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In higher ED this seems like a long time coming. Grad students essentially work as slaves for the Uni's & professors with triple-duty in lab time for professor

• tiki12revolt 9y ago
  > there are now a "glut" of PhD's that are far outpacing the very limited # of academic positions. Professors have very little incentive to practice academic `birth control`.
  • Nomentatus 9y ago
    They have a strong perverse incentive to glut the PhD market since their control of grads then becomes nearly absolute - the graduate students' futures depend on their profs letters of recommendation. Not just wage slavery but "Weinberg benefits" and "pump and dump" (steal the graduate students ideas and then kill their careers and publish those ideas) results. One helluvan incentive.
    • mattmanser 9y ago
      With such a power disparity, I wonder how long before the stories of professors sexually abusing their positions start coming out. The situation sounds like a breeding ground for that sort of exploitation.
      • skybrian 9y ago
        I'm not going to do the search, but there are already quite a few stories of that.
      • mjg59 9y ago
        "start"? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/24/sexual-harassment-university-california-berkeley-blake-wentworth https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/24/sexual-harassm... andhttp://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/03/23/top-uc-berkeley-professor-accused-of-sexual-harassment/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/03/23/top-uc-berkeley-... are recent stories from one college alone.
      • balladeer 9y ago
        I often wonder whether a much older professor sleeping with a much younger student (with consent; both adults obviously) is always a case of attraction based on intelligence and maturity as is often portrayed - esp. in books and films? e.g., One I watched recently - Pelican Brief. Just a random example really but my curiosity is broader in the sense that I want to know from people’s experiences - what they have seen around them. My example seems to make my question sound like having fixed gender roles in this context - it kind of is so. I mean I rarely come across examples of such relationships with reversed gender roles. In fact when it’s an older female faculty member and a younger male pupil it’s often portrayed as, directly or subtly, something perverse or an abuse of some sort and isn’t shown to be as open and accepted as its counterpart (my example). Maybe the historical patriarchy or so? Anyway, this has always intrigued me. Partially because where I am from this is rarely heard of and is a not at all socially accepted. In fact it was a taboo till very recently (maybe it still is), where as in the west it seems to be at least socially accepted (I am not sure how the reaction is at much smaller like concerned families level) and very common (unless I read it wrong from the films). (typed on mobile)
    • Nomentatus 9y ago
      Ooops. That should be "Weinstein benefits", of course.
  • llccbb 9y ago
    In the physical sciences (soft sciences too, perhaps) NSF proposals that don't have explicit funding for graduate students are D.O.A.
    • Fomite 9y ago
      This was really surreal to me the first time I worked on an NSF proposal, because the NIH is far more accepting of straight postdoc proposals.
  • Fomite 9y ago
    Little incentive, but some of us try to as good stewards of the field.
• programmarchy 9y ago
  It's baffling to me that academia, which is predominantly progressive, would treat its workers so poorly.
  • Nomentatus 9y ago
    Camouflage. I well remember a real Chinese Marxist dropped into a supposedly Marxist-dominated academic department here a few decades ago who was astounded. How they could reconcile all being wine collectors and snobs with their trumpeted socialist views he asked me? The answer is that their progressive views masked very regressive and antisocial behavior in general, and that was quite purposeful.
    • UncleMeat 9y ago
      Marxism as an analysis technique and as a political philosophy are totally different. This is not surprising.
      • gt_ 9y ago
        Please cite something or elaborate. This is a fair statement, but it's hardly an excuse in this context. I think you are stretching the meaning here. Marxism is not an ambiguous term.
        • TillE 9y ago
          Marx was first and foremost an analyst of class in history, and capitalism. That's Marxist analysis, which can be largely divorced from specific communist implications.
          • gt_ 9y ago
            That makes sense. I question assuming that self-identified "marxists" are merely analysts of class and capitalism. These things are necessarily correlated and I'm not sure the necessity of drawing the line. Why not just use another term? It seems to me we are making a rhetorical space for bourjois marxists. Why?
• weberc2 9y ago
  I'm not opposed, but where will the higher wages come from? You make it sound like someone is making a killing off their labor, but I understand universities to be perpetually strapped. These aren't meant to be challenges to your point; I just don't understand university economics.
