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Alas, I'm not sure a union can begin to fix anything except a few cosmetic things. The biggest problem is the massive oversupply of people who want academic car

Alas, I'm not sure a union can begin to fix anything except a few cosmetic things. The biggest problem is the massive oversupply of people who want academic careers versus the number of real jobs. The individual unions at the schools can't tackle this oversupply at all because it's caused by the schools acting independently. The natural game is to protect the insiders by restricting admission like many of the other unions like the AMA that actively campaign against too many doctors. Indeed, the unions risk the bad optics of campaigning to reduce new admits in order to maintain opportunities for those already in the pipeline. In other words, slamming the door shut on people who want to learn all to restrict supply of work for the privileged. I suppose the unions might be able to help in the rare case of a real jerk of a professor who mistreats her students, but I think most professors are smart enough to play passive aggressive games instead. The schools nurture the ability to act passive aggressively. The rest of the time, the students in the union are going to waste their time arguing about something instead of working on their dissertation, the one thing that will spring them from the jail.

frantzfanon 3y ago
There is a vast oversupply of people who want academic careers vs. the number of currently-existing tenure track jobs. In most fields (CS is somewhat different since industry is so attractive, so often even teaching faculty receive tenure), almost all of the teaching is done by contract workers and adjuncts. So the need for labor is there, just not the funding to give everyone secure jobs. If public funding returned to higher levels and the number of tenure-track jobs was increased, then the oversupply would not be quite so bad. This is a sector-wide change that graduate worker unions could push for at each of their individual institutions, especially if they worked in tandem with the unions representing adjuncts. Graduate workers have a lot of power since they can gum up the graduation pipeline and piss off wealthy parents and donors. Of course it is a band-aid solution since the system is fundamentally pyramid-shaped.
- labcomputer 3y ago
  CS is rather unique in that regard (along with maybe economics and business, though to a lesser degree). For everything else, the vast majority of incoming graduate students intend to get a job in academia and then "settle" for a high-paying job in the private sector that doesn't really use their skills. > If public funding returned to higher levels and the number of tenure-track jobs was increased, then the oversupply would not be quite so bad. This is unrealistic. You'd need to increase tenured faculty by at least an order of magnitude to soak up all the grad students currently being produced... But that doesn't even solve the problem because all those professors are going to want to do research, and they're going to want to have graduate research assistants. So now you have the same problem as before, but an order of magnitude bigger. The only real solution is to reduce the number of PhDs produced over a professor's career from ~20 to ~2. Which of course means reducing the number of grad students. > This is a sector-wide change that graduate worker unions could push for at each of their individual institutions, especially if they worked in tandem with the unions representing adjuncts Universities will never go for this. You have to understand your counter-party's BANTA. This is like Brexit: If your position is that you want terms that are strictly worse for your counter-party than if you just don't exist... well then you're not going to get a deal.
CrazyStat 3y ago
Agreed. I'm pretty cynical about academia but I don't see graduate student unions fixing the problems. I voted against a graduate student union at my institution ca. 7 years ago after a couple very frustrating conversations with organizers (both students and professionals from the SEIU) where they were doing the equivalent of promising everyone a free pony (scholarships for international students, lower tuition, etc.--things that aren't included in the mandatory bargaining subjects for a union). It was deeply manipulative and dishonest.
maybelsyrup 3y ago
> a few cosmetic things Show me someone who thinks a living wage and a boss who can’t overwork you anymore are cosmetic and I’ll show you a university administrator.
- parpfish 3y ago
  Grad student unions can stop TAs from being overworked for their classes. But most of the overwork actually stems from trying to start a research career. there’s nothing a union can do to fix research-based overwork because youre a) doing it to yourself, not because a boss is making you and b) you are competing with researchers from other institutions that aren’t in your union to build your CV.
  - uoaei 3y ago
    "There's nothing a union can do to fix structural inefficiencies" seems like an obvious and irrelevant take. Unions are for securing benefits within the existing system, not for changing the system per se.
- labcomputer 3y ago
  TAs aren't overworked, even without union representation. You'll never be asked to do more than an average of 20hrs/week, ever. You can always just refuse to sign the end-of-semester certification. RAs are overworked, but unions can't do anything to help that. As a grad student, you need to publish papers, which means you need the cooperation of your advisor. If you bring a grievance or work to rule, there are a million innovative ways your advisor can sabotage you as retaliation. They can let you pursue ideas that they know are not novel (and the papers will be rejected). Or suggest you try something they know won't pan out. Or run out of budget before ordering that $THING you need for your experiment. When you still haven't defended after ~8-10 years, the university's policies will automatically kick you out. Problem solved! As for a living wage: I wasn't represented by a union in grad school, but all the commenters here who were have pointed out that their unions didn't fight for higher wages.
  - autoexec 3y ago
whakim 3y ago
Graduate student unions aren't aiming to tackle this, and I don't know of any that are. At Stanford, the unionization campaign centered around Stanford's stipends (which have not kept up with inflation and put students in the "extremely low income" category per the county) and Stanford's status as both employer and landlord for many students.
- theGnuMe 3y ago
  It's pretty much the same at all Universities in HCOL areas.. UCLA is the same. UCLA actually had to build graduate student housing to offset the market and it is still overpriced. Talk about levitown.
theGnuMe 3y ago
A PhD is a path to citizenship which isn't a bad thing in theory but the side effect is it reduces graduate student real wages and lengthens the time to graduate as demand is so high. I'm surprised economists haven't studied it (or maybe they have) and figured a way out of this fundamental trap. Also University administrations are basically corrupt in the way they nickel and dime grad students across the board. The whole student/employee/apprentice thing really needs a systematic reevaluation since it can be exploitative. Maybe they need to pay incentives to professors to graduate PhD students. In general the market for PhDs is expanding and high paying jobs are available at least in STEM fields which is a good thing as new technologies find wide applications.

