<p>jmilton90,
I was surprised, too, but I got this directly from the Berkeley website. The document entitled 'what you need to know about being a GSI, GSR, Reader, or Tutor" refers you to this pay scale chart:</p>
<p>GSIs at Berkeley are unionized—they’re members of the UAW. According to the salary chart, GSI salaries range from $32,782 to $39,017 depending on experience.</p>
<p>A majority is not the same as all. So you can’t say “society” chose to fund this unless each and every single person in that “society” chose to fund it.</p>
<p>I never said that the preference came from the grants. See below. </p>
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<p>Uh, you actually just explained it, so I think it’s just a matter of reviewing what you wrote. Somebody is paying the OOS portion of these nonresident tuition. Sure, maybe, you like said, it’s just a silly accounting artifact, but the fact remains that somebody has to pay it. You are absolutely correct that it is not the graduate student who pays it, so who is left? The department itself. </p>
<p>But right there is the advantage. If the student were to declare instate residency, then the department would no longer have to pay that OOS fee. Hence, the department now has extra money to do other things. This is precisely why the UC’s place so much pressure on the grad students who are eligible to become instate residents to do so quickly, because that means extra money for the departments. </p>
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<p>Again, I never claimed that it affected their ability to compete for NSF/NIH grants. They get the same grants either way. The difference is that the UC public departments effectively end up with extrafunds that Stanford does not have, because they can play the accounting ‘trick’ of paying instate tuition. Stanford departments don’t have this ability and hence always have to shell out a bunch of extra money for their grad students. </p>
<p>But that extra advantage has to come from somewhere, and the answer is that it comes from the taxpayers itself. In effect, the state taxpayers are providing a subsidy to the UC departments that private departments like Stanford’s don’t get. </p>
<p>Now, again, I agree with you that this may indeed all be just an artifact of accounting. But, like I said, it has real-world effects. I pose the same question I posed before: why do the departments at Berkeley care so much that grad students change their state residency (if they can)? Trust me, they really care. Why do they care? The only logical reason for why they care is because the departments want to be able to lower their costs and hence have extra money available to do other things. Otherwise, there is no reason for them to care. Clearly the students don’t care, because, like you said, they pay the same either way (that is, they don’t pay anything at all because the department pays all). But the departments care, because they receive a benefit from having as many instate students as possible. That benefit must come from somewhere, and in this case, it comes from the taxpayers.</p>
<p>Hence, this leaves the question open as to why public research should be subsidized by the taxpayer, but private research should not be. </p>