  • classwarsteve 9y ago
    Universities have vastly expanded the percentage of their budget that goes towards administrative and brand building roles. Redistributing it towards teachers and grad students would be a good start. In addition, public universities could receive greater public funding.
    • adharmad 9y ago
      Also sports budgets.
      • driverdan 9y ago
        Big budget, popular sports teams typically pay for themselves through ticket sales.
        • throwawayjava 9y ago
          Which does not describe U Chicago...
    • stale2002 9y ago
      Uhh, no thanks. The research money should be spent on research, and the student tuition should be spent on students. That research and undergraduate education are combined together is the real problem here.
      • acdha 9y ago
        There’s a natural connection between the two: you need qualified people to teach students and many of the best students are looking for research experience in labs doing real work. Given what tuition runs these days, any place which doesn’t have those is going to see students passing for other institutions. The problem isn’t pairing the two but generations of overhead growth combined with a decline in the federal funding which used to support researchers, both of which mean compensation has fallen behind in real value.
• Shivetya 9y ago
  well it likely is too late to matter, with the ever connected world people will get their education from anywhere for the best price. the end result is the many US colleges will have to reign in costs and this could put a lot of pressure on all positions.
• laGrenouille 9y ago
  While these are valid issues, there are big differences between the concerns of Masters and PhD students in the US that I think you conflating together. Doctoral students at major research universities rarely pay tuition, particularly at a place as highly ranked as UChicago, and usually are given a large enough stipend to live off of (1). Relative to the amount of work, however, the pay is low and the number of faculty jobs on the other end of this is shrinking. Masters students on the other hand typically do not engage in their own independent research nor do they teach their own classes. They are basically treated like undergraduates with a harder course load. The tuitions for Masters degrees (for which few scholarships are available), on the other hand, are outrageously high. (1) [https://grad.uchicago.edu/admissions/funding/doctoral](https://grad.uchicago.edu/admissions/funding/doctoral) https://grad.uchicago.edu/admissions/funding/doctoral](https...
  • spamizbad 9y ago
    UChicago is notoriously stingy stipend-wise for top-tier school. A good friend ultimately went to Yale because their stipend nearly double.... also they were Yale.
    • santaclaus 9y ago
      > also they were Yale Depends what you are studying. Their CS department is notoriously shoddy (I know the Yale undergrads were up in arms about this a few years back).
      • kchoudhu 9y ago
        It's also undergrad, so the quality of the department doesn't actually matter. You also get to put Yale on your resume.
  • llccbb 9y ago
    In many of the physical sciences both Masters and PhD students are usually paid a living wage, do not pay tuition, and work double or triple duty as student, teacher, researcher. These students usually do not accrue additional debt beyond what was needed for their undergraduate degree (if any). Despite their importance to many parts of the university system such as instruction, research, and funding (NSF proposals that don't have explicit funding for grad students are D.O.A.), they can still be treated pretty unfairly. Given the hours they work, it is still most common for them to be on the books as part-time employees (0.49 full-time) which cuts off access to employee sponsored health care that is mandated under the ACA. In almost all cases they have no benefits outside of tuition payment. I think grad students unionizing is a fantastic idea. They are in every way the critical grease that keeps the capitalistic university system running. They should be able to protect themselves and have a stronger impact in how the universities are run. The only concern I have is the huge turnover. Unions are most effective and most rationale when the members are committed for life. The longest any of these students could be there is 15 years (5 masters, 10 PhD). This would be very extreme. Most are looking to be out in 2-6 years. Are there any other examples of unions for occupations that have mandatory turnover or term limits?
• stale2002 9y ago
  The solution is less people becoming PHDs. Unions, and the like, just move around the real problem, which is that we have too many people in academia, and that those people should move to industry.
  • HarryHirsch 9y ago
    Industry left to China: https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i41/Chinese-chemistry-PhD-grads-forgoing.html https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i41/Chinese-chemistry-PhD-gr... The only thing that the US is producing these days is student debt.
