PhD Students Told To Consider Selling Avon Products To Make Ends Meet (theguardian.com) 328
Postgraduates chosen for their "excellent potential" to become future leaders in environmental science and sustainable business should consider selling Avon products, pet-sitting and joining clinical trials to cope with the cost of living crisis. From a report: The advice -- issued on Wednesday by the prestigious Aries Doctoral Training Partnership funded by the Natural Environment Research Council at the University of East Anglia -- provoked outrage among researchers who described the letter as "appalling," "ridiculous" and "unbelievable."
An email to PhD students on the programme recognised that many were finding it "increasingly challenging" to live on their stipends, $18,776 a year at present, and attached a three-page document from the UEA careers office setting out options to make ends meet. Before making specific recommendations, the document warns that many students are not allowed to do more than six hours of paid work a week, because to do so would interfere with them completing their course on time.
An email to PhD students on the programme recognised that many were finding it "increasingly challenging" to live on their stipends, $18,776 a year at present, and attached a three-page document from the UEA careers office setting out options to make ends meet. Before making specific recommendations, the document warns that many students are not allowed to do more than six hours of paid work a week, because to do so would interfere with them completing their course on time.
Respect (Score:5, Insightful)
I have nothing but respect for the people who make it through a PhD program. The path is littered with obstacles often unintentionally (and sometimes maliciously) created by an inept system.
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Re:Respect (Score:4, Informative)
Being a student was never advertised as a way to make a living.
That has to be the most ignorant thing I've ever read. Someone doing a PhD is NOT a student, they are largely researchers who publish actual work in scientific journals. Many of them actually *teach* university students to make ends meet.
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Someone doing a PhD is NOT a student
Someone doing a Ph.D. takes university courses, completes homework assignments and projects, and takes exams.
Whatever else they do, they are clearly also students.
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You're universalising a quirk of the US system, which in particular is completely inaccurate when applied to the UK system which is the subject of the article.
Re: Respect (Score:3)
I'm curious, so I looked it up. (Score:5, Informative)
https://jawwaby.club/2022/07/2... [jawwaby.club]
It was an email sent to doctoral students. Essentially it says, "Do what you gotta do." And that strikes me as perfectly valid, useful advice. Any outrage people are feeling comes from a misplaced sense of entitlement. Aspiring to a PhD doesn't imply people should treat you like you have one.
"Other ideas (not endorsed or researched, just suggestions)"
Campus jobs
Babysitting
Dog walking or other pet sitting
Paid for clinical trials
Selling Avon or similar
Online assistant
Fruit picking
Paid surveys
Delivery driver
Cleaning
Retail
Service work
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I drove tow trucks. Not a bad gig for a student as there's work 24 hours a day.
But what a fool I was. I should have partied, maxed out my student loans, and then begged for loan forgiveness.
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But what a fool I was. I should have partied, maxed out my student loans, and then begged for loan forgiveness.
Biden is working real, real hard to avoid providing any of that to anyone else. Everyone who's gotten it so far was literally scammed by the institution, or fully disabled.
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Except a doctoral student has maybe 3 or 4 hours free a week.
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But what a fool I was. I should have partied, maxed out my student loans, and then begged for loan forgiveness.
All the ol' I suffered and therefore everyone needs to suffer for eternity reasoning. Nothing says progress more than holding back others because you got butthurt.
But forgiving debt in a vacuum isn't the solution. The solution is structural reforms addressing the idea that education should cost money. And then forgiving debt, regardless how upset it may make you for not parting.
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Re:I'm curious, so I looked it up. (Score:5, Funny)
Just beg. [smbc-comics.com]
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Most of those you wouldn't make a livable wage doing those for 8-12 hours a day.
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Unnecessary vitriol aside, they aren't working more than 40 hours to live. I agree that's unreasonable.
They are working for an unnecessary goal - one that is only attained by a very small group of people. And it isn't required to live.
It's chosen. Not imposed.
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I'd point out the logical fallacy demonstrated here, but you either already know it, or you don't care.
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Are you willing to extend your conclusion (and support) to all fields and levels of study? Or is it just PhD students that we should support structurally under the guise that their learning is special and the attainment of their goals should only task the intellect?
Re:I'm curious, so I looked it up. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Despite my phrasing it as opposition, I agree with you. I was poking at your commitment to the idea.
I think that in "rich" economies, education should be free, in all forms. That doesn't mean universally granted - entrance criteria and demonstrated aptitude matter. But if you qualify, it should be covered.
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I can tell from that statement that you've never been in an actual graduate program. (Part-time MBA doesn't count.)
