<p>How much time did you dedicate to being a RA or TA?? How much of your graduate tuition did this positions cover?</p>
<p>This varies dramatically by university, department and your actual position. I’ve seen anything from $5K/semester for 20 hours of work/week and no other benefits, to $30K/year plus full tuition remission and health insurance for 5 hours/week. (I am currently holding the latter. :))</p>
<p>That is amazing! Congrats to you!! How difficult is it as far as time management goes?? I assume 5 hours probably isn’t bad at all…</p>
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<p>no wonder california’s bankrupt.</p>
<p>Paying graduate assistants a decent living wage is an incredibly valuable use of tax dollars. Not to mention many of them are funded from external sources, some of which are taxpayer-funded (federal research grants) and some of which are not (private foundation/corporate grants).</p>
<p>As a former California resident, student and taxpayer, I can think of about 80 million things that impact the budget more (like prison guards making $90,000 per year, or Prop. 13’s ridiculously low property tax cap) than RA/TA pay.</p>
<p>Assitantship pay also varies by field, with the hard sciences more likely to get a higher pay (at least thats my impression).</p>
<p>no I agree, polarscribe. I was more or less joking. There are lifeguards making 6 figures, and they don’t even really work. A friend of mine from SD used to work 2 hrs a day on a 40k salary before he decided to get a second degree.</p>
<p>As a current grad student with a TA position, you dedicate a considerable amount of time to TA duties. If you include teaching class/lecture, having office hours, grading meetings, weekly meetings with the instructor, and not to mention grading, you can easily rack up 20-30 hours. My TA covers my tuition, and cost of living. I have to pay ~$1,200 in fees per semister, so that is deducted from my check each month. After paying rent, I usually have more than enough to live, somewhat comfortably might I add.</p>
<p>My program gives all its students RAs automatically and the PIs are required to continue funding us at that level for 5 years (although pretty much everyone gets a training grant by 2 or 3rd year). RAships are $27K for 20hr (technically) plus full tuition and healthcare, but nobody actually only works 20. I usually work 45-50hrs per week. If we only worked those 20 hours our PIs would be ****ed and it would take much, much longer to graduate. I also don’t have the option of TAing for extra money, but it takes so much time that I really don’t want to anyway. </p>
<p>Basically, all my time is devoted to my RA since I’m here for a research degree. Even in the first two years when I was taking classes, those only took maybe 10-12hrs per week and I still worked in the lab over 30hrs.</p>
<p>Thanks you all! Your posts have given me great insight to what it would be like in those positions! I love to hear everyone’s experiences with assistantships.</p>