Same is quite usual in some Cambridge University departments.
Also worth mentioning Scandinavian and Swiss universities treat PhDs like a regular industry job (job contract, paid at an acceptable discount wrt industry, pension contribution & other perks). This is how it should be everywhere.
Germany typically pays PhD students as research or teaching assistant (there are Grad schools in CS but this is the minority at least in my lab) When I started in 2005 the salary was even better than in many industry CS jobs (today the situation changed a bit). The problem I faced was that afterwards the PhD was not actually really valued by industry and I could not get myself to do a boring industry job without being paid 'adequately' to compensate for the loss of freedom. So I stayed at university again. I still have my freedoms but am kind of stuck in the academic system. If I would have gone to industry straight away my salary would probably be much higher by now.
Also worth mentioning Scandinavian and Swiss universities treat PhDs like a regular industry job (job contract, paid at an acceptable discount wrt industry, pension contribution & other perks). This is how it should be everywhere.