First: Graduate programs typically prohibit students from working *at all* as a condition of being in the program. Second: Not all degree programs, even in STEM, r
Re:I'm curious, so I looked it up. (Score:5, Insightful)
The stipend listed, $18,776, is within a few dozen dollars of what I made as a graduate student as a full time research assistent, back in 1990! And it was extremely low back then too (but in engineering, this was better pay than what students in other departments got). Maybe they don't have to pay for tuition out of this like I had to, but I would think that in 30 years that the pay would at least attempt to pretend to match inflation.
Granted, this is east Anglia and not London, but the cost of housing in the entire UK is very very high at the moment so any of the jobs above will not be sufficient to cover the rent.
This doesn't feel like any sense of entitlement, this pay is below the poverty line for what is essentially full time work, often much longer, most of which often does nothing to advance your own education goals. Yes, you gotta do what you gotta do, but there's not even time to do a second job.
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Back when I was a graduate student, I made $ 11,400 a year in 1995. I also made somewhere between $10 and $25 an hour (depending on how it was arranged and the level) tutoring physics and math at the high school and college level. I lived in an apartment with 4 other people (a double bedroom and a triple bedroom). I drove a 1984 Toyota Tercel, though to be fair, I rarely actually drove it - walking distance to campus and mass transit for much else. Mostly used it to go grocery shopping. My rent was $2
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In the life/biological sciences at a major US research university, our graduate students are making between $27-$32k (this depends on their particular program). That also receive full tuition coverage and health insurance. $18.7k is crazy low. We could not retail or recruit any students with stipends that low.
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At least you did not list "sex work" (prostitution is legal in the UK outside of Northern Ireland if the worker is independent).
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I didn't create the list. It was copied from the source.
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...And this was probably the #1 reason I dropped out of my PhD program. This, and the fact that the money was *still* going to be lousy even if I finished my degree. This was probably no great loss to science-- but it highlights a really big problem, which is that research scientists (in practically any field) tend to be *obscenely* underpaid.
The poster accusing PhD students of "a misplaced sense of entitlement" who "want to be treated like they already have a PhD"... well, he probably doesn't know very ma
Nice Work (Score:2)
David Lodge's novel _Nice Work_ back in the 1980s predicted this was where the UK academic world would end up. Prophetic!
sign of the times (Score:2)
"appalling," "ridiculous" and "unbelievable."
Pretty much applies to most of the news these days.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11. [slashdot.org]
just use unlimited student loans and school full t (Score:2)
just use unlimited student loans and school full time you want good grades right?
Step one (Score:2)
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Have I told you about how my new coin can stop you from being poor? I call it AvonCoin. Just find two friends to join in with you.
What's that, you don't like it? Have fun staying poor.
Poor poor students (Score:3, Insightful)
An email to PhD students on the programme recognised that many were finding it "increasingly challenging" to live on their stipends, $18,776 a year at present .. many students are not allowed to do more than six hours of paid work a week, because to do so would interfere with them completing their course on time.
Let me get this straight.. These are students in a program that covers their school expenses plus a stipend - in exchange for nothing more than them being a student with potential who does their coursework and could possibly lead future research.
Wtf is this news?
If the potential of these students is So valuable that it makes sense paying them just for Pursuing their coursework: Then those students should negotiate a higher figure, Or "permission to do more hours of paid work", under threat of not Joining the program, or they can withdraw from it as soon as allowed to do so, So the school will be forced to adjust the conditions of the program in order to make it work. And if the program won't incentivize students to a point where it's financially sustainable and not unduly burdensome to the student, then the student's best option is to pull out. If the student is going to remain due to their personal desires: Then the program is in part for the student's personal gratification, and the student should expect to pay a price then..
Students need to simply pull out when it's inadequate. Whoever is running the program then will have no real choice but to either bump up stipend figures then or Accept having no worthy students willing to undertake the program, due to their providing insufficient incentive for students to do so.
Presumably a postdoc student who have qualities recognizable as those of a leader should be able to earn for themselves far greater than the $18K plus academic expenses working in private industry, And they could still study independently outside the restrictions of a program.
Re:Poor poor students (Score:4, Interesting)
Graduate students don't do much coursework except in the first year, and while taking course work you're usually not paid for it. When you get paid that awful salary is when you're trying to do your own research and get your thesis done; except that your research is put on hold because you're working 60-80 hours a week on your prof's research, teaching the prof's classes, and attending symposium of peripheral professors.
Now there are some benefits of course. But if I had to do it all over I'd skip it and then today I'd easily have 2 or 3 times the amount of money that could go towards my eventual retirement, probably with better health also.
