@bluebayou 's post #53 above is helpful. Click on the cited source & read Article 19 No Strikes and No Sympathy Strikes.
I suspect that once international student TAs are forced to return to their home countries, that sympathetic TAs at other UCs might decide to adhere to the terms of the union negotiate, agreed upon contract.
In my view, the sympathy strikes by TAs at other UCs tied the hands of the UC system & sealed the fate of the 54, now reported as 74, fired UC-Santa Cruz TAs.
Still concerned that these strikes occurred in the second year of a four year agreement. Concerned because nothing has changed & no fraud, mistake, or bad faith negotiation has been alleged.
Sometimes students just have to resort to personal resources, family, and loans to make it through graduate school.
P.S. Seems as though the UCs could sue each striking TA for damages. Maybe the UCs will consider taking further action against these TAs.
I haven’t seen any list of the fired students, but if an International, wouldn’t that visa gets voided almost immediately? (Thus, my pure guess, is that none of the Strikers are internatoinals.)
I’ve always said that no one should attend a PhD program without funding. Comparing PhD programs to professional programs is, in my opinion, a case of apples and oranges.
(1) There is a difference between finding the funds for a 3 year law degree and for a PhD that can take upwards of 8 years.
(2) Students in fields like law and business are expected to work full time jobs in the summer. PhD students are expected to focus on their research, as that’s how you get a job, and for many that is the only time they can get away from campus for research.
(3) A student coming out with a MD or MBA is guaranteed to make pretty good money. A PhD in English, not so much.
Yes, and most of these PhD students have little to no shot at a career in academia. Universities are pumping out far more PhDs than the job market can handle, but a reliance on TAs ensures a steady stream of new PhD students.
Ever since the end of mandatory retirement in 1993, faculty have waited longer and longer to retire. The percentage of faculty over 65 doubled from 2000 to 2010, a rate which outpaces virtually all other white collar jobs. Additionally, an increasing percentage of courses are taught by poorly paid contract faculty with financial situations even worse than graduate students. Tenure-track jobs now account for a mere 30% of teaching positions in American colleges.
The harsh reality is that a student graduating from a PhD in English from Northern Illinois U is far less likely to get an academic job than someone graduating with a PhD in English from Yale or Berkeley. Many of the schools offering PhDs are simply flooding a glutted job market with PhDs unlikely to secure academic positions. Ideally all PhD programs should reduce their intake of graduate students, and many PhD programs should be eliminated entirely. This is, of course, not going to happen.
As Cary Nelson and Michael Bérubé pointed out 25 years ago in Higher Education Under Fire,
[quote]
*It is time to say, bluntly, that graduate school education is losing its moral foundation. For many years graduate students served not only as colleagues of lesser status but also as apprentices. The economic tradition in which “apprentices” are underpaid and overworked is older than capitalism itself; but throughout its historical transformations, the apprentice tradition typically held out eventual full-time employment with better working conditions as its delayed compensation. With the collapse of the academic job market, the guarantee of a job at the end of a long apprenticeship is more than a long shot; it’s often an impossibility. This leaves us in the position of promoting not an apprenticeship but exploitation. We overwork graduate teaching assistants for seven years or so, then cast them aside. The money we pay them each school year is often not enough to live on in the summer. Their health benefits are often marginal, their retirement benefits nonexistent.
All this is well known to anyone in the field, but its implications have not yet been faced squarely. At institutions with large graduate programs, all faculty members benefit from the work graduate students do. Faculty members are freed for intellectually specialized teaching by assigning graduate students teach introductory courses - from basic language instruction to introductory calculus, from rhetoric and composition to introductory logic. Faculty members who devote no energy to graduate training have a relation to graduate employment that is almost wholly parasitic: their own salaries and privileges are sustained by exploiting teaching assistants.
We need to recognize these injustices, to admit that the long-term collapse of the job market is making the logic of graduate apprenticeship morally corrupt…Faculty reluctance to face these issues is due not merely to a sense of helplessness, to an inability to think of solutions to the employment crisis in academe, but also to a lack of concern, since the job market does not directly threaten tenured faculty members’ careers.
Are we in some bizarre world where we forget that grad school IS A CHOICE? And in which we forget that “free tuition” IS AN ECONOMIC BENEFIT?
People: Remember the alternatives! Assume room and board is $30k:
- Don’t go to school: Get a job. If you make as much as they’re paying you now ($30/hour) that’s $60k/year.
Outcome: You pay $30k in room and board but you’re fine.
- Go to school and pay your freight like most other folks. You don’t have to teach (just like law students, med students, or MBA students)… but your tuition is $50k+/year and you need to borrow to cover tuition.
Outcome: You pay $50k/year in tuition AND $30k/year in room and board, so you’re borrowing $80k/year. At the end of school you’re $320k in debt.
- Go to school as a PhD student. Get a job which pays 20k/year AND ALSO get free tuition.
Outcome: You pay $0/year in tuition. You get a job which pays for $20k/year of room and board. You have to borrow the remaining $10k.
Outcome: At the end of four years you’re $40k in debt.
You can only complain about living wage IF YOU IGNORE THE $50,000 OF FREE TUITION AND PRETEND IT DOES NOT MATTER. Which: Why?
But wages are not “insufficient:” they also include the value of free tuition, which is a benefit to the tune of $50k/year. Total wages are $70k/year.
@bluebayou : I am running late for an appoinment. Quick response is that yes, several of the fired TAs are internationals on student visas according to an article I read.
And a poor choice at that, perhaps. I always discourage students from pursuing a PhD unless they can’t see themselves doing anything else. This is as much for mental health reasons as financial reasons.
