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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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- Better and fewer working hours.
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I think you may be taking this wrong. The problem is that universities are severely underfunded and always have been. They simply don't have the money to pay a living wage to grad students. When forced to do so, some universities have simply dissolved student positions as a response.
The problem isn't the university or this professor. The problem is why we aren't funding these better so that they can pay a reasonable wage.
Lol, please do tell me more about Stanford's lack of money.
It’s an endowment, they can’t just empty that pool of money they take around 4% of the money each year that they get from investments which ends up being around 10% of their budget
That's still 1.4B a year. They get $1.1 B in tuition a year. That's $2.5B. They have 2300 professors. At $200k salary that's only $0.4B of the $2.5B.
They also have 12.8 square miles of campus to maintain… which requires a lot more than just the 2300 professors. They also have adjunct professors, lab managers, researcher techs, facilities, and a ton of other expenses that are required from an R1 research university.
The grad students while they don’t get a “livable wage” do get their tuition comped and get a housing stipend. Like we can always do better but undergrad students are being done much dirtier than grad students as they are going into huge amounts of debt to try and even afford tuition
Those all fall into the underpaid category too. Adjunct professor is particularly abused.
$2.5B from tuition and endowment, $2.2B in sponsors and $1.6B in donations. $6.3B a year income. 27.4k total employees. If each and every employee was paid $100k, that's $2.7B for salaries.
You know you can just look at their budget right?
https://budget.stanford.edu/budget-plans
Great link. Thanks!
There are interesting expenses in there. Like $178M spent for travel and food. I wonder how many teaching assistants and adjunct professors get private jets and private chefs like the President and his executive staff and all the Deans and their staff. I had a friend 10 ago who applied for the job to be the private chef for a dean in a medium college.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Stanford_Research_Scandal
Those perks didn't end when the scandal was exposed. They only changed to take the money for perks from tuition instead of the government.
They get regularly audited which is why the scandal was caught, they still can’t misuse tuition funds either. Travel and food expenses mimics gsa travel expenses but then they also have multiple dining halls and catering. Why are you trying so hard to make mountains out of mole hills it’s like you are begging for everything to be a giant conspiracy
Dining halls isn't "food expense". Student dining halls are paid for by meal plans.
Catering private parties with private chefs is a big part of management in acedemia. That's part of the reason why they can't afford to give raises. The deans want their galas.
Why are you ignoring that the income vs salary doesn't add up? Private chefs isn't something regular low level executives get outside of acedemia.
It's not a giant conspiracy when it's documented.
https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2017/05/25/examination-growing-number-perks-and-bonuses-college-presidents-essay
They are paid for by meal plans that count as income and are paid out as an expense… that’s how a budget works
After you mentioned the private chefs I tried searching for private chefs at Stanford and there was no prior job histories for it or current job openings for it. They have an executive chef but that is a dining hall position.
They aren’t hosting constant galas and most schools have contracts with companies like Sysco that require all catering events on campus to be supplied by Sysco so it’s not like it’s super high quality food either
You and I are the only people in this thread with actual experience at a university. The rest are just looking for places to project their anger and general malaise.
I worked at a university, did research at a university and was a student. There is obviously waste and definitely some amount of grift but the auditing requirements in place to prevent grift are arguably so strict that they cause as much or more waste as they save in grift.
That's great, these sound like basic details that their budget should take into account when considering how many people they can employ!