Rethink your application to Berkeley...

[Marge_Simpson]

Last year I was admitted to an MA program in anthropology at Berkeley, with promise of a TA position for the two years. Most grad students have their tuition and some fees paid by working as a TA or researcher. I.e. you NEED a 20 hour/week job to get your education funded. You of course get paid a [small] salary too. 

I write here to let prospective students know what's going on at Berkeley, in anthropology. Funding prospects are dismal. Half way through my first year, the department informed me that I would not in fact have a TA position for the spring. So I had to search for work elsewhere at the last minute, during finals. I finally found a job teaching a course in another discipline for which I knew nothing about, & it was a big struggle to learn the material while teaching it. For my second year, coming up in the fall, the budget to pay TAs has been drastically cut (about 25%) and therefore many anthro students do not have jobs in the department. Again, they must look elsewhere and hope they can find something, although there are budget cuts across the campus. 

The financial support for Berkeley grad students is dismal, and seems to be getting worse. My PhD friends face the same issues; they must find a job in other departments, find their own summer funding support, etc. 

No wonder the average graduation time for anthro PhDs is over 8 years? Rethink applying to Berkeley just because it carries status; there are a lot of problems, the largest perhaps being financial in nature. 

[bioarch_fan]

49 minutes ago, Marge_Simpson said:

Last year I was admitted to an MA program in anthropology at Berkeley, with promise of a TA position for the two years. Most grad students have their tuition and some fees paid by working as a TA or researcher. I.e. you NEED a 20 hour/week job to get your education funded. You of course get paid a [small] salary too. 

I write here to let prospective students know what's going on at Berkeley, in anthropology. Funding prospects are dismal. Half way through my first year, the department informed me that I would not in fact have a TA position for the spring. So I had to search for work elsewhere at the last minute, during finals. I finally found a job teaching a course in another discipline for which I knew nothing about, & it was a big struggle to learn the material while teaching it. For my second year, coming up in the fall, the budget to pay TAs has been drastically cut (about 25%) and therefore many anthro students do not have jobs in the department. Again, they must look elsewhere and hope they can find something, although there are budget cuts across the campus. 

The financial support for Berkeley grad students is dismal, and seems to be getting worse. My PhD friends face the same issues; they must find a job in other departments, find their own summer funding support, etc. 

No wonder the average graduation time for anthro PhDs is over 8 years? Rethink applying to Berkeley just because it carries status; there are a lot of problems, the largest perhaps being financial in nature. 

The same thing happened to me in my department. I was told by my POI that my funding would be a two year TA position. I got my funding for the first year, but was told that my funding for the second year was being cut for "unsatisfactory performance" even though the professor I TA'd for never once came into my lab to watch me teach and I took on 100% more responsibility under her direction than the other, "senior," TA did (plus this senior TA read the evaluation I got and said that none of it was right and that she's actually the one who did most of what they said I did). My evaluation from the professor this semester was almost exactly the same as the one from last semester without her having watched me teach at all...so it makes me seem like they came together and the professor this semester copied the evaluation from last semester. I brought this up in my meeting with the dept chair and DGS and the professor from this semester just looked down when I mentioned it because she knew she was in the wrong.

In my opinion, the only reason they truly cut my funding was because they wanted to bring in more graduate students this year. The only way for them to do that was to cut funding from someone that originally thought their TA position was for 2 years and give it to someone else. I'm seeking funding elsewhere and I'm trying to decide if I want to contact the higher-ups at the university and let them know what's going on and that I do not agree with the funding decision w/o a proper evaluation. Hopefully they can figure out a way to set things straight and to maybe reprimand the professors this year and let them know that this won't be tolerated.

Hopefully you can figure something out for the future! It sounds like this happens quite often in anthro depts since the funding is so dismal in most of them.

[Marge_Simpson]

15 hours ago, bioarch_fan said:

The same thing happened to me in my department....

Sorry that's happening!! 

Could you find a job in another department? Not ideal, but I happened to get a job teaching a neuroscience course, which was really hard, BUT I loved the professor and felt more supported by that department than my own. 

Are the grad student workers represented by a union at your school? That might be a good point of contact. 

 

[bioarch_fan]

7 hours ago, Marge_Simpson said:

Sorry that's happening!! 

Could you find a job in another department? Not ideal, but I happened to get a job teaching a neuroscience course, which was really hard, BUT I loved the professor and felt more supported by that department than my own. 

Are the grad student workers represented by a union at your school? That might be a good point of contact. 

 

I might be working with ITS next year, but I'm honestly really hoping for a position from the Biology Department because they pay a lot more and I prefer teaching over anything else. Idk why...but I prefer the closer connections I make with my students. This past year I had students who were actually sad the semester was ending. So it gave me hope that I was doing something right...but I guess my department doesn't care about the student evals at all.

Sadly we don't have a union for our graduate student workers. That's kind of the negative about going to school in Mississippi.

[ThousandsHardships]

I have a B.A. in anthropology from Berkeley. For those working in biological anthropology who are faced with or potentially face a similar situation but are still interested in Berkeley, Tim White (integrative biology) and Katharine Milton (ESPM) are potential faculty members that you might be able to TA for and possibly even work with as faculty mentors, as their work is basically within the field anthropology even though they are no longer in the department. In fact, they both left the department because they didn't get along with the department and the other faculty members. Tim White actually specifically mentioned problems with grad student funding as one of the reasons he didn't like the anthro department. As an undergrad, I didn't have a lot of insight into the departmental politics. From what I saw, it definitely felt like the biological subfield was somewhat dysfunctional. The other subfields seemed a lot better off though.

Edited May 10, 2017 by ThousandsHardships

[bioarch_fan]

22 hours ago, ThousandsHardships said:

I have a B.A. in anthropology from Berkeley. For those working in biological anthropology who are faced with or potentially face a similar situation but are still interested in Berkeley, Tim White (integrative biology) and Katharine Milton (ESPM) are potential faculty members that you might be able to TA for and possibly even work with as faculty mentors, as their work is basically within the field anthropology even though they are no longer in the department. 

Plus who wouldn't want to work with Tim White...hello it's Tim White.