  • lsh123 9y ago
    Bingo! It’s free country — you don’t like to be in academia, go somewhere else! It is also a free market — you get paid how much you are worth. Disclaimer: dropped out of PhD program many many years ago for this and other reasons. Don’t regret it for a second.
    • scarecrowbob 9y ago
      I don't regret leaving either. I do wish that 24-year-old me had either enough wisdom (or perhaps, say, an ethical advisor) to skip getting into massive debt. I don't agree that folks get paid what they are worth, but that's probably a deeper disagreement than warrants discussion on this forum.
      • mpcomplete 9y ago
        Going in to academia is always on my mind because I would love to be on the cutting edge of research, but I can never justify leaving my job to work twice as hard and get paid 4x less. It's a shame that you need to be rich to continue your education past a point, but it just doesn't make sense to keep going.
• twblalock 9y ago
  The problems you mentioned still exist at universities where grad students are unionized. Some fairly large university systems have had grad student unions for a long time, including the University of California, so I don't think it's a matter of waiting for a critical mass of unionized universities to develop before change can be made. I think the root cause is one that you mentioned in your post: "there are now a "glut" of PhD's that are far outpacing the very limited # of academic positions". As long as that is the case, academic labor will be cheap and easy to replace, and there will always be enough students willing to work in the conditions you mentioned for professors who could help them in their careers.
  • Fomite 9y ago
    Indeed, in some places things get really odd because there are several different "types" of graduate student, and unions don't necessarily manage to negotiate equally advantageous contracts for all of them.
    • hyperbovine 9y ago
      This is correct. At Berkeley the GSIs are unionized at the GSRs are not. As recently as two years ago they tried to organise the GSRs and as far as I know it was voted down. GSRships tend to skew towards STEM and there seems to be little interest among the GSRs themselves in worker protections. Most of them arrive knowing they're there to work their asses off for little pay in return for a better life down the road. It's a very different mentality than in the humanities.
      • mattkrause 9y ago
        It's not the mentality per se; the conditions are very different in humanities versus STEM. For humanities students, the department or division makes a lot of decisions that affect grad students, including the assignment of TA and RA positions, providing funding for conferences and other travel (e.g., to archives). Issues like fairly distributing TAships and keeping class sizes reasonable are things that a union could address. Their advisors were literally....advisors; some of my friends met with their advisor monthly or even less and their research was usually related to--but not an integral part of--their advisors' work. In contrast, science PhD students (especially in biomedical fields) usually work for ONE professor and their work is usually a piece of that prof's overarching research plan. The prof (through grants) usually provides funds for salaries and research-related expenses, rather than the department. The department has very little effect on their lives; bad interactions with their advisor are the main source of misery. It's less clear to me how unions could solve this. They could prevent students from being dismissed for not working insane hours, but they can't force advisors to actually help students do and publish experiments, write them useful letters of recommendation, or things like that.
• mathattack 9y ago
  There is some irony in this happening to one of the most anti-union Econ departments out there. :-) What will this do? Raise the cost of grad students for schools, so perhaps they take less of them. But didn't the students know this was the situation before applying?
• _dps 9y ago
  > Grad students essentially work as slaves for the Uni's & professors ... The typical cost to a professor's budget of employing a graduate student with tuition covered and a basic stipend is somewhere in the range of $50k to $150k. The graduate student gets paid to be trained by a domain expert, and the cost to the "employer" is well above the median income. Outside the rather unorthodox software field, graduate degrees typically result in title advances and higher salaries (this is 100% true in government positions). Calling this arrangement slavery is ridiculous. Bias disclosure: I was once a professor, and also once a graduate student.
  • Fomite 9y ago
    Out of curiosity, I looked up a recent grant of mine and you're spot on. Costs me about $65K a year to support a grad student on a grant.
  • jacalata 9y ago
    Comparing cost to the employer against the median income is nonsensical. At least try and estimate "median cost to an employer".
    • _dps 9y ago
      There's slack, sure. But "nonsensical" is obviously false -- the two must be correlated else profit margins would be detached from labor costs, which we know is false at a macro level. Do you think there could possibly be enough slack to justify calling this arrangement "slavery", which was the crux of my point?
