Some TAs from UCLA and Berkeley are also on strike in solidarity with UCSC TAs. Each professor is handling the situation differently. Apparently not all classes are impacted, seems small but IDK how many, though.
Regarding the rental cost in the Bay Area, I just signed a contact for a 1 bedroom apartment for my daughter and her roommate for $3200 in Berkeley. $1600 each without utility. Not cheap.
In the past few years, CA has liberalized ADU (accessory dwelling unit) laws, which has made it much easier to build them and add to the affordable housing stock. Obviously, it’s not going to help right at this moment, but ADU building is a hot market right now, or at least before the Coronavirus.
I’m a parent of a UC TA - not at UCSC, but at a supporting strike school. My child chose not to walk out and the vast majority of TAs made the same choice - they are still teaching and doing their jobs, and it looks like they plan to keep doing so.
One comment from reading the posts…
Full funding is not $2400/month for 12 months. TAs are on a nine month contract and get about $22k/year, so pay is closer to an average of $1800/month, and that is before taxes and withholdings. Rents are almost always on a 12-month lease. Sometimes TAs can teach in the summer, but class demand goes way down, so there are not many positions and and they certainly can’t count on having that extra income.
I think the UC TAs need to honor their existing contract, but Santa Cruz may be a special case needing some relief. From my understanding, there is an acute housing shortage that is partially a result of the housing prices in the Silicon Valley, where even high wage earners struggled. Enough of those high wage earners migrated south to the Santa Cruz area greatly affecting the housing market there. Other things contributing to the shortage are an increased enrollment at UCSC (23% increase between 2013 - 2017), stalled UCSC housing projects and the many landlords who found that running an AirBnB in a beach town was more lucrative than renting to residents. I’m skeptical of the $1797 median rental cost stated above.
I don’t have a problem with “the poor grad student” model, but they deserve a roof over their head and food security. As stated above, being a TA is a half time job. Additionally, they are full-time students and researchers. They work days, nights, weekends and summers and put in a lot of hours to graduate. That is as it should be, but if they are to be moved through the pipeline (earning their PhD in a reasonable amount of time which allows new students to come aboard) they don’t have time to work another job so they can pay for rent, utilities and food.
@csfmap: Your post is a bit confusing with respect to TA pay.
If TAs are paid $22,000 for 9 months, then monthly pay is over $2,444.
If TAs are paid $22,000 over 12 months, then your post does not make sense since you also write that TAs are on a 9 month contract.
Too many sources contradict your statements about TA pay. Just click on the articles & sources cited in this thread. For Example: Post #40 above. The Chronicle of Higher Education writes that base take home pay–after taxes & deductions–is about $2,100 per month.)
To the best of your knowledge, are TAs paid differently based on school location or on area of study and/or duties ?
P.S. Aren’t masters TAs paid less than fully funded PhD candidate TAs ?
In addition to The Chronicle of Higher Education article cited in post #40 above, the article cited in post #89 above states that grad student TAs are typically paid $2,400 a month before taxes (in addition to other compensation).
^^ Publisher - your posts seemed to imply that TAs got $2400/month for 12 months of the year. They get approximately $2400/month for 9 months of the year.
Per the UCSC website, effective fall '20, fully funded PhD students will be receiving a total of $43k annually (ignoring OOS). Take out the $13k for tuition/fees which is a pass thru, and they receive $30k in cash comp over 9 months. That includes ~$5k for medical, which can be waived with other coverage. In addition, the campus will be offering an extra $2400 for a housing adjustment, bringing the total to $33+k over 9 months.
Any summer research or TA’ing and/or Fellowships are on top.
@csfmap: The stipend seems to vary by student.
An LA Times article on 2/29/2020 stated that the typical monthly stipend is $2,400, but did not address whether it was paid for 9, 10, or 12 months per year.
CBS News interviewed 2 PhD candidates who both take home about $31,000 per year after taxes & deductions for their TA duties.
Clearly, there is a legitimate cost-of-living issue for TAs at UC-Santa Cruz.
