<p>jmilton90,
I was surprised, too, but I got this directly from the Berkeley website. The document entitled 'what you need to know about being a GSI, GSR, Reader, or Tutor" refers you to this pay scale chart:</p>
<p>About</a> Human Resources</p>
<p>GSIs at Berkeley are unionized---they're members of the UAW. According to the salary chart, GSI salaries range from $32,782 to $39,017 depending on experience.</p>
<p>See also:</p>
<p>Those are the full-time salaries. The best appt you can get is half time or $16,350-$18,500 or so.</p>
<p>OK, that makes sense.</p>
<p>@barrons</p>
<p>A majority is not the same as all. So you can't say "society" chose to fund this unless each and every single person in that "society" chose to fund it.</p>
<p>Every society has its outcasts and non-believers, kinda like you.</p>
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Your point about a research preference for public schools is just a complete red herring. There is no such thing. NSF and NIH don't award research grants on the basis of competitive bidding by price. They award money to the strongest research proposals, which is generally determined by the quality of the principal investigators and the importance and feasibility of their proposed research.
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<p>I never said that the preference came from the grants. See below. </p>
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<p>Sakky,
Your point about a research preference for public schools is just a complete red herring. There is no such thing. NSF and NIH don't award research grants on the basis of competitive bidding by price. They award money to the strongest research proposals, which is generally determined by the quality of the principal investigators and the importance and feasibility of their proposed research.</p>
<p>As for the cost of maintaining grad students, as I've said before, this is going to be roughly comparable everywhere. Most grad students at Berkeley are employed as Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs), the equivalent of TAs at other schools. They're paid a standard salary ranging from $30K to $40K per year, plus full or partial fee remission depending on how heavy a teaching load they're carrying. Some are employed as Graduate Student Researchers (GSRs), same deal though their salaries can apparently go as high as $60K for more senior people. GSRs are paid out of the research budgets of the faculty they're working for. Berkeley doesn't actually require non-resident grad students to become California residents, but it does create a pretty powerful incentive: it makes the fee and non-resident tuition waiver available to non-residents for only one year, so a GSI or GSR who does not become a California resident would have to pay their fees and non-resident tuition out of their own pocket after the first year. So of course, all the non-residents become California residents to avoid fees and tuition. But so what? Either way, they're not actually paying tuition---just as graduate assistants at Stanford aren't paying tuition. They're being supported by the University, just as at Stanford. The only difference is that by having them become California residents, the University is showing a lower nominal cost on its books, by claiming it's just waiving the lower in-state graduate student fees and not the higher OOS graduate student tuition. But the real costs to the University are the same either way: it's got to pay their salary, it's got to pay to provide their education, and it doesn't get any tuition income from GSIs and GSRs, same as at any other major research university. Just in what way this amounts to an unfair subsidy to Berkeley researchers, I fail to see.
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<p>Uh, you actually just explained it, so I think it's just a matter of reviewing what you wrote. Somebody is paying the OOS portion of these nonresident tuition. Sure, maybe, you like said, it's just a silly accounting artifact, but the fact remains that somebody has to pay it. You are absolutely correct that it is not the graduate student who pays it, so who is left? The department itself. </p>
<p>But right there is the advantage. If the student were to declare instate residency, then the department would no longer have to pay that OOS fee. Hence, the department now has extra money to do other things. This is precisely why the UC's place so much pressure on the grad students who are eligible to become instate residents to do so quickly, because that means extra money for the departments. </p>
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Just in what way this amounts to an unfair subsidy to Berkeley researchers, I fail to see. And even if it did, I find it wildly implausible that this would materially affect the Berkeley faculty's ability to compete for NSF and NIH grants.
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<p>Again, I never claimed that it affected their ability to compete for NSF/NIH grants. They get the same grants either way. The difference is that the UC public departments effectively end up with *extra*funds that Stanford does not have, because they can play the accounting 'trick' of paying instate tuition. Stanford departments don't have this ability and hence always have to shell out a bunch of extra money for their grad students. </p>
<p>But that extra advantage has to come from somewhere, and the answer is that it comes from the taxpayers itself. In effect, the state taxpayers are providing a subsidy to the UC departments that private departments like Stanford's don't get. </p>
<p>Now, again, I agree with you that this may indeed all be just an artifact of accounting. But, like I said, it has real-world effects. I pose the same question I posed before: why do the departments at Berkeley care so much that grad students change their state residency (if they can)? Trust me, they really care. Why do they care? The only logical reason for why they care is because the departments want to be able to lower their costs and hence have extra money available to do other things. Otherwise, there is no reason for them to care. Clearly the students don't care, because, like you said, they pay the same either way (that is, they don't pay anything at all because the department pays all). But the departments care, because they receive a benefit from having as many instate students as possible. That benefit must come from somewhere, and in this case, it comes from the taxpayers.</p>
<p>Hence, this leaves the question open as to why public research should be subsidized by the taxpayer, but private research should not be. </p>
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Where is this preference you claim?
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<p>See above.</p>