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[roarheels]

This last post is dead on. Face time really counts. A department closely affliated to mine has a grad student lounge but no offices. However, whenever I sit in there, their faculty come and retrieve students on a regular basis. In addition, they seem to be a much more tightly bonded unit. My advisor just realized after 2 years hu did not have my address or phone number. That hu even remembered makes hu unusual where I am. Students are really out of sight out of mind when it comes to some things.

[magistra]

Are you sure there's no public grad space at all -- maybe a lounge they use, even if it's not completely theirs?  A departmental library?  A grad computer room?  These things can be important social centers and give you a place to work, even if it's not ideal. 

Also, those with funding, especially teaching duties, are more likely to be granted office space than those without.  But it sounds as if the OP describes an environment where there's nothing.  This does limit your networking with other students -- future colleagues -- and gaining info about how to teach, bibliography, strategies for working with profs, all sorts of things.  Besides the value of face time, having a place to meet with students, etc.  If you're looking at two schools, and all else being equal, I wouldn't go to a place that puts so little value on their grad students.

What was funding like?

[wegie]

My MSc institution didn't give MScs offices, but we did have one computer lab that was all ours, and we shared the postgrad and faculty common room in the department.

My PhD institution ensured that all PhDs had at least a desk with a computer, even if it was only a dumb terminal, in one of the three or four shared PhD offices. We also had the run of the departmental facilities after hours (undergraduates got kicked out at 9 in the evening) and priority access to the best computing lab. Again, postgraduates shared the common room with the faculty.

[histgradstudent]

Oh for heaven's sake. Graduate students always think everyone is paying mor attention to them than anyone is. I can almost promise you that people judge your work ethic by your work, not how often they see you hanging around your office. Please don't decide where to go based on office space. If you are concerned about the social life of the department, go on a visit and pay attention to how people interact. Are they comfortable with each other? Do they have inside jokes? Do they clearly hang out a lot? Pay attention to this kind of stuff. I'd love an office, but I'd love a lot of things, it isn't that big a deal.

I found an office important for another reason not previously mentioned: face time. 

People often discount the importance of face time but it does create an impression.  As a good graduate student, you in your office are there and always working hard (or so it looks). 

It was amazing how many times the old saying, 'out of sight, out of mind' comes to fruition. 

CTG

[histgradstudent]

I think it has more to do with space than with the value paid to grad students. There just isn't room in our old building for grad student offices. I suspect this is the case for many places without them. In our department various places act as informal meeting spaces. People generally work in the same area of the library as each other and I see my fellow grad students every time I go to the library.

Are you sure there's no public grad space at all -- maybe a lounge they use, even if it's not completely theirs?  A departmental library?  A grad computer room?  These things can be important social centers and give you a place to work, even if it's not ideal. 

Also, those with funding, especially teaching duties, are more likely to be granted office space than those without.  But it sounds as if the OP describes an environment where there's nothing.  This does limit your networking with other students -- future colleagues -- and gaining info about how to teach, bibliography, strategies for working with profs, all sorts of things.  Besides the value of face time, having a place to meet with students, etc.  If you're looking at two schools, and all else being equal, I wouldn't go to a place that puts so little value on their grad students.

What was funding like?

[larryc]

In all seriousness, I think it is important that grad students have a dedicated space to call their own. The endless bull sessions in the graduate offices and break room in my PhD department were where we analyzed major texts, bounced scholarly ideas off of one another, and formed relationships that have sometimes blossomed into professional networks.

[wegie]

To follow up what Larryc said, I have to add that until the thread I'd never even heard or conceived of a department that didn't give its graduate students a space of their own, regardless of the space constraints the department faced. I think it sends a very strong message to students they're not really wanted in a department if they don't have a space to call their own. Doing a PhD is an isolating enough experience to start with, without one's own department making it even worse.

[scarcity]

My university is large and urban, so only TAs or RAs get to have offices that are shared (common space for students is very rare).  Even in the shared offices, the number of computers is less than the number of people (but everyone does have access to the computer lab).

I agree with others, face time is important so you should make an effort to be "seen" in your department.  But you can still do this without an office, you just have to make an effort.  I rarely use my office for doing actual work, it's just holds my stuff.     

