UC Santa Cruz fires grad students for unauthorized strike

[bluebayou]

@katliamom

^^^ @Nhatrang The UCs didn’t used to offer tuition waivers to their grad students. Grad students were expected to cover that from their own money whether through TA-ing, loans, working outside the university – or by applying for outside grants/fellowships.

I believe that the UCs only began offering tuition wavers in the 90s, as a way of remaining competitive with private elites – Stanford, Ivies - which did waive tuition AND offered (often very good) TA ships.

…

I don’t believe that to be true. (I found a catalog from UCI circa 1980 which identified tuition waivers, i.e., ‘grant equal to Education Fee’, back then.)

Regardless, what UC did 30-40 years ago should have no bearing on the Grad programs in 2020.

UC fees were also much lower before then (even out-of-state tuition was not that high back then).

UC fees are a kinda bookkeeping pass thru, so charged grad tuition itself is not that important. (UC could double the grad tuition, but they’d just have to double the dept budget to cover it; net effect is zero.) But perhaps what is significant is that the State Legislature gave a lot more $$ to UC back in the dark ages, so for that reason, the campuses were able to keep tuition/fees much lower than they are today. In other words, its was the state support that was important, not the tuition/fees charged to students.