Paying people a living wage shouldn’t be an issue but it isn’t surprising that with America’s violent history of labor vs. owners it is a very politicized one.
When I was a kid our barn was one of the biggest show/training/sales barns in the Midwest. The barn itself had been a breeding farm originally and there was a fairly big apartment attached to the stables where the grooms lived. It was a decent place, well-maintained, and throughout my junior years we had the same people living and working at the barn, with very little turnover.
One year my horse bowed a tendon at the beginning of the season so I groomed at shows the entire spring-summer. We got paid well, had our hotel rooms and daily expenses covered, and were treated like valued employees. I made a good chunk of money that summer, learned a lot, and had fun. It was a good team; the grooms knew their jobs and took pride in the work. When I shipped down with the semi I rode in the cab with the driver; no one ever rode in the back with the horses. <-- this should be the norm, and my story shouldn’t be unusual.
The thing that bummed me out the most when that upsetting article was published was how many horse professionals in my Facebook circle were posting it.
And then there’s the thread in the dressage forum asking where all the working students are. Not the OP but a poster said it’s because young people today are afraid of hard work. . God I love older horse people who don’t have a clue.
Ummmm…a PhD student also has strict requirements on the number of hours they work teaching undergrads as well as health care and weekends off. I still don’t think this in any way is comparable to what a Working student gets or what a Working Student has to do, which is in most case just another form of slave labor without any real education or connections once they’re burnt out and quit.
As well, what grad students get as their stipend is not at all standardized. When I was a Ph.D student (in the early 00s), we didn’t get free tuition, and our stipend was 12k a YEAR before taxes and tuition. The only reason we had health insurance was because we formed a grad student union and fought for it. I taught my own classes and made a less-than-liveable wage. Both my husband and I had to work other full time jobs on top of our academic work while trying to finish our degrees. I worked as an artisan bread baker and was exhausted all the time. I remember once seeing that I had $1.20 in my bank account. But even with all of this I would argue that I had it better than the average groom or working student.
Poverty wages are terrible, but getting poverty wages while being treated like a lesser human and doing often dangerous manual labor are worse.
It’s just horrifying that these people were made to ride in the trailers. I guess they were beaten and starved and were unable to go anywhere else. Clearly the majority of the posters had led a gilded life, except the poor souls still working on their PhD so they can pay back their student loans in 50 years.
This is definitely going in the book.
When I was in grad school it was expected that you would be there 10-12 hours per day, 7 days a week. Our tuition was covered and our stipend was around 28k a year. But it was not unlike a working student gig.
@AAHunterGal Were you a PhD student, and if so in what field? During my PhD in the biological sciences you were absolutely expected to work on the weekends and holidays (not teaching classes, but doing research, oftentimes work that benefited my advisors research or the lab but in no way directly furthering me finishing my dissertation in a timely matter). I never heard about an hour limit, I often worked 80 hr weeks. Those that didn’t were shamed by the PI as not being “serious” about science and having screwed up priorities (family? Work/life balance? Mental health? Death in the family? Didn’t matter. Science must go on. ) I got out of that lab but it took a huge mental toll. There were also numerous safe sport type violations between PhD advisors and grad students/postdocs. I’m not going to even go there about medical school and medical residency. Everybody survived it so younger generations just have to tough it out is the prevailing attitude. And this was a top program at a top, well funded research university. This was 2011-2018. It was pretty much slave labor, the only difference is at least there was health care and housing and a guaranteed stipend, and grants available if you took the initiative and applied to them.
I had both great and awful PhD advisors as well as great and awful working student gigs at several h/j barns ranging from Florida to California.
Unfortunately, exploitation is often hard to identify ahead of time until you are already deep in the situation and feel trapped by your commitments. The only redeeming part of the PhD is at least you come out the other side with credentials, which unfortunately really don’t meaningfully exist in the American horse industry. I’ve got no answers as to how to fix academia or the horse world in this aspect, unfortunately… both systems depend on a large pool/underclass of naive young people with big dreams to do the grunt work.
When I was in grad school (late 1970s) my tuition was not covered, though I was allowed to pay in-state instead of out-of-state tuition.
There was a limit on the number of hours I was teaching IN THE CLASSROOM, but there was no limit on the number of hours I spent preparing, and grading homework and tests.
My stipend was WAY less than $28k. Probably closer to $5K.
Worst PhD story from the sunny side of the Atlantic. A departmental head, full professor, was a total prat to everyone. He didn’t fulfill his teaching hours, he bad mouthed his grad students at academic conferences, he published grad student work under his own name, thereby effectively stealing it - but the straw that broke the camel’s back was that he kept his personal tea mug chained to the radiator in the staff room so no one else could use it. Totally beyond the pale and condemned to the deepest reaches of Hades. He didn’t last long in his position.
PhD students are managed very differently here and are largely self-directed.
Honestly, can we lay off the poor woman? What a snarky thing to do to a woman that clearly has gone through enough the past few years. Let it go. Who talks crap about a wife and mother dealing with a handicapped husband that was a legendary rider and good sportsman to boot? Speaks more about you than her IMO.
Bad things happen to people all the time, regardless of how those people behave, what they say or do, etc. She wasn’t writing that stuff because her husband was horribly injured, she wrote it because she believes it. Tragedy doesn’t absolve people of abhorrent beliefs that they have publicly expressed.
That article was written almost 4 years ago.
Let it go.
Geez, if we all followed what we did 4 years ago, we’d be downright refusing to wear safety vests in the hunter and jumper rings because they were tacky…and mocking people for having eggheads because of wide brim helmets.
Things change. People change. Stop living in the past. Move forward and have some compassion.
I was in grad school very recently…adjusted for inflation you were probably being paid close to the same amount I was. (Also, that was before taxes were taken out.)
Yes while accepting and Soliciting donations from a plethora of other ridiculously well heeled professionals and owners, Diana is doing very well. She’s capitalizing magnificently, manages to maintain both of their farms, their feed business, and still drives around in a brand new car and truck. No, I have zero pity for that woman.
