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In Santa Cruz, a graduate student strike grows out of a housing crisis
- davidw 7y agoFWIW: https://www.santacruzyimby.org/ https://www.santacruzyimby.org/
- StanDavis 7y agoThere's nothing at that link related to the title.
- cultus 7y agoHuh? The entire article is related to the title.
- cultus 7y agoWith ever-lengthening PhDs, it's getting hard to see many grad programs as not exploitative.
- eli_gottlieb 7y agoThere's a reason that we've all been screeching "Grad workers are workers!" as a slogan.
- overeater 7y agoThis is the first time I've heard of this. Do you have any data to support this claim? None of the places I know about have lengthening PhDs, in fact the opposite -- they are decreasing PhD lengths from 6+ to 5-6 being the norm, because that's a key factor in how applicants choose PhD programs so they need to do this to remain competitive.
- chrisseaton 7y ago5-6 years is far far too long. It doesn’t take that long to learn to do research.
- croissants 7y agoAmerican PhDs applicants typically don’t have Masters degrees, so 5-6 years elapse between completing undergrad and finishing the PhD. This appears comparable to the 1-2 + 3-4 years for masters + PhD in Europe. If you want to assert that this process is universally too long, what makes you think that? Not to get too personal, but I notice that you got your PhD 8 years after your Masters, albeit in 4 years after starting. Are you sure the intervening extra 4 years didn’t help?
- chrisseaton 7y agoIn the UK you generally either do a masters or a PhD, but not both. So you’d usually do three years bachelors, three or four years PhD, then done. > If you want to assert that this process is universally too long, what makes you think that? If the goal of a PhD is to teach someone to research, introduce them to the community, get them to make their own unique contribution, and have it tested by publishing something good, ready to start doing unsupervised research full time in academia or industry, then they've usually done that by three or so years. What are they doing after that point? > Are you sure the intervening extra 4 years didn’t help? You mean because I was more grown up? Maybe, but I also had a wife and house and later a family to worry about - most students can just focus on their research.
- 7y ago
- atarian 7y agoThere's a lot of things that California gets right. It's too bad housing isn't one of them.
- mrfusion 7y agoWhat things do they get right? Serious question.
- m0llusk 7y agoOh, many things that get lost in the details. One of the more surprising is how budget nonsense can work out reasonably well. The spending mandates that apply to the budget exceed the actual budget. As a result state employees allocate resources using their best judgement. Thus the political chaos surrounding the budget is converted into an orderly surrender to government administrators.
- gamblor956 7y agoCalifornia has had a budget surplus for several years bigger than most states' entire budgets.
- m0llusk 7y agoCalifornia has been in budget crisis for most of the time I have lived here which is one of the reasons for the very recent situation with the surplus. Several years of surplus does not necessarily make the process for dealing with a lack of surplus any less interesting unless you assume that the business cycle has disappeared.
- gamblor956 7y agoCA changed its budgeting laws during the last financial crisis to lower its dependence on transient high-income events like IPOs, and most of CA's budget problems stems from the state getting back less from the federal government than its residents pay in federal taxes (in contrast to red/flyover states, which for all their talk about low taxes would be bankrupt without the largesse provided by CA and NY). Notably, California had a budget surplus despite a relative lack of high-profile IPOs the past several years. It helps that many of CA's biggest industries are at the high-end of the value spectrum (i.e., tech, biotech, Hollywood, and video games).
- pengaru 7y agoThe last 10-15 years has transformed Santa Cruz into something I barely recognize anymore. It used to be really great. Abundant free parking, a huge multistory used book store (Logos), and a house turned cozy coffee shop overflowing with college students where you could spend entire days studying/working without going broke (The Perg) and without being a jerk occupying one of the few tables at the Starbucks or Peets. The last time I went there ~2 years ago I couldn't find any free parking other than the grocery store lot, and the coffee shops were hipster cafes without outlets and overpriced everything on very limited menus. At least there's still the Red Room. I'd like to know where the students go to study now instead of The Perg. I hope they're not paying through the nose at Verve Coffee.