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These are students in a program
No there are no students in a program. Calling people doing their PhD students is completely ignorant of what a PhD is and what it entails. You're writing this today largely thanks to the countless hours put in by PhD "students" at university researching and developing technology that you hold dear.
And you're comparing them to some twerp sitting in a class listening to a teacher crap on about maths.
Shameful man.
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This distinction is wrong in the UK. All PhD students are doing their research. There is some taught component as most advanced jobs have an training component.
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The problem is that students aren't being permitted to also go work 20 hours/week doing something else, otherwise they lose the assistantship and the associated tuition waiver.
That's the problem? Students aren't allowed to work full time in addition to going to school?
So, Door Dash then? I mean, whatever! (Score:2)
Sounds to me like a bunch of people need to deflate their fat egos a bit and realize that you need some quick, short-term income to make ends meet while you're trying to get through school. And this advice is just throwing Avon out there at random. (I mean, unless you believe there's a big Avon conspiracy here where the company gets a kick-back for being mentioned?) When you have insufficient income, you know what you do? You find ways to earn more, OR you cut back on your spending. In this case, we can
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With a college degree of ANY kind, you're already in a good position to find work that pays well.
I think someone has been drinking the coolaid... The master's degree in environmental studies is worth less than the paper it is most likely printed on. The only real jobs in those fields are research jobs (which is what they have and are getting paid essentially the price of their doctorial program+the $18k), or being a low level teacher in their "field" (but probably never a tenured position due to lack of said PhD), or low level government position (again, due to lack of PhD).
I don't see many fortune 50
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Maybe we should look at whether PhDs should even be offered nowadays for most fields. The college degree structure hasn't really evolved with technology and other advantages we have in the modern world.
That said, a teacher with a PhD is usually doing a lot more than just teaching which is one reason for the pay difference.
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There are definitely options out there to earn good pay without resorting to a PhD. It's a luxury, IMO.
This is a huge blind spot, IMO. As technology advances we need more highly educated people to help it continue to advance. But we also look down upon such people and make it hard to become one. I guess we just hate progress.
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You would hope the technology advances would help people be more highly educated quicker. Just the speed of information availability should help with that.
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Just the speed of information availability should help with that.
It does where that's the problem, but people can only really absorb and integrate new information a) so quickly, and b) through use. Just a bunch of study won't cut it, though it is often very useful and important.
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Selling Avon is better than .. (Score:2)
.. sellig your kidney or even your liver.
But remember, students in Russia are not told to serve Avon, but to
serve their country and well in the current situation this just falls into the category of organ donation.
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So to be clear, as long as it's worse somewhere else, you have no right to complain? In that case, explain your actions.
Wow! So many clueless comments... (Score:5, Informative)
Wow! Pretty much every comment here is absolutely clueless if not downright shameful.
At least in the US, students tend to receive a stipend, tuition waiver (but are still subject to fees), and an insurance subsidy. Universities call it an "assistantship," but it's effectively wages and benefits for being either a teaching assistant or a research assistant. Assistantships tend to be officially for 20 hours per week, but students sometimes spend well over that amount of time, particularly on research.
Let's say that a student gets paid $24,000/year on an assistantship. At 20 hours per week, it's a little over $23/hour. That probably doesn't sound bad at all, except that students are generally prohibited from having other employment while on an assistantship. If students could get a job for the other 20 hours per week and be full time, which is what many of you are saying, they could get paid $48,000/year if it paid at the same rate. They're not allowed to do so. The email is telling students that they find other ways to get paid, but that can't actually be another job.
For all intents and purposes, the assistantship might as well be full time because students with assistantships aren't permitted to have outside employment. As a full time position, $24,000/year is around $11.50/hour. These students are skilled labor, having received degrees and being hired for assistantships in a competitive application process. Add on top of it that students receiving assistantships are required to be full time. Tuition is generally covered by a waiver, but fees aren't. The university pays the students the $24,000/year or whatever it is, then says students have to give some of it back three times a year. The fees aren't cheap, either.
But I guess some of the commenters here are so out of touch and entitled to demand that students, who are skilled labor, should do challenging research for pay that is effectively just above the federal minimum wage.
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Because tuition is waived, this is effectively an increase in pay by the amount of tuition, perhaps another $25,000 a year. That brings the effective pay to more like the $48,000 a year you used as a comparison.
Anyone who has hired a fresh college grad, even a Ph.D. grad, knows that fresh grads are very green, they are not seasoned, they need a lot of training and hand-holding, just like any other junior employee. So the work these guys do is NOT better than entry level, it IS entry level.