Also clear is that there is a union negotiated contract covering the TAs in effect from August, 2018 until August, 2022. This contract includes a no-strike clause.
No one is forced to get a masters or PhD in an elite California coastal community.
The obvious solution is to raise resident tuition rates at UC schools in order to fund a livable wage for UC system employees.
Folks need to be careful assuming journalists are accurate. Many will just take the union write up and assume that it is unbiased. Moreover, they won’t take the time to call the other party – in this case, UCSC – and ask for their side and numbers.
Is this the result of the strike?
dunno. It was posted on the UCSC website awhile ago, but I have no idea when the decision was made. But if you take the numbers at face value, the math works out as:
$30k less $5 for medical = $25k. (“free” medical is conveniently forgotten in the striker’s claims)
$25k/12 months = ~$2100/mo.
One thing that I am wondering about: Should a TA necessarily get paid well enough to cover their full cost of education?
I have a daughter still in university as an undergraduate student, but who was asked to work as a TA for a freshman class. She is not getting enough to cover her full cost of education, nor are they covering her tuition (although different merit based aid comes close). She is however getting what amounts to a pretty good “per hour” income, and being a TA does not interfere with her education and her research project. It definitely beats working in the cafeteria for at least three reasons (it pays better, it is more interesting, and it adds more to a student’s resume when applying for jobs or graduate schools in the future).
When I went off to university and when my kids went off to university, we saw what sort of offer the schools gave us. We figured out what it would cost, and made sure that we had the money to cover whatever was not covered by various forms of financial aid. This also applies to my masters and my wife’s masters. We did not expect the university to make it free for us. I turned down one school (which was ironically UC Santa Cruz) specifically because it was not affordable.
I think that you see what offer you get from schools, you figure out if you can afford it and if you want to do it, and then you either accept the deal or you don’t. If you accept a deal, then you live with it if you possibly can. If you cannot afford whatever deal is offered, then you go somewhere else.
MOST Master’s programs do not offer tuition waivers. They’re cash cows for the universities.
@DadTwoGirls while I don’t necessarily disagree with your post, the idea of “choice” is problematic to me. Almost all of the UCs are in expensive areas. If those schools stop attracting top students to their graduate programs - and that’s in essence what you’re suggesting by making choices - what do you think will happen to their rankings? And how long do you think they will remain the powerhouses that they are today - powerhouses that attract top professors, the most in funding, the best graduate students?
And let’s not forget what these top universities do for the communities in which they find themselves in: they bring in huge amounts of growth and money. There’s a reason why Silicon Valley is where it is and the Miracle Mile is where it is - and that reason is that they grew out of proximity to the world’s great universities that feed ideas, talent and skills.
Although I support the students (or anyone else for that matter) to go on strike and fight for whatever they are fighting for, and should accept the negative or positive result of their action with a badge of honor. My thought is the same as what you said here.
If one goes to school, they have to assume that this is an investment, not a for profit, not even for net zero. I am very glad that they get paid, but the idea that they should come out with net zero is a little strange, as investment usually means you loose something now and hope to gain something better at a later time. But I also realize that this model would produce FAR less Ph.Ds and we as a nation will lose our competitive advantage to the rest of the world, and that’s the last thing I want.
I completely agree with you here. It irks me when people make this kind of argument. It’s like saying to poor white folks in the rust belt areas where there are no job prospect: if you can’t find job there, why don’t you just get educated, and move to other areas where there are jobs?
It is problematic indeed.
^^^ @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 think having a healthy system of private and PUBLIC system is one that’s worked very well in the US. We will all lose if public universities start losing their best - and their luster.
Undergrad TAs are different than those who are in masters and phd programs. Undergrad TAs are usually tutoring or doing a specific research job for a professor. It’s a job and like you said better than washing dishes, but it is not intended to support the student or pay for their tuition.
I don’t understand the comparison. PhD students at the smartest state university system on the planet are more than capable of making that choice.