- jmspring 7y agoI used to go to Lulu Carpenters as a student back in the 90s. It was a decent place to study then. But the owner has become a jerk toward students. Perg is an institution I still miss.
- floren 7y agoThe whole of California seems like that. Places get a reputation for being great, so everybody goes there... which overloads the roads, drives up rents, and makes the city decide they better put in some parking meters. Being "the cool place", when the cool used book shop goes out of business it gets replaced with a joint selling $20 acai bowls or whatever. Half of the state is being perpetually loved to death.
- joe_the_user 7y agoWith all due respect, the "too many outsiders spoil thing" narrative is hokum, flat wrong, an not-useful myth. Back when rents were considerably more affordable, most of California received a similar level of visitor and had similar growth rates. The changes have been driven by massive money coming into real estate, restrictions on building, and an economy where real wages are stagnant.
- 7y ago
- GuiA 7y ago> The 33-year-old single mother and third-year anthropology graduate student says she makes around $2,200 a month after taxes as a part-time teaching assistant at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She also pays around $1,700 a month for the two-bedroom she shares with her 10-year-old son in student housing. After that, there’s little money to spare. Spending 80% of your income on housing is just poor budgeting no matter how you look at it. If someone decides that accepting a ~5 year position that pays close to minimum wage in one of the highest COL areas in the country is the right choice for them... then what? Academia is kind of like the video game industry - plenty of young people with a dream who want to get in, get abused and spat out by the system. Because guess what, it gets even harder after your PhD. You’ll be paid barely more, except with even less job stability (you’re now looking for a post doc every 1-2 years, or jumping from adjunct contract to adjunct contract) and more stress and responsibility. And of course by that point the sunk cost fallacy has fully set in, you now think of yourself as an Anthropology Professor and there’s no way you’re going to go back and pick up plumbing or programming. Ideally grad students would stop pouring in, free labor would dry up at universities, and they’ll have to raise grad student salaries to acceptable wages again. Seems unlikely given how badly people want to do anthropology PhDs, and that there’ll always be people who can afford to take a poorly paid position like that because their partner or parents are paying the bills. Maybe unions are the right call, but seems like a strong uphill battle.
- jmspring 7y agoFor the most part the same grad students get tuitions wavers, which if accounted for, would up their income for what is part time work significantly.
- GuiA 7y agoCurrent US tuition is a scam driven by an exploitative loan industry. Giving tuition waivers to grad students is something universities do precisely because it lets them say "no but really when you consider your total compensation it's very competitive with the industry". It's nonsense.
- 7y ago
- jmspring 7y agoThe problem in Santa Cruz is that the city is bordered by greenbelt and the ocean. Student population when I first attended UCSC was sub(or maybe close to) 10k. It has grown to nearly 20k, counting part time, etc. In that time, the university has not built beds to keep up with enrollment. The city certainly hasn't added thousands of rooms to keep up. UC housing apparently has to be paid through campus funds, not through what the state gives it. When I lived there, I looked into adding an ADU. The city wanted north of 40k in fees and "improvements" like putting in a sidewalk where one didn't exist (and doesn't on the whole block).
- nradov 7y agoCalifornia state law since 2019 now allows most single-family homeowners with large back yards to build ADUs without dealing with additional compliance rules from local governments.
- strbean 7y agoThis may be apocryphal, but awhile back I heard there hasn't been a permit granted for an ADU within Santa Cruz City Limits since the '89 earthquake.
- hexeater 7y agoAbout 5 years ago, I asked a politician about housing. The assemblyman told me that housing is largely controlled at the local level and driven by local city politics. He explained that voters tend to be home owners and property owners. The conundrum then is how to make housing affordable without impacting long term investment of majority of voters. A politician or city council which actually moved the needle on housing would be putting themselves at risk of losing many votes, and thus their political careers.
- joe_the_user 7y agoHousing currently controlled at the local level by default, resulting in all those problems. Efforts to move things to the State level in California are ongoing and have hit or miss. The problem is that since housing has been managed at the local level for so long, finding a coherent State level solution is hard and moreover, wealthy interests have influence at the state level also.
