<p>It is true that grad students create a huge sucking hole in a school’s budget that diverts resources from undergrad education. Phd candidates pay no tuition, receive stipends and partially subsidized housing, take up space etc. And at MIT and many others these postgrads greatly outnumber the undergrads. 4200 to 6200. For all of these reasons one of MIT’s proposals to balance its budget calls for reducing the number of grad student freeloaders and increasing undergrads [at least some of whom pay something toward their education]. Besides, does the world really need all these extra, overeducated post docs? [I am excluding from this the MEng students who pay their way]. IMHO.</p>
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Is that “etc.” limited to “provide the actual work that brings federal grant money to the school, composes published papers that advance the careers of faculty members and enhance the prestige of departments as a whole”? Or does it also include “serve as an underpaid supplemental teaching force, doing the grunt work of course administration on top of their already ridiculous research workloads”?</p>
<p>Though I admittedly take up space as a PhD candidate, and have an unfortunate habit of breathing the rarefied Cambridge air that could otherwise be nourishing worthy undergraduates, I am happy to note that I am fully funded by outside fellowships, and therefore am freeloading only on the US government, and not at all of my university.</p>
<p>Grad students don’t get an education. They are there to do the professor’s research.</p>
<p>Seriously mia, your post was so out there that I thought it was a joke at first.</p>
<p>^ They do work, a lot of it, but how do they not get an education?</p>
<p>The most important thing in grad school is to learn how to produce a lot of research as quickly as possible. Classwork, especially at schools like MIT, tends to be minimal. A lot of people take some kind of readings class for one semester. The rest of the time is spent doing research. You also write a proposal, but this is something a postdoc would do as well.</p>
<p>These things are education, yes, but in terms of research production, there is little difference between a postdoc and a grad student. That was my point. In some cases, grad students may spend even more time in the lab, although at MIT I’d guess postdocs are burning the midnight oil.</p>
<p>Real engineers do go to R.P.I… Real engineers also go to M.I.T… I think that commitee member was just having a bad day. I graduated from Rensselaer and have many close friends who went to M.I.T… For the most part there is a mutual respect between us because we all know what M.I.T. is, but they also realize that Rensselaer is America’s oldest
engineering school and thus hugely important in it’s own right. </p>
<p>Lots of great schools out there. Sometimes we just get carried away with rivalries.</p>