I wish I could hav
Proof (Score:2)
We live in a sick, disgusting world run by the most evil and greedy monsters in mankind....
The US government is like Boko Haram. (Score:2)
US policies are aimed at keeping it's population unhealthy and stupid, so no surprises there.
All that its subjects have to do is to find ways around this, but I guess that will never happen, because in stead of copperating, they much rather spend their time and energy screaming at those whom they disagree with.
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Wish I had mod points to give you right now!
The Yorkshiremen (Score:2)
Perhaps they should take sex work (Score:2)
sex work (Score:4, Informative)
Sex work is the obvious answer. Research by day, sex work at night. Hell, you can probably make more money than with a fancy degree. I mean since we are considering idiotic proposals...
Onlyfans (Score:3)
Why don't they just be honest and tell them to get an Onlyfans account?
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You call peddling MLM crap "actual work"?
What are you, an influenza?
Re:How Dare Anybody . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
So the answer is no then. The MLM doesn't pay you, you pay them.
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Bullshit. Of course, MLM pays you. Maybe, not as much as you expected, when joining, but you do get paid for every item you sell.
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You really aren't too familiar with how MLM works in the real world, are you?
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Nobody pays you to sell in an MLM. You pay the MLM for product and hope like hell you can actually sell as much as they demand that you buy.
Re:How Dare Anybody . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Seating is limited to the first one hundred people to register for $10,000 each.
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Bullshit. Of course, MLM pays you.
Many people who join MLMs never make a dime.
you do get paid for every item you sell.
You don't make money by selling products. You make money by recruiting new members.
Re:How Dare Anybody . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
You should probably come back when you have some idea of exactly how much work doing a PhD is.
Turns out that become an expert in an area and making an original contribution to knowledge is likely to be one of the more demanding things that you can do in your life.
Re:How Dare Anybody . . . (Score:5, Funny)
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Everybody knows the electromagnetic spectrum was invented by Steve Jobs at NeXT, obviously
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Re:How Dare Anybody . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you think they are called Al Gore-ithms?
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Apple invented the electromagnetic spectrum.
Only the reality distortion field.
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Re: That's $2000+ a month... (Score:3)
I made more than that 25 years ago in a relatively low income area. I was poor and broke.
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2000 bucks is pretty decent pay for a first job.
Re: That's $2000+ a month... (Score:5, Insightful)
Depending on the field (e.g. STEM), a PhD is humongous amounts of "actual work". Essentially all the hevy lifying is done by PhDs.
Do you want research? Technology? Better medicine? TVs? computers? Energy? That's all built on shoulders of PhD students.
Re: That's $2000+ a month... (Score:3)
Says who?
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Most jobs have a training component and most jobs are also voluntary in the sense that you do not have to do them. Most people expect to get paid reasonably while doing any job.
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The issue is that this means only those with wealthy parents or partners can go into academia. Not only is it bad for those individuals to have artificial restrictions on prestigious jobs like this that prevent upward mobility, it's also bad for academia as a whole. Think about the perspectives that are missed when the only folks in the room are those with parents wealthy enough to support them through 8 years of grad school?
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These are gradudate students, and it's not about taking classes but doing real work. Faculty has long held that this is all educational and thus they're allowed to pay below minum wage so that they can get cheap labor. That grad student who taught your writng class? That grad student gained nothing from it for his own education, and was paid less than the person who sweeps the classrooms.
Re: That's $2000+ a month... (Score:4, Insightful)
They are doctoral students. It's a lot of work, much of which doesn't advance your own education requirements. Teach the prof's class, run the prof's experiments, help the prof's colleague's research, do a lot of butt kissing long enough until they grudgingly agree to look at your thesis. Really only the first year is class work comparable to undergraduates. And for me, I had to pay tuition out of my own $18K research assistant salary. $2000 a month today in Anglia probably doesn't cover rent, so you're going to be getting 4 or more in the same unit to split the costs.
This is less than US federal minimum wage in a full time job. You make MORE money working behind the counter of McDonald's than working on your prof's high end cyclotron experiment. Of course, you're being told that someday, far far away, you may have the glorious future academic job of grubbing for research grants and the opportunity to exploit your own below-minimum-wage workers.
You're a bit low. (Score:3)
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The real question is how much rent costs right now. If rent costs $2000 a month, then it's still a problem.
Although I admit, I didn't get paid for being a student, I paid for the privilege.
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Well if rent is cheap and healthcare is paid for, then $2000 a month is a pretty nice little wage.
