I happily lucked out with gracious PIs all through my graduate profession however I’ve seen academia labs which can be kind of run as sweatshops.
BUT this drawback is so,so laborious to resolve.
A big issue that impedes the evolution of labor compensation in academia within the US is non-nonsensical immigration legal guidelines. If a GTA/GRA/Put up-doc place presents close to poverty-line wages and that drives home college students away after which there’s a close to limitless provide of more-than-willing international college students. Worldwide college students are so wanting to get into the US that they readily settle for 5-6 years of abuse. And to be clear, the worldwide college students are the victims right here.
One other issue that makes universities favor worldwide labor over home one being the state of US major training. The labor pool accessible for cutting-edge tutorial analysis right here within the US is pitiable and that merely sends recruiters wanting elsewhere. This performs into the previous level and generates a cycle of stagnant wages.
After which there may be the wonderful red-tape in tutorial analysis that simply guzzles good capital that may very well be in any other case used for higher wages. In most of academia it takes like $3 to spend $1 and it solely will get worse annually. One among my advisors at Oak ridge nationwide must spend $5 on bureaucrats for each $1 he really spends.
And these factors solely start to scratch the floor of why US academia, whereas being the envy of the world, is structured like fucking Russian serfdoms.
