Thank you for actually engaging in a meaningful discussion. > How do you propose to get schools to allow part-time work or to change any other bad practice if

Thank you for actually engaging in a meaningful discussion. > How do you propose to get schools to allow part-time work or to change any other bad practice if not through organizing the workers? I alluded to it, but this change requires massive changes at the government level. The first thing I would like to see changed is that universities cannot count waived tuition as a cost of a grad student. Trump actually proposed to tax these waivers taxed at the individual level. Short term, this would have crushed students. But, imagine working for a car dealership and part of your pay was a new car, of course it should be taxed. This tax would have really brought this distortion that this causes in the market. Second, the student-employee limbo needs to be solved. Personally, I think being allowed to pay your PhD tuition should be allowed. That is, if I can make $100k outside, I should be allowed to pay $50k in tuition and work at my own pace. I don't want to advocate for government intervention, but it seems to me that if there is a tuition, that is an implicit admission that that is the price a student would need to pay for the services of being a student. After the university admits me, they should have no control which route I decide to go: TA + research or work + research. This would require rethinking the F1/J1 visa. Now, why do I think organizing workers won't solve this issue. Because, it does not break the student-employee limbo. As I have pointed out in other comments, PhD students enjoy many benefits of being a student. Chief among them, international students can come here to "study". However, the problem is that your status at the university is dependent on your progress as a student with many programs having hard caps on the number of years to complete certain tasks. This is fundamentally opposed to organized labor because they cannot bargain for changing degree requirements.