Alisha, As an abd PhD student I sympathize with your situation. I would like to see my department function without the graduate student population, as they teach many of the classes, produce the majority of the first-author publications, write many of the funding grants, and even take on the peer-review responsibilities of their advisers. On the food-chain of university politics, however, graduate students are very clearly on the bottom. Part of this is justifiable, as we are generally earning a stipend plus free tuition and health insurance, which is not an insubstantial sum. Having written some funding grants, I've become aware of just how much it costs to keep me around!
The part that is often underestimated, however, is that the quality of any department is 1) dependent on the quality of the faculty, yes, but 2) also dependent on the quality of the graduate students. As a guy that had options, I came to my present school for three main reasons: 1) I liked my adviser and his realm of study 2) I liked the departments commitment to graduate student funding 3) I liked the graduate student facilities. Honestly, I would have gone somewhere else if I was introduced to the situation you describe. I suppose I'm not directly answering your question, as I don't know of a study specifically assessing the "value" of graduate students, and workloads and support differ greatly from lab to lab. I've witnessed labs where the great majority of the "value" being attributed to the faculty member was being produced by graduate students, and I've witnessed quite the opposite. Nonetheless, when a faculty member interviews they always have some common concerns: what's my salary, how much lab space, what's my start-up. Don't think that graduate students aren't doing the same thing (I was), and in my mind, the reason why the "best" schools are attracting the "best" graduate students comes down to these fundamental (and rather unscientific) concerns. On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 1:34 AM, Alisha Dahlstrom < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I am currently a phd student in my second year. Currently, within my > department, grad students share a small building with several rooms, 5-7 in > a room. There is a proposal to uproot all the students (and combine them > with grad students in a similar department) to a renovated basement that is > currently not being used because it is moldy, has poor ventilation and no > natural lighting. Apart from a few short partitions, this would be a large > shared space that "packed as many students in as possible" (about 40; you > can imagine the potential noise and disruptions). As the grad student rep, > when I explained this to the proponent of this new plan and asked for his > justification, it was that "grad students aren't worth much to a university > (monetarily speaking, at least, undergrads earn a school more) and it would > be nice for visitors to see all the students in one space." > > As this plan seems to be moving forward rapidly, I would really like to > pull > together some documentation that supports my belief that 1) grad students > will have a higher completion rate and better output in a better (e.g., > quieter and well-lit) work environment and 2) grad students are actually > valuable to a university. In my cursory, search, I haven't had much luck - > does anyone have any suggestions or input? Feel free to email me directly. > > Cheers, > Alisha >
