The major stress for me as a graduate student is that my entire career is in the hands of one person who may or may not like me at any given moment. I think a real committee system where the power is taken away from one person, and is uniform campus wide and not different in every department, would help recruitment and grad student morale all the way through. The campus wide thing is important. I know a lot of people in the sciences and the dependence on their faculty is terrible. I would like to see a different committee system.
Software companies have magnificent perks.
They are the most humanistic. I spend a lot of my time travelling to UCLA because we don't have the research facilities. I know the Chancellor is trying to fix that. Inter-library loan is not that helpful. I think we also need a semester system.