Grad Student Stipends

Almost certainly the latter, considering grad students are paid practically slave wages.

The abuse of grad and PhD students might be even more egregious than undergrad admissions. Paying objectively world class talent a meager $15,000 stipend to work themselves to the bone while they earn the university millions in grants and industry contracts, teach undergrad classes, and slave away on their own thesis. It’s super gross.

Because funded grad students are paid way, way below what they could get in a "real job" because it's an arrangement that benefits all: the grad student get the education and the degree, and the schools get cheap labor. Undergrads are typically not full-time employees of the school they attend. Funded grad students are. And for PhD students that are no longer taking classes, they are typically a net-positive in terms of cost.For example, in my last two years of PhD, I was both

While it is common to pay tuition for your undergraduate degree or maybe even your master degree, PhD students are typically paid for their teaching and research work and their tuition is covered (admittedly the salaries are low).

At least in STEM, tuition is practically free and PhD students are paid for their research work and teaching. There are even PhD student labor unions in most public and some private universities. (Whether the pay is good and whether unionizing makes sense are separate topics).You will not get paid well as a PhD student, but there is no massive amount of debt involved either (and again, whether there are opportunity costs is a separate topic).

Those people are paid for out of research grants, not tuition.

The graduate student is only getting paid $33k/yr. The university is paying for/waiving the student's $50k/yr tuition. Why should the student pay taxes on what the university is paying?

That's correct, part of grant money is allocated to salaries for graduate students and postdocs, sometimes even salaries for the professor himself. The corollary is that any PhD program in the sciences where it's the student who pays the tuition is worthless.Another part of a research grant goes to the institution, that's the dreaded "indirect costs".

PhD students are typically only paid by the university if they provide labor in the form of being a teaching assistant for undergrads, guiding lab sessions and grading assignments and exams. Alternatively they're paid through their advisor's grants, in which case the student brings in revenue in the form of the large overhead cut the uni takes.The alternative would be hiring dedicated employees to help with grading and lab sessions, and they won't tolerate the $30k/yr a Ph

It's almost as expensive to hire a PhD student as a postdoc.A postdoc makes something close to the median wage. While not great, it's enough that people in general are expected to buy homes and start families with incomes like that. You can't reasonably expect more from an early career job that doesn't produce anything with a direct monetary value.A PhD student earns much less, because the rest is used to cover tuition. And that is the root issue. Neither the federal go