Reply #47: Very Long Answer...

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Work load, pay, benefits are all completely dependent on the situation of a grad student's department. For example, I have no idea what goes on in the school of Public Policy or Education. I know that the professional schools (Law and Business) are expected to pay out of pocket because they will make enough money in their respected fields to pay back loans.

The real issue is in the Fine Arts and the Arts and Sciences. We teach the majority of the undergraduates and, upon graduation, we face a very competitive field for jobs with low pay. If you make tenure-track, pay usually starts at $35-40K. And only 20% of grads in the humanities and social sciences actually get tenure track positions. Most Ph.D.s these days are living lives as adjuncts, who get $1500-6000 a course, depending on the school. Most adjunct jobs seem to fall around $2500. Adjuncts often live below the poverty level.

Going to NYU is about $20K a year. Minimum for a Ph.D. is 5 years, although most seem to graduate in 7-8, some take 9-10 years. So for all Ph.D. students in the arts and sciences tuition remission is dependent upon teaching. At NYU, students (I think) get one to two years of fellowship and then they get 3 years of guaranteed work and receive pay checks in the form of a stipend (taxes taken out and all). For the years beyond the first five they must hustle for yearly TA appointments, like all the MA and MFA students do.

Now let me explain the way MFA's work. This is the category I fall into.

Almost all the teaching assistantships in freshmen composition (a class that every single NYU undergrad must take, one of the largest segments of TAships) is taught by MFA students. Don't let the 'TA' title fool you. We are expected to teach our own classes, create our own syllabi, hold office hours, and forty-five hours of additional one-on-one instruction per semester. We generally are in school from 2-5 years and this is the only way for us to get tuition remission at NYU. The appointments are yearly, one must go through a grueling interview to get the job. There is absolutely no difference between faculty and myself in the way I am hired, fired, paid, trained, or teach.

The biggest problem at NYU, though, is that there is no grievance procedure without a contract. We can be fired at will, abused (one foreign TA was manipulated into teaching an extra class and not compensated for it), overworked, paid randomly (there was a serious problem with non-payment or late payment before the union), or not paid at all (I went through two weeks of full time training and was never given a straight answer on whether or not I would be paid for training.)

Unless you are a star professor making $500,000 at NYU for barely teaching, you are usually beaten into submission. And TAs are beaten on par with the adjuncts. MFA candidates are beaten worst of all. Most of the MFA students at NYU are extremely wealthy because no one else can afford the degree.