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Update on grade strike
- pmoriarty 7y agoSome background: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxe45b/graduate-student-strikes-are-spreading-in-california https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxe45b/graduate-student-s...
- SilasX 7y agoSemi-OT, but I did a double take at this: >Like the UC Santa Cruz strike, the UC Santa Barbara work stoppage is a “wildcat” strike, meaning that graduate students are acting separately from the United Auto Worker (UAW) 2865, the union which represents more than 19,000 workers across the UC system. I thought that was a mistake somehow, but it turns out that, yes, the UC students are organized as a branch of UAW despite not being auto workers.
- dmd 7y agoUnion names these days are almost entirely historical.
- saagarjha 7y agoAs far as I can tell (I attend UC Santa Barbara, where graduate students started striking Thursday) this has only strengthened the resolve of the protesters. There were complaints about the strike "hurting the quality of education" which may have turned some against the graduate students involved but with this move (specifically, firing 52 number of graduate students, not providing appointments to others) I can only see the issue getting more heated.
- rubidium 7y agoStriking coincidence that I’m reading a biography on Jimmy Hoffa right now. $2500 a year is a slap in the face to the $1800 / month the students were demanding. Something needs to change there. For the Midwest small college town where I went $20,000-30,000 was plenty (for people without kids at least). I imagine it’d be a lot harder in CA coastal cities.
- praptak 7y agoStudents pay through the nose, grads can barely make ends meet. Where does the tuition money go?
- pjc50 7y agoAdministrators, buildings, and sports usually.
- chongli 7y agoYes. A lot of donations to schools are earmarked for specific things like libraries and sports complexes bearing the donor’s name. The university is then forced to hire all kinds of staff to run and maintain these buildings, lest they ruin their reputation by allowing the fancy buildings to fall into disrepair. Donations that are earmarked to help students are in the form of scholarships and bursaries. To be honest, there aren’t nearly enough of those to go around.
- ryandrake 7y agoCan’t a school refuse a donation if it comes with undesirable conditions like earmarks for unneeded buildings?
- chongli 7y agoFancy buildings are a marketing tool for schools, even if they're unneeded. Schools would rather raise tuition and compete for ever-wealthier students than refuse a shiny new building.
- froindt 7y ago>The university is then forced to hire all kinds of staff to run and maintain these buildings, lest they ruin their reputation by allowing the fancy buildings to fall into disrepair. I talked with one of my professors at Iowa State about this topic. He said back in the day, donors only needed to pay the cost of the building and then the university would get hit with tons of maintenance and utility expenses. For some time now, they have to donate the cost of the building and money for an endowment for expected maintenance costs and operating costs.
- inetsee 7y agoI find it ironic that on the same page where the University is detailing how badly they intend to treat the graduate students, they also have a link to make a gift to the University. If I were in a position to make a significant gift, I would be more inclined to make it to the graduate students (e.g. through a strike fund, or other means).
- inetsee 7y agoA follow up to my previous comment: I graduated from the University of California at San Diego more than 45 years ago. I graduated with honors, and I was proud to be a UCSD graduate. After I started working, I made (modest) contributions to UCSD's scholarship funds. I stopped doing that after Janet Napolitano was named president of the University of California. It makes me sad that the University of California seems to be determined to join the Ivy League schools in becoming a hedge fund with a minor side business in education.
- acuster 7y agoOne of the better ways that occurred to me when we Cal grad students were protesting a couple of decades ago was, rather than withhold the grades, simply to give everyone an 'A'. That form of protest most directly targeted the institution since it simply affected its reputation. The students were not hurt, the grad students could comply with their obligations and move on. I am surprised that such an approach never took off.
- saagarjha 7y agoHa, wouldn’t that be nice :) I’m not sure if professors would allow that to go through, though…
- chrisseaton 7y ago> The students were not hurt They’re not getting genuine feedback on their work.
- praptak 7y agoYou can still give them feedback. Damn, you should, regardless of grades.
- chrisseaton 7y agoPart of feedback is the grade.
- praptak 7y agoThe least useful one. Edit: Here's an opinion about that: https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-moral-problem-of-grading-extended.html https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-...
- Balgair 7y agoUCSC is a bit strange. At first, they did not give out grades at all. There was only a written evaluation that the professor did for each student at the end of the quarter. Eventually, in the mid 1980s or so, other schools demanded that UCSC give out a grade in addition, so they they could compare Slugs to other students when admitting for post-secondary education. When I send my official transcript over, it's ~75 pages long, not just one page. It's chock-full of detailed personal information about my efforts in Psych-101, Intro to Jazz, etc (or, rather, the total lack of effort, in my case).
- inventtheday 7y agoWhy did these people accept their positions (with full up front knowledge of their salary) if the money is not enough?
- sev0 7y agoNot starving or being homeless are great motivators. But yeah, why didn't they just get $250k FAANG jobs like the other 300 million Americans?
- i_am_nomad 7y agoI don’t think those people had a binary choice between starving and a Ph.D. program.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- claudiawerner 7y agoWanting to have your cake and eat it too is no great sin. In fact, it's what everyone, everywhere in modern society is trying to do. You want a job you enjoy, and that pays well. That seems like something worth fighting for. Just what you're doing eight hours a day is a very large amount of your lifetime.
- arkades 7y agoBecause people go into graduate programs as an educational opportunity, not as a job search?
- epistasis 7y agoNIMBYism in Santa Cruz has resulted in a massive increase in prices over the past few years. Additionally, the students at this campus voted with an 80% majority against the prior contract that the union had negotiated on behalf of grad students at all campuses simultaneously. Students at other campuses with lower cost of living are not squeezed nearly as much.
- ellisv 7y ago> with the hope that we could resolve this unsanctioned strike and return to our shared mission I didn’t realize most strikes were sanctioned...
- throw_away 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_strike_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_strike_action They mean not sanctioned by the union leadership in this case.
- epistasis 7y agoThe strikers have been fighting back against the union's attempts to say that UC should negotiate with the union rather than the strikers, even: https://twitter.com/payusmoreucsc/status/1234130912281010176?s=21 https://twitter.com/payusmoreucsc/status/1234130912281010176...
- spyckie2 7y agoWhat's the objective argument against raising wages? It seems like they're willing to pay extra money but not via a wage increase?
- saagarjha 7y agoThe wage demands are significantly higher than the money that’s being offered here.
- Consultant32452 7y agoThis article may help you understand the whole grad student racket better. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-government-universities-industry-create-domestic-labor-shortages-of-scientists-high-tech-workers https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-gove...
- spyckie2 7y agoThanks. Makes things clear what's going on. Does this have a HN discussion thread?
- Consultant32452 7y agoNot that I'm aware of. Most of the time when I talk about this topic it gets downvoted pretty hard. Part of the program not covered in the article was to train the population that anyone questioning those policies is the usual litany of bad words. I was very careful this time not to even hint at the content of the article. That seems to have helped.
- gbronner 7y agoWhen I was represented by a graduate student union, our department actually tried to raise wages. This was opposed by the union (solidarity!), and the result was that the department essentially invented fake courses to pad the hours of the grad students; the union didn't care because we were "working more" rather than getting "paid more" This led me to believe that grad student unions were not a particularly useful way of dealing with issues affecting graduate students.