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PhD student Maxim makes $18 an hour to research children’s cancer – it’s barely above Australia’s poverty line

3d 13h ago by lemmy.zip/u/Valuy in australia@aussie.zone from www.theguardian.com

Well duh there’s no profit in curing children’s cancer.

We used to be a fucking country, man.

The world has Wifi because of the blue-sky research done at the CSIRO. This resource extraction colony is run by short-sighted deadshits.

The world has Wifi because of the blue-sky research done at the CSIRO.

Ehh, they like to claim that, but they weren't actually involved in the development of wifi, they were working on another networking radio tech that never went anywhere.

They do hold a bunch of patents and like to sue for royalties over them though.

This is why I left academia after doing my honours. At the time I was planning to start a family and needed something that paid at least minimum wage.

especially doing the whole PHD is abhorrent, since the pay is very little, and only ever well off students can afford to succeed in the phd in general. disadvantaged students are often unable to compete with students with no financial worries. they did this with columbia ? the med school was free for that class, and the college decided to only choose well of students instead. this doesnt mean disadvantaged cant do grad school , its just they are working 2-3 times as harder to earn it than someone that can afford to spent 24/7 studying.

PHD students in essence provides cheap low cost labor for research, without having to deal with a tenured professor.

The pay is one thing, the next filter for Australian PhD students though is that if you want a job in academia you probably have to go overseas, at least for a few years as a postdoc. You may also get paid shit all as a postdoc depending on where you go, and then your position will probably only be for 2 years then you have to find somewhere else.

Will you be able to come home eventually? No uni has any money to hire permanent staff so good luck!

Your value in society is determined by how much value you bring to billionaires.

The worst part about that? We all agree.