- kaikai 7y agoYou're right; there's an ongoing recall process right now in the City Council, against people who voted for rent control measures.
- epistasis 7y agoRent control won't help the striking grad students, though, since they are here for a short time. Rent control is for giving ownership-lite to people. The only thing that helps graduate students is in the short term a COLA so they can survive, and in the longer term far far more housing so that there is enough to go around. The prices are the symptom of the underlying problem. The price controlled stock in Santa Cruz is miniscule, and the lines so long that nobody who lives here less than a decade ever has a hope of getting a price-controlled unit. Unless we address the shortage, we will have one of high prices, long lines, or lotteries. None of these are acceptable solutions for students. (Or really anyone, for that matter. We have to stop trying to exclude people and finally welcome them.)
- 7y ago
- kaikai 7y agoI lived in Santa Cruz for over 10 years and grew up in the area. The tech industry has had hugely negative effects on Santa Cruz. It's a long but doable commute to the south bay (including Netflix), and there's shuttles to many of the larger tech companies. The job market in Santa Cruz is dismal; the university is a major source of jobs but other than that it's mostly small town service jobs. Trying to live in Santa Cruz AND work in Santa Cruz is very difficult. Home ownership is out of reach for the vast majority of people who work in the area, and the rental market is dominated by students living off of student loans or family support rather than supported by local jobs. There is no easy answer, because as others have noted, Santa Cruz is surrounded by ocean and greenspace, and full of NIMBYs who want to limit development. I can't blame them; the city is cute and many of the neighborhoods are lovely. It's just a shame that it's becoming a bedroom community for Silicon Valley rather than a self-sustaining town in its own right.
- ng12 7y ago> There is no easy answer, because as others have noted, Santa Cruz is surrounded by ocean and greenspace California's coastline is over 800 miles long and most of it is equally as picturesque as Santa Cruz. Driving down the 1 you'll pass through a hundred small towns with relatively affordable homes and plenty of oceanfront scenery. The primary value of SC is that it's close to the Bay Area and that's what it should be optimized for.
- thedance 7y agoMost of California's coastline is sheer cliffs. There are reasons why our cities are where they are.
- Retric 7y agoFor the average person, ocean temperature is a bigger issue than cliffs. With plenty of examples of popular beaches globally next to giant cliffs.
- nostrademons 7y agoThe GP is largely correct though. There are tons of incredibly beautiful small coastal towns in California - Crescent City, Fort Bragg, Gualala, the whole Point Reyes region from Bodega Bay to Stinson Beach, Pacifica, Half Moon Bay, Pescadero, Watsonville/Moss Landing, the Carmel/Monterey area, Morro Bay, Santa Barbara, etc. Cliffs or not, there are real settlements there, and they're gorgeous, even prettier than Santa Cruz. What they don't have is easy proximity to the jobs and tech wealth in the Bay Area.
- bcsphd 7y agoUC Berkeley CS PhD student here. I can definitely empathize with the UCSC strikers---housing costs are also insane here, although we get payed a bit more. CS PhDs here have it relatively good, at about $55K / year before taxes, but it's still common for us to spend more than 30-50% of income on rent. (Even in shared housing, it's very difficult to find anything cheaper than $1.3K / month.) I do know that for students in other departments, money is extremely tight, and they often have very limited options and periods of housing insecurity. As a side note, the homelessness problem in Berkeley has gone from bad to insane over the past few years that I've lived here. I essentially never leave my house, in a pretty posh part of Berkeley, without an uncomfortable interaction (homeless people in various states of undress, under the influence of drugs, talking to themselves, or screaming). Meanwhile, the UCs (and UC Berkeley in particular) continue to expand a very expensive bureaucracy (I question how many $500K/year vice provosts we really need). It's not that they don't have the money to pay grad students more, but that they're not incentivized to allocate it towards making grad students' lives better. Unfortunately, there's an apathetic attitude among many students on campus of, essentially, "doing your time and getting out," since they know, at least in STEM, that there's a pile of money waiting on the other side. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months and whether the COLA campaign expands to other UCs. The UC administration is very fearful of union organizing (as evidenced by the many weird anti-union emails the university sent out in 2018, during the last contract negotiation).
