Frank wrote:
Grad school was paid for with a teaching
assistantship.Â* Pretty hard to do this today.


I know I left out the earlier part of Frank's paragraph.
I just wanted to mention that departments are staffing the
majority of their teaching position with graduate teaching
assistantships. For a large department, maybe 2/3 of the courses
are taught that way. That translates into there not being very
many real academic positions available to students who do earn a
terminal degree (like a PhD). Having witnessed it firsthand, it's
really disrespectful. It's mostly about the $$$.... I guess this
is a separate, but admittedly widespread problem (think Walmart).