Center City Pretzel? Wawa for the true classic?

Access to the variety of stories in libraries are part of how kids get motivated to read. Kind of like how the number of books in the kid’s home correlate to academic achievement.

Kanella’s?

I haven’t opposed them getting a higher wage. I oppose comparing their situation to people paid poverty wages, including more qualified adjuncts.

Yes. It’s disrespectful to all the people who are working full-time at schools for lower pay rates and no tuition benefits and to people working in essential jobs barely above minimum wage to treat their plights as comparable to students getting free tuition in addition to a stipend of at least $25 an hour for part-time work. They’ve opted to work part-time to be full-time students, like thousands of undergrads do who do not get paid a higher rate for that decision. They also have the option to find full-time work and go to school part-time, or work part-time elsewhere while studying full-time. The financial outlook of those options aren’t great either for most fields.

Two things can be true: the students are justified in asking for better compensation and they’re in a much better position than people who are living in or near poverty.

Of course they’re full-time students. And I’d look at adjunct pay before you assume it would cost more than $20k to hire TAs. If the math is wrong, show me where.

The minimum stipend (STEM students tend to earn more) is $19.5k for 9 months of half-time work would be $39k full-time. That would be $4,333 a month or $52k if they worked full-time all year. They don’t pay FICA on assistantships, a 7.65% tax break, or income tax on waived tuition.

They’re requesting a $32,800 minimum for half-time work for 9 months. $65,600 at full-time is $7,289 a month or $87,466 for 12 months- with the same tax break.

That pay rate is in line with and in some cases higher than the starting salary of an assistant professor who already earned their PhD and it’s well above a poverty rate. While they are making a great case that they deserve more, it’s disrespectful to compare them to people who are living in poverty unless they’re actually supporting a family of 3 or 4 on that stipend alone.

They don’t pay for students’ own research for their final projects; those in teaching or administrative assistantships get paid the same as researchers because the stipend is paid for the labor and studies for the final projects are on their own. But plenty of times the researchers choose (or I’m guessing are pushed into, I never signed up for a research one) a topic a professor is already working on to do their own project’s research and that’s where the line that’s clear for teaching and administrative assistants blurs for research assistants.

That gets tricky in some fields because no one gets paid for their own research but I think especially in the sciences, there’s not really a bright line where the job ends and study begins. And that makes you guys easier to exploit.

Were any of those hours part of your own research for your final thesis/dissertation? Or was it all teaching/research and then you still had separate research to do for the degree?

Their pay rate is well over the US median income. What they’re requesting is a pay rate equivalent to an $87,000 full-time salary. They’re not demanding full-time hours; they want half-time work and full-time credit loads. Again- I don’t blame them for demanding Temple keep up with competitors but there is a huge difference between those who are paid poverty wages and those who choose to work for the school half-time so they can primarily be students. And that distinction easily saves them $12k in taxes each year, so they probably don’t want to lose it.

They’re demanding to be treated more like employees. The reality of working half-time is that it pays less than full-time and also that it makes it easier to take coursework and study. It also rarely comes with benefits, let alone benefits of an equivalent value to tax-free tuition. And if students were leaving for full-time work, Temple would have more incentive to pay better; but it’s not that likely that they’ll choose full-time work and tens of thousands in bills and loans over half-time work, free tuition, and a smattering of loans.

$20k for even 9 months of half-time work is the equivalent of a $53k full-time job- and if they were a full-time university employee, they’d pay FICA on their earnings and income tax on the value of the waived tuition. I don’t blame them for seeking more given the costs of living and better compensation at competing schools, but let’s not conflate them as a whole with people who are actually living below poverty level.

No, it’s that you’re not accurately describing their situation. Saying they’re below the poverty line suggests they might actually qualify for public benefits or that the poverty levels are much more generously calculated than they are.

Hardly anyone gets art/art history degrees. People just pick whatever majors they don’t respect when they want to complain about college grads and usually those are the least common majors to start with.

$30k is not below the poverty line unless it’s a single earner family of 4.

State parks pass, cooking class at Walnut Hill community college, an improv class at Philly Improv Theater or Comedy Sportz, a theater gift card