- eli_gottlieb 7y agoThe trouble is that without overall housing growth, the university can "giveth and taketh away": "grant" a COLA of some nominal amount, while also running a campaign to weaponize towny NIMBYism against grad-students by accusing grads of taking housing that "rightfully" belongs to "real" Berkeley residents, rather than admitting that Berkeley isn't a damned bedroom community anymore and just building some dense, subsidized grad housing on campus property.
- traek 7y ago> while also running a campaign to weaponize towny NIMBYism against grad-students by accusing grads of taking housing that "rightfully" belongs to "real" Berkeley residents What? Why would UC Berkeley want to do that, to make itself less appealing as a destination for graduate studies? There’s zero incentive, this is such a silly hypothetical.
- musicale 7y agoEventually the graduate serfs will revolt if you take away their housing.
- asdff 7y agothere's showers in the lab
- prime9973 7y agoMIT CS PhD student here. Pretty similar story in Boston/Cambridge. Every grad student spends most of their income on rent. What's worse is that MIT and Harvard own a lot of the land in Cambridge and literally have thousands of students that live outside campus increasing the rent demand. MIT is trying to do something about it by building new grad dorms with their most recent one opening up next year but guess what...the rent is insane ... 2.6K a month for 1 bedroom and this is a student dorm... The justification is that its 'below market rate' but stipends are not at market rate.
- ausbah 7y ago$2.6k per month?? where is that? school owned housing in Cambridge? I don't think I've ever seen prices that high for off campus stuff in the mission hill & Fenway area
- xnyan 7y agoIn my experience university housing is almost always more expensive than market rate, NYU and a few other places excluded. This was true even at my moderately sized southern United States school with no land pressure. They know living close to the university is valuable to students and they charge accordingly.
- throwawayhhakdl 7y agoI feel like I have to disagree. I did a masters there a few years ago, and lived in somerville for 2700/mo in a large 3BR split with two roomies. So very cheap. The commute was just about 25 minutes on very affordable, very comfortable public transit (red line). Certain areas of Cambridge and Boston are very expensive, but we have plenty of options that are easy to make work. A quick ddg reports much lower rates than what you suggest. https://studentlife.mit.edu/housing/graduate-family-housing/graduate-residences https://studentlife.mit.edu/housing/graduate-family-housing/... The new grad housing is likely for established families who don’t want to live in a “dorm” but do want to live on campus.
- justlexi93 7y agoThe UC system needs to build and/or create housing for all their non-tenured teaching staff.
- ironman1478 7y agoI'm really happy they are doing this. As an anecdote, I got into USC's grad program with a 45k per year salary, which was great! But, the person who was running the lab actually emailed me saying that I really should think about entering a PhD program after working in the industry. The quality of life decrease is so huge when going from 6 figures to sub 50k. I couldn't stomach it and decided to stay in industry, even though it's something I think about everyday. In the end, I'd rather have some amount of stability and comfort taking on the burden of having such a low salary in a high cost of living area. It's especially frustrating because my job in the industry is so much easier but I make so much more money. It's extremely unfair for these students to be paid so little.
- sjg007 7y agoI was at UCLA and I had to rake loans to pay my rent because my PhD stipend wasn’t enough. Still paying those off. The whole system is foobar. I support the strike. It’s been a long time coming.
- j7ake 7y agoId be curious to see a list of cost of living adjusted stipends for PhD ranked across universities. It would be interesting to see what are the top places to go in terms of highest stipend .
- ccvannorman 7y agoFrom the article: "sparked by West Virginia educators who waged a largely successful wildcat strike in 2018, even though their right to collectively bargain was unrecognized by state law". So.. implying it isn't a legal position to bargain? So bargaining for wages is therefore ..illegal by default? I don't get this.
- wsxcde 7y agoYeah, many red states have made it illegal to strike. And of course, this eliminates any possible leverage that employees have over employers to force better treatment and that is precisely the reason why Republicans have done this.
