Coronavirus (political)

[MTK]

Originally Posted by mike340

As a grad student I made $17,000/year (about 20 years ago) after winning the biggest U.S. university math competition. ...and it takes a while to get your Ph.D. If you go into academia you don't really make it back, unless you play the right office politics. My thesis was "rediscovered" a decade later and declared the "idea of the year" by a bioinformatics blog, and for that I received... $0. By then I was out of the field because my work was used to make the "office pet's" career, (so he got credit for all my work), and I gave up.

Maybe we should consider making competent scientists a little better paid so they don't have to worry about finances. I saw an article a few years ago that stated that 30% of the Ph.D.s teaching university extension courses are on welfare. So they get crap wages for working hours per day on getting their degree and are rewarded with crap pay afterwards.

I'm tired of hearing of the poor teachers and waitresses all the time with no mention of the people who have busted their ass for years for no benefit, but their (almost unpaid) research is then heavily used.

Most companies pay college grads like shit to start off with, couple that with massive student loan debt and yeah that doesn't add up either. We can have both arguments at the same time though.