frantzfanon 3y ago

There is a vast oversupply of people who want academic careers vs. the number of currently-existing tenure track jobs. In most fields (CS is somewhat different since industry is so attractive, so often even teaching faculty receive tenure), almost all of the teaching is done by contract workers and adjuncts. So the need for labor is there, just not the funding to give everyone secure jobs. If public funding returned to higher levels and the number of tenure-track jobs was increased, then the oversupply would not be quite so bad. This is a sector-wide change that graduate worker unions could push for at each of their individual institutions, especially if they worked in tandem with the unions representing adjuncts. Graduate workers have a lot of power since they can gum up the graduation pipeline and piss off wealthy parents and donors. Of course it is a band-aid solution since the system is fundamentally pyramid-shaped.

labcomputer 3y ago
CS is rather unique in that regard (along with maybe economics and business, though to a lesser degree). For everything else, the vast majority of incoming graduate students intend to get a job in academia and then "settle" for a high-paying job in the private sector that doesn't really use their skills. > If public funding returned to higher levels and the number of tenure-track jobs was increased, then the oversupply would not be quite so bad. This is unrealistic. You'd need to increase tenured faculty by at least an order of magnitude to soak up all the grad students currently being produced... But that doesn't even solve the problem because all those professors are going to want to do research, and they're going to want to have graduate research assistants. So now you have the same problem as before, but an order of magnitude bigger. The only real solution is to reduce the number of PhDs produced over a professor's career from ~20 to ~2. Which of course means reducing the number of grad students. > This is a sector-wide change that graduate worker unions could push for at each of their individual institutions, especially if they worked in tandem with the unions representing adjuncts Universities will never go for this. You have to understand your counter-party's BANTA. This is like Brexit: If your position is that you want terms that are strictly worse for your counter-party than if you just don't exist... well then you're not going to get a deal.

CrazyStat 3y ago

Agreed. I'm pretty cynical about academia but I don't see graduate student unions fixing the problems. I voted against a graduate student union at my institution ca. 7 years ago after a couple very frustrating conversations with organizers (both students and professionals from the SEIU) where they were doing the equivalent of promising everyone a free pony (scholarships for international students, lower tuition, etc.--things that aren't included in the mandatory bargaining subjects for a union). It was deeply manipulative and dishonest.

maybelsyrup 3y ago

> a few cosmetic things Show me someone who thinks a living wage and a boss who can’t overwork you anymore are cosmetic and I’ll show you a university administrator.

parpfish 3y ago
Grad student unions can stop TAs from being overworked for their classes. But most of the overwork actually stems from trying to start a research career. there’s nothing a union can do to fix research-based overwork because youre a) doing it to yourself, not because a boss is making you and b) you are competing with researchers from other institutions that aren’t in your union to build your CV.
- uoaei 3y ago
  "There's nothing a union can do to fix structural inefficiencies" seems like an obvious and irrelevant take. Unions are for securing benefits within the existing system, not for changing the system per se.
labcomputer 3y ago
TAs aren't overworked, even without union representation. You'll never be asked to do more than an average of 20hrs/week, ever. You can always just refuse to sign the end-of-semester certification. RAs are overworked, but unions can't do anything to help that. As a grad student, you need to publish papers, which means you need the cooperation of your advisor. If you bring a grievance or work to rule, there are a million innovative ways your advisor can sabotage you as retaliation. They can let you pursue ideas that they know are not novel (and the papers will be rejected). Or suggest you try something they know won't pan out. Or run out of budget before ordering that $THING you need for your experiment. When you still haven't defended after ~8-10 years, the university's policies will automatically kick you out. Problem solved! As for a living wage: I wasn't represented by a union in grad school, but all the commenters here who were have pointed out that their unions didn't fight for higher wages.
- autoexec 3y ago

whakim 3y ago

Graduate student unions aren't aiming to tackle this, and I don't know of any that are. At Stanford, the unionization campaign centered around Stanford's stipends (which have not kept up with inflation and put students in the "extremely low income" category per the county) and Stanford's status as both employer and landlord for many students.

theGnuMe 3y ago
It's pretty much the same at all Universities in HCOL areas.. UCLA is the same. UCLA actually had to build graduate student housing to offset the market and it is still overpriced. Talk about levitown.

theGnuMe 3y ago

A PhD is a path to citizenship which isn't a bad thing in theory but the side effect is it reduces graduate student real wages and lengthens the time to graduate as demand is so high. I'm surprised economists haven't studied it (or maybe they have) and figured a way out of this fundamental trap. Also University administrations are basically corrupt in the way they nickel and dime grad students across the board. The whole student/employee/apprentice thing really needs a systematic reevaluation since it can be exploitative. Maybe they need to pay incentives to professors to graduate PhD students. In general the market for PhDs is expanding and high paying jobs are available at least in STEM fields which is a good thing as new technologies find wide applications.