- strbean 7y ago"No right to collectively bargain" means non-union workers aren't forced to pay union fees.
- peacockwank 7y agoThey have very very very high wages already for PhD students though? True, their rent costs are also very very very high but based on the current exchange rates the $500 the tag line example person has left over, after rent each month, is comparable to the amount left after rent, food, etc when doing a PhD in the UK 6 years ago in a not London location. It seems that the PhD wages are very high already to compensate for the very high rent costs. If the anecdotal evidence given by people in the comments here, concerning TAing and moonlighting at other nearby research institutes (for ~$10K !) are both true and common then what is the problem?
- michaelt 7y agoDuring my PhD I received a £1380/month tax-free stipend from EPSRC, and rented a single room in a shared house for £300/month. So after rent, I had £1080 - about $1400 - left over to live on. To me, $500/month sounds like very little. I wasn't trying to pay for a child either!
- peacockwank 7y agoah I received £1125 a month and paid £600 in rent, so while it was more than $500 it is pretty close.
- norswap 7y agoThe PhD wage situation in the US is simply shameful. I applaud the resolution of those who still go through with it. In Belgium, PhD are paid salaries that are competitive with entry-level programming positions (though under what you can get if you are a little bit discriminate), and that's for all subject matters. Most of these positions are state-funded (directly through tax-exempt scholarships, or indirectly via TA contract with the state-subsidized universities). I feel like a big reason US universities can get away with this is that they draw a lot of international students who are happy to accept lower wages for a chance to live and work in the US.
- cgiles 7y ago> The PhD wage situation in the US is simply shameful. It really isn't. I recently finished my PhD, and now I'm a postdoc. My stipend was $30K, but, crucially, I wasn't living in a place like Santa Cruz. It was very easy to live on such a stipend where I was at. I paid $800/mo for a 2-bedroom apartment all to myself. This was not a CS PhD, it was biomedical, so the stipend was comparable to the normal B.S. salary in that field. These students' problem is that they chose to do their studies in Santa Cruz. This is not a normal US PhD student situation, it is yet another dysfunctional California situation. If someone is pursuing a PhD, yet can't do the basic math to determine, before accepting an offer, whether the stipend will allow them to live in the area, I can't summon much sympathy.
- norswap 7y agoWell I agree they should think about it before taking the position. This does not seem to me incompatible with the idea that not paying your TA a living wage is shameful. I also think most of the strikers did think about it. But if the opportunity comes up to join a movement (which can achieve something, unlike you own solitary actions) to fix a flawed standard... why not joint it? Be prepared to face the consequences if it fails though.
- chriskanan 7y agoGraduate student stipends have remained relatively flat for decades, in part because the size of grants has. When I was a PhD student in San Diego a decade ago, my stipend was $1800 per month for the last 4 years and $2500 per month for the first two years. Everyone had to have roommates and pennypinch to make it work, and every peer who had kids really struggled unless their spouse had a real income. Being a single parent would be very rough under graduate student income constraints. While increasing dollars allocated to grants is hard and requires changing grant agencies, having TAs make much more than RAs would not really be feasible. I'd like the universities to greatly increase the amount of (greatly) subsidized housing available for graduate students, which would go a long way toward addressing the problem.
- jccalhoun 7y agoAs someone with a phd from a Big 10 college and is (happily) teaching at a community college, I think graduate schools are admitting way too many students. The math for universities is simple: more grad students = more cheap labor = fewer tenure track jobs. But ethically, I think it is immoral. Among the 30 or so people I became friendly with at grad school I think 3 of them have tenure track jobs at research institutions. 3 or so are at private liberal arts colleges. I would say 5 or so are at public liberal arts colleges. I was lucky, after adjuncting for 3 years I finally got a full time job at a community college. There are a number of people I have lost track of but I can think of more than 10 that have left academia because they couldn't find jobs. (I could hit up facebook and track people down to get an accurate count but I need to go jump in the shower so I can finish getting ready to go teach!)