I'm pulling for the students here, and these are basic benefits, but you've gotta reign in student debt in the first place
> "Weeks after an announced increase in state funding staved off a tuition hike, the Board of Regents riled spending critics this summer by handing 3% raises to some of UC’s highest-paid employees. The number of those making at least $500,000 annually grew by 14% in the last year, to 445, and the system’s administrative ranks have swelled by 60% over the last decade — far outpacing tenure-track faculty."
https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20...
Not a professorship; an actual, physical chair.
They weren't amused. I think they'd heard that one before.
Last year the top 6 highest paid employees at Berkeley were all coaches or athletics administrators, of which the highest (head football coach Justin Wilcox) was paid $4 million. The football team isn't anything special, consistently coming in middle of the pack and not drawing in huge crowds.
The people rooting for Cal are doing it out of college/hometown spirit and not because we think our team is the best. If instead of $4M we spent $200k on a coach, would that change the outcomes at all? That would save $84/student per year in tuition, which is not a negligible amount.
I don’t know how California state schools are run, but at least in Oregon it doesn’t work like this. The athletics programs are funded from a completely different pot of money than the academics, specifically so that football spending doesn’t affect tuition. At Oregon State University (where I’m currently a grad student), the football program is profitable and brings in enough ticket sales to pay for itself and all the rest of the athletics programs too.
The lottery also makes money for a few of its participants.
Also players can now be compensated for their "name, image and likeness" and top players are earning millions.
This is led to bloat within universities. See: https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-administrative-bloat-is...
Then we make the loans non-dischargable and there is no real reason for a university to every place any limit on what they charge for tuition since the customer who is buying the product is not the customer paying for the product.
It essentially makes the system be "tell us how much money you have, and that's what the price is for you".
If you spend 18 years saving money for your kid's college, or they work and save during high school, the university just takes all that money. If you spend it all instead, you'll get more "financial aid" to lower the price.
Which, if you're a socialist school administrator is great news. No one keeps any money, everyone leaves school equally poor and dependent on the state, regardless of their previous labor or financial responsibility.
How do those numbers add up? If a degree costs $100K and a graduate student costs $25K per year, then one person can pay a personally tutoring graduate student for four years to acquire all knowledge. If 10 students pool their money, education costs only $10K.
There needs to be some space to meet and there needs to be a budget for professors but another $10K should cover that easily.
What's the obstacle that prevents students and graduate students and even professors from going back to the beginnings? They can organize their own university where the administration works for them.
There is no need to strike if the university has to match the offer of a competent competitor.
>Universities were generally structured along three types, depending on who paid the teachers. The first type was in Bologna, where students hired and paid for the teachers. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university#Characteri...
The problem is that being privately tutored by UC Berkeley faculty is worth much less than a UC Berkeley degree[1], even though you might learn a lot more. And starting a new university from scratch is apparently difficult, although I share your confusion on exactly which part is so difficult, and whether the difficulty could be circumvented by getting a billion or so in private donations, or if it's a case of "no matter how much money you pump into Brown, it'll never become Harvard. Only Harvard can become Harvard".
[1]: Unless you go and make yourself famous for it, which in this case might be quite doable[2]. But the general point that just learning the material without an official piece of paper recognized by the system is often worth significantly less than having the piece of paper.
[2]: And someone should do it and make headlines.
Don't get me wrong, I really liked Bruce Porter, but I don't think he could replace Bob Mugerauer teaching Contemporary Moral Problems.
If you want famous professors, you either have to pay more, or create an enticing environment. You still have the option to pay for recordings of their lectures which should be more affordable.
A well-funded university will be better in several dimensions but quality of education and research is entirely within the influence of whoever starts a new university. Nothing else should matter.
Yes. From the article: "If the deal is approved by union members, graduate students would receive a minimum stipend of $34,000 by October 2024—a raise of $13,000 for some students". So as I said, professors are vastly more expensive.
> Also, wouldn’t that provide more actual jobs for PHd’s instead of competing for a scant number of jobs?
Yes. But it wouldn't do anything to save money on undergraduate education.
> Furthermore, I do not believe that the costs of undergraduate education are driven by professor salaries; I suspect there are other drivers like administrative overhead and overbuilt facilities.
Then what's the objection to higher stipends for PhD students?
Right, and this is why they are trying to underpay teaching staff.
There is no problem with “whiny” PhDs. The problem is with overpaid self-dealing administrators betraying the purpose of the institution.
TAs also grade quizzes, final exams, create questions for problems, etc... The professor often does very little work and leaves it to the TA, at least in my experience as a TA for physics courses. It's a lot more than just maintaining a lab.
That is exactly what the union is negotiating.
It's a graduate student union. Both Masters and PhD students are in the same union.
> senior undergrads
1) They're not qualified.
2) Why would they even want to? It's time consuming and low paying. In fact, it would be even lower paying without a union, so senior undergrads would need to form one. Also keep in mind that PhD students are generally intending to go into teaching in the future, whereas undergrads generally aren't.
If they don't work for the university, these union negotiations don't affect them.
Research is also incredibly important, especially at state schools, so that undergraduate students have more opportunity to participate in and learn from active research.
In my experience having worked at both prestigious private and low ranking state schools, state school doing research are much more willing to have undergrads involved in research. I've seen plenty of young students coming from low income, rural homes go on to become more successful than they ever imagined because they had access to research facilities and teams.
edit: it's worth noting as another commenter has that most of the teaching in universities is done by highly underpaid grad students.
Interesting concept. Paying students to attend. I survived on this support in ancient times as somebody has to handle all those pre med/vet/dental students. But it was lean and I still can’t enjoy Mac and cheese. It certainly wasn’t a job or career.
Edit: reply again to deeper in the thread: we used the early students for things like 1-2 year lab as they were way better at lab than the students. Nobody handled a recitation unless they were 3rd year or more, had neutral+ evaluations and their boss lacked RA funding. Those with funded profs didn’t waste time ta’ing as they did work and wrote paper drafts. Those with new or unfunded profs did the ta gig and they also did full time work and writing drafts. 10+ extra hours a week ta.
Adjuncts are more expensive than PhD students. That's not going to help at all with undergraduate costs.
> or senior u-grad students to be the necessary ta’s. It’s not like a 1st or 2nd year PhD student is particularly good or interested in ta’ing - they might be taking courses and are certainly fulfilling program entry requirements.
If 1st or 2nd year PhD students are not particularly good, then wouldn't senior undergraduate students be even worse? Anyway, in my experience 1st or 2nd year PhD students didn't usually TA. It was the longer tenured students who were the TAs.
The general public thinks first and foremost about education, but for lots of academics, teaching is a necessary evil and research is where the prestige (and money) is.
Most students I know were TA for one or two semesters and RA for the remainder of their 6 years. As far as I can tell, they are all a financial gain, not drain, for the university. That will likely depend on the department though.
I don't know about Masters students.
That would be interesting, because TAs do the grading. ;-)
If I said that the introduction of the automobile to common public use was similar to the introduction of domesticated animals for riding, because it opened up a larger/wider area that people could interact with... saying that a car has wheels but a horse doesn't wouldn't invalidate that comparison.
"“The current child care subsidy will be enough to cover … less than 2 months of child care per year”"
Look I'm for affordable tuition, but is frankly going to be a lot[1] easier with the jobs that homomorphic is gonna bring to cloud.
1: "a lot" spoken suddenly guttural, like Trump does