<p>I am planning to get a PhD in biology. My graduate school will provide me with a specific amount of stipend somewhere around 25k. I would like to know if I work as a graduate teaching assistant, can I get extra cash in addition to the regular stipend that the school allocated? If the answer is yes, how hard is it to become a teaching assistant and what are the required qualifications? And how many hours can I work a week and what is the pay rate? I appreciate your responses! </p>
<p>The answers to all of these questions will depend on your program and your school’s policies. For my program, we were required to work as a teaching assistant for one semester, and that required teaching experience was unpaid, but if we taught past that one-semester requirement, we were paid at a rate per class section that varied by graduate year (older graduate students earned more than younger graduate students). We were paid per semester and per class rather than per week or per hour, but your mileage may vary.</p>
<p>In general, once you join a lab, your ability to work as a teaching assistant may be constrained by how much time your advisor is willing to let you spend away from the lab bench. My advisor was perfectly happy to sign the papers to allow me to work as a teaching assistant for the course he taught, but he was less happy with a labmate of mine who taught an undergraduate class every fall.</p>
<p>Depends on the program, but my program worked the same way as molliebatmit. Students on the GSAS fellowship were required to TA one semester per year. If they also TAed in the other semester, they got paid per class section (it was $3,000). If you had an external fellowship, you weren’t required to TA and therefore could get paid per class section for both semesters. I once TA’ed two sections of the same class in a semester and got paid $6,000.</p>
<p>However, I also agree with molliebatmit…a lot of professors are reluctant to “let” you TA more than you actually have to, and some advisers will actively block you. In my department you had to get approval from your adviser to take on any additional TA’ing. I’ve been on external funding during my entire grad school career, so I was never required to TA. My advisers, specifically, wanted me to TA as little as possible - just enough to get the requisite experience so I could get hired as a professor, but that was it. One of them flat out said he would prefer if I didn’t try to sole-teach my own class (I contemplated doing it as I dissertated, and I’m really, really glad I didn’t).</p>
<p>Being a teaching assistant can be extremely time consuming. I would say a minimum commitment is definitely 12-15 hours per week, and that’s if you’re assisting a professor in a lecture course (maybe grading and helping set up the A/V). If you have to teach your own lab section, prepare your own lectures, and/or prepare exams and homework assignments, expect the time commitment to go up by a lot. It’s also very distracting from your research, but your teaching prowess won’t get you a job even at a small LAC - it’s really your research achievements that will get you a job in academia, with good teaching being just the cherry on top. I actually really like working with undergraduates and I like teaching (although I hate grading), so I’m not saying this out of dislike, just being 100% real.</p>
<p>So teach some, but don’t let the desire for money keep you doing it too much. I say this as someone who absolutely refused to believe the hype that graduate students need to live the life of an ascetic. Having a side hustle to earn a little more money is important, and I’ve worked part-time ever since my coursework was over - sometimes teaching, too. It’s nice if the side hustle isn’t always teaching. IMO, office jobs are best. You don’t have to think about them too much, and sometimes you can even get your work done at the office depending. They also usually have bounded schedules, and sometimes the experience is useful for getting other kinds of jobs. I worked a student affairs job for 2 years that was bounded pretty well at 20 hours per week, and I got supervisory experience as well as experience managing a small budget that I can put on my resume should I ever want a non-academic job. I’ve also done some consulting work for money, and I like it so much that I’d like to have my own consulting business on the side.</p>
<p>You really can’t rely on how it works for other people. I know someone who is not permitted to take on work as a condition of her fellowship (but I know her from a seasonal PT job, hehe)</p>
<p>One program I know pays TA’s via a price set by collective bargaining of the teacher’s union. I though that program paid 16k, but online I found 29k so I guess I’m not sure. The time commitment is significant and not always flexible (class hours, lab hours, office hours, grading)</p>
<p>Some programs let any grad student TA, regardless of experience, possibly because they need many TA’s. Some will prefer prior TA experience, so those with some from undergraduate TAships are at a bit of advantage. Some programs only let PhD candidates TA. So depends on availability of positions.</p>