Am I being underpaid?

[waitinginvain?]

I've accepted an offer to be a TA this semester--my first semester as a grad student. According to my professor, I will actually be teaching the discussion class myself. That means I'll have to attend the lecture in order to know what to discuss. Of course I will grade papers, take attendance, etc. Classtime alone will take 3 hours a week. Office hours will take another two. And I don't know how many hours I'll spend grading papers and exams. For all of this, I'll be given a waiver that pays almost half my tution. I have a feeling I am being taken advantage of. I should add that the acceptance letter was vague (didn't outline my TA responsibilities) and deceptive (said the cost of tuition was about $2200, when it's more than $5000.) It took a lot of investigating to get to the bottom of all of this. I know, I know, I shouldn't have signed it without asking more questions. But I trusted them to be honest. Is such low pay typical? Should I ask for more? As it is, I can't even afford to take 12 credits this semester!

Edited August 4, 2012 by waitinginvain?

[1Q84]

I don't have any firsthand experience but that seems egregiously low from what I've read and heard from others.

[waitinginvain?]

Egregiously low, eh? I suspected as much! By the way, I saw that you're interested in magic realism.So am I! Can you recommend any books? I know about One Hundred Years of Solitude. Any others? Thanks!

Edited August 4, 2012 by waitinginvain?

[1Q84]

Don't take my word for it, however. Maybe it's more common than I think. But it sounds like you're doing a heck of a lot of work for only partial funding.

Lots of stuff by Haruki Murakami (Kafka On The Shore is an excellent place to start)! Also, Life of Pi by Yann Martel is pretty good.

[kaguyahime]

Hello again,

Not to second guess you, but are you sure that you correctly understand the aid you are receiving?

In your previous thread you said you were getting fee remission AND a stipend.

You also said that your TAship is quarter time, which may be part of the problem. Quarter time TAships seem to be not a great deal; half time is about the same amount of work for a lot more compensation. Any chance you could get it increased?

Also, in case you haven't TA'd before, "teaching the discussion section" is not as intimidating as it may sound.

You usually are supposed to review materials covered in readings and by the professor in lecture; this can be in the form of having students work together in small groups, writing activities, etc.

Edited August 4, 2012 by kaguyahime

[ANDS!]

Without seeing the actual letter, I doubt anyone here can say whether your letter was "deceptive" or not. Is the tuition 2200 a semester or year? Is the 5000 for a semester or a year?

As for your teaching duties, leading a discussion session is hardly out of order. You're not actually going to be teaching anything; you're most likely just going to be answering homework questions and administering tests.

These people generally are not out to screw you. Will they require you to fill holes in their lower division schedules for far less than it would take to hire part time faculty - yes. That's to be expected anywhere.

[Eigen]

Not knowing much about stipends in your field, I can't help much directly, but as for underpayment, looking at what it pays to adjunct might help.

Adjuncting, for a full 3-hour class, pays between $1600 and $3000-ish per semester, with $3000 on the distinctly upper end of that range. And I've seen as low as $1000 or $1200 as well.

I do know from friends in English on TAships that they pay very little, on the whole.

[snowblossom2]

It seems like its about par for the course. You are getting what every other TA in your year is getting. Like a pp said, they're not there to screw you. That's what being a TA is - going to lecture, preparing for your own section etc. Also, in my experience, most of the time no one comes to office hours. You do your own work.

[TakeruK]

In Canada, these positions (where you are fully responsible for your own course) are called Teaching Fellows (TFs) rather than TA positions. At my school, these students are paid ~$7500 for a one semester (13 week) course, with an additional 12.5% bonus if there are more than 100 students in the course and a 10% bonus if there are more than 3 contact hours (e.g. lab, tutorial, or discussion group). The wages vary from school to school here, but that's about the average. Yes, Canada is a different country but the value of your labour shouldn't be too different. By the way, these wages are uniform across fields. I guess for comparison, minimum wage here is $10.25/hr so this number should be scaled based on minimum wage/cost of living where you are.

EDIT: Okay, I reread your post and realised that you aren't actually doing equivalent work to an adjunct/teaching fellow. So the above paragraph may not really apply, but it's interesting to see the large differences. However, what I can say is that leading discussion group for a class is very normal, especially in the humanities/social sciences. At my school, we are paid hourly for TA work, so the time you spend attending the prof's lectures, and the time you spend reading any assigned reading counts towards our hourly wage. So, if you want to see what is fair, you should add up all expected hours of work (office hours* + time replying to emails from students + marking time + discussion group + lecture attendance + doing readings) and divide into your expected value of stipend and see what your effective hourly wage would be.

* We count office hours towards work time because it's time that you are forced to be in the office and you cannot schedule other activities during this time. If a student shows up, we drop whatever else work we were doing and help them. In other jobs, if we are required to stay on the job site for a lunch break, then that lunch break has to be paid. Office hours are the same idea.

I think these wages represent what is "fair". But from the typical numbers that Eigen mentioned, it sounds like typical is probably not equal to fair! So, I guess it depends on what you mean by "underpaid" -- do you mean underpaid in relation to the value of your labour, or underpaid in relation to typical stipends offered to students in your department? Fair or not, I think the former case is going to be common at entry level positions (e.g. graduate students) everywhere. But if it's the latter case, I would definitely try to start a discussion on this issue!

Edited August 5, 2012 by TakeruK

[lewin]

"Am I being underpaid?"

Only to the extent that the entire academic system relies on a cheap labour force of graduate students barely a step above indentured servitude.