I mean I hear ya but we wastes millions and millions of students money on worthless coaches getting huge salaries. A star on our basketball team making $100k a year pales in comparison to that. Draw the line wherever you’d like though.
Your daughter’s work is honorable, and she definitely should be compensated for it.
I used to more easily believe that Universities wouldn’t be able to afford paying student athletes, TAs, etc. but I became more skeptical after speaking to a Cornell University board member some years ago (family friend). He candidly pointed out that universities’ financial priorities are very often not where you and I think they should be, and that if you look, you’ll see expenditures that aren’t exactly defensible.
In this case, the subsidized construction of luxury suites for the football stadium. If the university can afford to build more of those, it can absolutely afford to compensate student workers like your daughter; it just chooses not to.