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$2086.22 a month and that doesn't sound terribly unreasonable if it's provided to cover living expenses without any additional work
Otherwise known as slightly less I pay for rent. Not bad if you're a highschool kid living with your parents. Not so much a if you're a nearly 30 year old researcher doing your PhD.
As for "additional work". Way to progress your ignorance. People doing PhDs largely put in more actual hours than full time employees in the US of "I love overworking and never take holidays" A.
but I spent four to six hours a day not doing my research
So you pissed around then and think everyone has as cushy of a ride as you do?
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How is it free money? They have to get the job, do the work, which is a lot, learning a lot of information, becoming a world expert and making an original contribution to knowledge.
Sounds like work to me.
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chemistry
Manufacture and sell drugs. Not only good money, but good practical work experience as well.
and if you go to prison your loan will be wiped ou (Score:3)
and if you go to prison your loan may be wiped out
https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
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Clearly from someone not based in the UK who doesn't know the first thing about what NERC funds. For example a PhD in improving crop yields would be NERC funded dip shit. Now if it was AHRC you would have a point.
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Ironically this is what conservatives in America have been preaching for decades. Anything other than STEM,Business, Law or tradecraft is a worthless waste of time.
Now they are looking at today and getting upset that everything in the humanities, arts, education and entertainment is "run by liberals". Why does that matter if these professions are not worth entering in the first place?
The value of things to our lives and the world at large cannot be guaged purely by the money-making potential. Thats not to
not all jobs need the 4+ plus years of classroom (Score:2)
not all jobs need the 4+ plus years of classroom and HR needs to drop BS like need masters, PHD preferred.
For some jobs even 4 years is pushing it much less any think after that. And we need an way for people to work full time and go to school in the past uofphx may of been the only choice for older working people.
The school system at the higher levels like masters / PHD is about staying in the Ivory Tower and in some cases learning real hands on skills can be very lacking.
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So you want an America where the government can choose where to allocate public program money based on peoples speech and thoughts? Isn't that an actual pro-censorship stance? Not not like Twitter/Youtube censorship, that's real, whole-ass government mandated censhorship.
Now if you want to cut those programs entirely that's one thing but if you feel like only one political side is taking advantage that's not those peoples fault, that actually makes exactly the point i was getting at. I actually think we s
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I think his point was the hypocrisy of taking tax payer funds that come from people working to then complain about normal Americans and capitalism.
2 years ago, I went back to college (still in it.) Every class I have taken makes sure to critize capitalism and American history. And I am working towards a business major.
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And people who crisize socialism and governent programs will still pick up their social security checks when the time comes, sure it's kinda annoying in a way but really not worthy of consideration when it comes to actual problems to tackle.
If that's your experience I guess the question is why, even in the business department of a college, are all the professors like that? Why are there no pro-america pro-capitalism professors teaching there?
Also, just to check are they really anti capitalism, like socialis
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Everything can be and usually is assigned a value. Bachelors, Masters and PHDs all have a value we can generate by looking at the data over time. We even know the value of different degrees which is my entire point.
Is it a good value is a different question entirely, and one with a fuckload of subjectivity, but it's been a capitalist world for a long time, we can caluclate the value of just about everything.
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This scenario has some nuance.
Someone studying toward a PhD that society doesn't particularly value can be considered a bit of a luxury. If you can afford to make it your focus, great. If you have to relegate such a pursuit to fit into your productive life, great.
However, I would not expect a student to be afforded significantly more considerations than a non-student.
I'll agree that higher education in and of itself should be more affordable, but living expenses will still require some thing. If it's a val
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How about getting a PhD in an actual useful field (engineering, chemistry, microbiology)
What makes you think a PhD in an engineering field pays any more? Is it ignorance? I bet it's ignorance.
or learn an actual trade (welding, plumbing, HVAC, electrician).
Yeah but how is a welder going to research new ways to detect bloodclots as part of their PhD? It's like they aren't the same thing. Do you even know what a PhD is? Don't answer that, you've already told us.
Better yet: Do both.
Exactly. If you aren't making enough money, just do two full time activities. What a concept. Hell why not three, or four? It's not like there's only 168 hours in a week, just make up a new calendar wh
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What makes you think a PhD in an engineering field pays any more? Is it ignorance? I bet it's ignorance.
Because my wife has a master's in ECE and got a pay bump on entry for it. Every job she applied for had a similar built-in pay bump if you had an advanced degree. In educational fields it's pretty much the *only* way to get a pay bump beyond seniority. My mathematics teacher in high school got a masters in anthropology just to get a pay increase (he wasn't broke, he used the extra money to buy a condo in Florida.)
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Did you note the part about "many are only allowed to do 6 hours of paid work per week"?