[grasshopper]

My university is large and urban, so only TAs or RAs get to have offices that are shared (common space for students is very rare).  Even in the shared offices, the number of computers is less than the number of people (but everyone does have access to the computer lab).   

Ditto. Except that not all of the computers have internet access, none have printers, and the only scanner died last year. And you'd better cross your fingers that more than one computer is working at any given time.


I'm teaching this term, and don't have an office. In my home department, I've seen full time faculty doubling up in offices. Office space for graduate students is low on the list of priorities.

[ahhh_history]

Perhaps having an office might give you more face time, but that really depends on where it is.  My (shared) office is across the hall from three professors in my department -- one who is in my program, but not my subfield, two who are not in my program-- and down the hall from a lecturer who will never be tt here, and is not in my subfield.  My advisor is in a completely different building, and we're not en route to the dept. office. 

The only people who notice if I'm in the office are my office-mates, who I enjoy, but the small space is not terribly conducive to working.  I am much more productive in my home office, and there I don't have to smell the cigarette smoke that inevitably fills the office while people smoke too close to the air-intake.  Blech.

[namazu]

One institution I attended (large semi-urban state research university with a large campus but a general space-crunch and shortage of funding) had several rooms that grad students shared, but each student had his or her own desk (and often a bookshelf, not necessarily a computer, but there were shared labs for that). 

Another (private urban R1 with lots of grant money) did not give students offices automatically.  Some had shared offices like those described above by virtue of working for a professor.  There were no study carrels in the building, and no "reserved" study carrels in the library in another building.  However, students got small lockers, and the building was outfitted with wireless, so students "could work anywhere".  Yep, sure...  Most students commuted in from other parts of the city because the neighborhood containing the school was unsafe.  And the department wondered why attendance at the "mandatory"-but not credit-granting twice-weekly seminars was low!

[roarheels]

I actually noticed it on my visit (a complete absence of any space for grad students), brought it up and was lied to. I was told by my third year that a room was to be converted for our office for my program. Funny part of this is, I was to stupid to realize I was being told the standard academic bs. It really is amazing in hindsight that I even believed change was coming. Yet, I see this in our incoming faculty candidates all the time. All of them speak as if money is on abundant during their visits, then they learn that we actually have no space in our own building even for them and that they are to be housed in a dual occupancy office in another building, which actually belongs to another department. I cannot imagine how outraged I would be if I were junior faculty and I was required to share an office while trying to make tenure. On top of that, we had a recent faculty member get denied tenure even though hu sucked it up, shared an office for five years, and still published two books. That is really infuriating.

[polly_mer]

Wow, Roarheels.  I'm stunned by your department's actions.

How can they hire people if they don't even have private offices for tenure track faculty?

[roarheels]

 I do not really know to be honest. Like so much in academia, you will tolerate a lot if you think it might benefit your career. We do not have a particular high promotion rate to tenure either. I would guess about 33% in my experience. Even before I came to my grad program, a chaired prof at my ugrad had been denied tenure there and had ended up being a chair elsewhere less than 10 years later. The last scholar denied tenure here received tenure and a promotion when hu signed on with another institution. In short, there seems to be no stigma attached to coming to the institution and suffering for seven years even if you do not get tenure because so many scholars have landed in amazing jobs later. For those that do make it through, the only teaching load is 2/2 and never more. Normally when they make full its 1/2. I guess its just a risk, reward game. The rewards seem reasonable to some I suppose.

[lacohen]

I'm in a dept. where some students get offices depending on who there is adviser is and how senior (or how much grant money) ones adviser brings in.  Its not an ideal system, there is just not enough space for all PhD students to get offices, so by default some students get offices and some students don't.  The social life in my dept. is nonexistent.  I can't say if or how the two are related, but its possible.  In my dept. lots of students come to school for classes and then leave to study at home or elsewhere.  The result is that there is little informal chitchat in the hallways or in the kitchen.  I have a single office (with a big windows and a view--so I'm incredibly lucky as a grad student) but I'm very envious of students in other depts. where students socialize and talk about their research on a daily basis.  Related to this situation I feel like I haven't made many friends in grad school, I'm currently in my third year and its impossible to socialize with people unless I email them ahead of time and plan lunch or coffee.  So yes, I think being in a dept. where students hang out in the building all day and work in proximity to each other is important to the social life in grad school.