500k more in widgets then they would have otherwise bought last year and back that up with stats, then if you write a paper that leads to better widgets years down the line or even worse, write a paper on the sociocultural effects of widgets.

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