Somewhere, recently, I saw someone comment almost in passing that grad school shouldn’t cost anything. I can’t find the source now. Maybe someone can clarify if that’s a serious claim? I’ve been under the impression for a while that grad school and academia would be an awfully expensive way to acquire the prerequisite knowledge for AI safety work.
Expensive in terms of time, perhaps, but almost all good universities in the US and continental Europe provide decent salaries to PhD students. UK is a bit more haphazard but it’s still very rare for UK PhDs to actually pay to be there, especially in technical fields.
Specifically, the salary is for being a teaching assistant or a research assistant, rather than being a student, but everything is structured under the assumption that graduate students will have a relevant part-time job that covers tuition and living expenses.
I think that’s true in the US, but not in most of Europe. E.g. in Switzerland a first year PhD student gets paid $40000 a year WITHOUT doing any teaching, and more if they teach. That’s unusually generous, but I think the setup isn’t uncommon.
Somewhere, recently, I saw someone comment almost in passing that grad school shouldn’t cost anything. I can’t find the source now. Maybe someone can clarify if that’s a serious claim? I’ve been under the impression for a while that grad school and academia would be an awfully expensive way to acquire the prerequisite knowledge for AI safety work.
Expensive in terms of time, perhaps, but almost all good universities in the US and continental Europe provide decent salaries to PhD students. UK is a bit more haphazard but it’s still very rare for UK PhDs to actually pay to be there, especially in technical fields.
Specifically, the salary is for being a teaching assistant or a research assistant, rather than being a student, but everything is structured under the assumption that graduate students will have a relevant part-time job that covers tuition and living expenses.
I think that’s true in the US, but not in most of Europe. E.g. in Switzerland a first year PhD student gets paid $40000 a year WITHOUT doing any teaching, and more if they teach. That’s unusually generous, but I think the setup isn’t uncommon.