A 2018 study of mostly Ph.D. students, for instance, found that 39 percent of respondents scored in the moderate-to-severe depression range. That’s compared to 6 percent of the general population measured with the same scale.
As I stated above, most PhD programs should reduce their intake of students, and many programs should be eliminated entirely. Job prospects for new PhDs are grim and unlikely to improve unless there is a mass retirement of the boomers in academia, which is hardly likely.
In some of the articles I read regarding the strike one student striking was quoted as getting a doctorate in “history of consciousness “ and another in “gender studies”.
Can someone tell me what kind of jobs these will lead to? I seriously don’t know.
This was aCHOICE these stents made as adults.
Prospects for Phds are grim in academia, yes. But most PhDs in science, for example, aren’t even seeking academic positions, since fewer than 2% of science PhD jobs are in tenure-track academic positions.
In non-science jobs, PhDs can lead to much higher earnings in many fields, and often serve as an entry to higher echelon administrative positions in research oriented institutions, public or private.
Yes, but many of those jobs don’t require a PhD nor necessarily lead to an advantaged application vs. MBAs or those with science Master’s degrees.
Great discussion!
I dated a TA now husband when I was at Berkeley and I think he made around $11,000 a year as a TA but the rent was like $700/month for a studio or 1 bedroom apt. It was 24 years ago. I was surprised that he even got paid, I thought it was part of the work you have to do to earn your degree. But @warblersrule 's explanation the difference between PhD and professional school, it makes sense that TAs should get paid.
As for the strike - legal or not, they should fight for what they believe in. And suffer the consequences, OR reap the benefit of their bravery. I hope the outcome is the latter.
I think the UCs should mimic UM’s model - they don’t have OOS cap but the UCs do. They should attract more OOS students with full pay. I have a love/hate relationship with the UCs, especially Berkeley. I am sure many had seen my comment “I hate Berkeley”. I am rooting for them and I want them to do well. We send donation to the school way before my daughter attending there. BUT I just hate their grade deflation culture, their horrible services, and lack of student support. The school admins are usually very rude (so i was told).
My daughter lives in a dorm 7th floor and she said the elevator is constantly down, sometimes for weeks. There was no common area to study because they used that space for temporary housing. She usually goes to the laundry room to study, or the library but she is afraid of walking across campus in the dark. Kids would get locked out of their dorm room and standing around in bathrobe for hours because no one would come to let them in during weekend. I could go on and on. Yeah $70K/year for this kind of service, i am bitter.
But I love Berkeley because of the students, despite all the hardship they manage to produce the best and the brightest. I am so proud of them. My husband recruits PhD graduates from Stanford and Berkeley. And he always said he would take a Berkeley graduate before any other schools. So there is that.
I’m a parent of a UC TA (not at SC but at another high cost of living one) and have read this thread with great interest and greatly appreciate the thoughtful and in-depth dialogue. You’ve all taught me a lot and made me think, no matter what your stance is on this. I wish everyone could debate this issue so wonderfully. (PS - put my kid in the “has no desire to teach or go the academia route” column. )
A PhD in gender studies will likely lead to being a professor of gender studies to teach other students of gender studies.
^ not just:
A PhD in gender studies is in demand for HR and in many fields where another perspective is needed.
“History of consciousness” used to be called “intellectual history”, it’s at the cross roads of philosophy, history and various social sciences. The one at UCSC has a sub-10% acceptance rate.
The issue isn’t just low wages/high cost of living but that the university depends on the TAs to run. If your systems can’t run without some workers the right move would be to keep them in decent living conditions.
If the TAs had to pay tuition most would not be able to pursue a degree - and thus engage in research that is needed for our country to remain among the top research producing countries (and we’d help China rise further), help professors in their research, and keep lower undergrad classes running.
Basically, it has to be balanced.
Wages adjusted to cost of living in exchange for keeping things running.
(Many grad students do research in fields they find genuinely fascinating. Many wouldn’t do anything else and can’t imagine doing anything else.
However they can and sometimes do - and it’s often a terribly sad waste when it happens in highly selective programs such as the UCs.
The fact we don’t understand what they’re doing doesn’t mean it’s of no value. Losing them to random other jobs that pay better would be devastating for the universities, for the state of research, and for the country’s world-wide standing.)
Some do some don’t. Totally depends. Sort of like Bachelor’s degrees: a huge percentage of jobs can be performed by someone without a college degree, but try to get them without one.
My daughter found very limited opportunities in her science field with just a Master’s (and from an elite Ivy-caliber university at that.) To advance in her field she either needed another analysis-heavy (data science, etc.) Masters - but most preferably an MBA - or a PhD. The former would have precluded research-heavy jobs and limited her to analysis positions.
In either case, she would have had to have more grad school, preferably at a major university which offered TA position. TA salaries would have affected her whether she was doing a Master’s or a PhD.
A gender studies PhD was hired to create, administrate and run an anti-harassment program at a major American, Fortune 50, corporation. Most of the staffers likewise had advanced degrees in this areas.
TA’s have that much impact on our world-wide standing? ?
I know you’re just being contrary. But in case you’re not: TA’s have an impact on universities. Universities have impact on our economy, opportunities and scientific and industrial standing.
Yes, because 1) they do a lot of the grunt work researchers need to speed up their national-level and international-level work 2) their own research forms the foundation of the work they’ll do later 3) the skills they built will be incorporated into many companies, hospitals, military either from their findings or from their own postdoc job.
4) most undergrad students attend public universities which depend on TA’s work to function (teaching, grading, office hours, handling discussion sessions or labs - it depends on the university) so, with the % students in college and graduating college being a significant factor in world standing (globalization +knowledge economy, etc.), their work with undergrads is high-impact.