      • jacalata 9y ago
        Yes, they're correlated. If that's the only understanding you have of the relationship, would you agree with my assertion that the cost of employing a grad student is about 10% of the median cost of an employee?
        • _dps 9y ago
• kkylin 9y ago
  Not to say that these are not issues, but the treatment of students is also highly field-dependent. In addition, in fields like mathematics (mine), most postdoctoral positions (even very good ones) come with a certain amount of teaching, and students who have not had significant classroom experience sometimes will have difficulty finding good positions. Also, how much TAing one does really varies a huge amount between fields. AFAIK students do much more teaching in the humanities than in STEM, and within STEM departments that teach lots of service courses (e.g., math) will tend to have more TAships than departments that do not.
• roel_v 9y ago
  * by-line * rite of passage
• mulmen 9y ago
  I completely agree with you here. I also wonder what other effects this could have on public higher education. My university was largely funded by the IP created by grad students and other property owned by the university. Undergraduate student fees were actually paid to the state board of education, the university then got only a fraction of that back. The state provided less than a third of the budget to a state university. This was actually less than the cost to educate an undergrad and so grad students work was used to subsidize undergrads who in turn subsidized other public schools in the state. Grad students do deserve fair compensation for their work but if that happens it will exacerbate the problems caused by under funding public education. I hope I see the time when we solve these problems and I think this is a step in that direction.
• autokad 9y ago
  if they are saying they are employees, not students, then international students should have to get the appropriate visas, and should not be here on a student visa.
• lambdaphagy 9y ago
  Why will unionization solve the glut of PhDs? If there are already too many grad students when conditions are miserable, why will improving the conditions reduce the supply?
  • mattkrause 9y ago
    Grad students are not supply-limited. UChicago--and many of the other places flirting with unionization--are never going to have to worry about finding enough grad students. Improving conditions might let them recruit better grad students, which has obvious knock-on effects for the university, even if they retain fewer of them. In general, it is not the case that one researcher yields one interchangeable unit of knowledge. We might be better off (in terms of happiness and productivity) with N calmly productive researchers than 2N miserable researchers desperately flinging stuff at the walls.
• bzbarsky 9y ago
  > and an average of $100k (1) in debt First, the USNews article you cite says the average is $57k. The $100k number is the 75th percentile number. Second, the article you cite is pretty freely mixing "graduate students" and "graduate and professional degrees", to the extent that it's not clear whether the average numbers it cites are just for the former, or for the latter. It obviously makes a big difference, because while law school and medical school have their own problems they don't have the (very real) problems you describe PhD programs as having. So I looked at the actual report your linked article is citing. The $57k number is the _median_ (not average!) debt across all graduate and professional students. Same for the $100k number: 75th percentile across all graduate and professional students. See page 1 of the report. Page 3 of the report cites some "typical" (I assume they mean "median", but they don't define it) numbers for various graduate degree debts, including law and medicine, but conveniently leaves out the number for "PhDs". Those make up about 23% of all graduate degrees, according to the chart on that page, by the way, so your typical "graduate or professional student" is not a PhD candidate, but is aiming for an MD, JD, or Master's degree, all of which have _quite_ different funding models from PhDs. All the tables on page 12 and following conveniently exclude PhDs as well. So this report tells us pretty much nothing about PhD debt. The law and medicine numbers inflate everything involved, obviously, and most of the rest are masters degrees of various sorts. All PhDs could have a debt of 0 and still get the reported median and 75th percentile numbers. OK, so how this works in practice (or at least did 10 years ago) at the universtity of Chicago, while I wad doing my PhD there.... Grad students in the _sciences_ generally did not take on debt at all: their tuition was covered, and they were paid a stipend that was enough to live on reasonably, in return for the teaching and whatnot that they did. Grad students in the _humanities_ were an entirely different story. So even within the PhD bucket it really depended on the field of study. The number of students who took on debt and had "lab time" of any sort was quite close to 0, if not exactly 0. Now there are real problems in PhD programs, including in the sciences, and grad students and especially postdocs _are_ underpaid in various ways. But you're not having science PhDs with $100k in grad school debt, typically.