U of California Grad Students Strike

[marshwiggle]

We have to be careful not to say "wages" as that would imply that what a grad student does is a job. Can't have that.

Well, it's similar to how some denominations give their ministers a "stipend". It signifies a different arrangement, (in this case, requiring a "call"), which makes it different than a normal employment contract. Similarly, for a grad student, their "employment" is contingent on their being accepted into the grad program, and only lasts while they are in the program, so it's not like a normal employment contract.

[dismalist]

We have to be careful not to say "wages" as that would imply that what a grad student does is a job. Can't have that.

Looking at this slightly differently, is the U of C suffering from declining numbers of applications from potential graduate students? There are plenty of graduate schools in all kinds 'a subjects in the US. The "non-wage" of graduate students is determined in a competitive market.

The definition of the remuneration has legal implications for the right to bargain  collectively at the federal level. At the moment, graduate students are not employees in the eyes of the feds but states can determine that they are.  A few have. Some never will -- the growing number of right-to-work states under Taft-Hartley.

The legal implication in turn has an economic implication. Unionization in the US creates a wage differential. The graduate school sector will shrink in high wage locations and expand in low wage locations.

Even if union states fully compensated universities for the increased costs, which I don't see ever happening, the increased taxes necessary to finance the extra educational costs will drive graduate students and residents away.

I have no skin in this game [anymore]. I just see all this as normal human endeavor and its rhetorical justification of -- I want more!

[mythbuster]

To add to this confusion, when I was a grad student at a UC, sometime you were an employee, and sometimes you were not and received a stipend. I know this because during the period where I was an employee, I earned vacation time. But that was only during the summer when my RA-ship was paid through some other mechanism I don't know what it was) than during the year. If you just had a stipend there was no such thing as vacation (and often no summer pay at all).
   Now I think that emergence of the grad student union (during my time as a grad-student) resulted in this odd loophole being resolved. I benefited mightily from it as I was hired as a lecturer for the year after earning my Phd and so the vacation time rolled over and was paid out when I left at the lecturer rate. At the time a lecturer was paid the grad student rate but at 100%- so double! It basically paid for the cross country drive to get to the post-doc location.

Given all of that, I am highly supportive of there being a based amount for whatever type of funding so that students can worry more about their schoolwork than how they will buy their next meal.

[Parasaurolophus]

So, in other words, living on your own is tough with a half-time job?
In other news, water is wet.

Per Article 32 of their contract (32A.1.a.) a 50% TA appointment comes with a maximum workload of 340 hours per semester (220/quarter). For comparison, I don't know of any TA appointments in this country that come with more than about 180hrs/semester of work.

Remember, they're PhD students; they're supposed to be learning and researching in addition to grading. That's the tradeoff. You don't want them working one or more full-time jobs.


(I don't know what's up with their 50% and 100% designations, exactly; given the hours, I suspect that the arrangement on the ground is that almost all TAships are at "50%", and that the funding packages only guarantee such TAships, with the result that most students are left just about able to pay the rent. That likewise makes sense of media reports that the average TA earns about $24k. If the average grad student had a 100% TAship, paying $46 493.01/year, they wouldn't need to go on strike, and there wouldn't be so many accounts of grad students living in their cars.)

[research_prof]

So, in other words, living on your own is tough with a half-time job?
In other news, water is wet.

Per Article 32 of their contract (32A.1.a.) a 50% TA appointment comes with a maximum workload of 340 hours per semester (220/quarter). For comparison, I don't know of any TA appointments in this country that come with more than about 180hrs/semester of work.

Remember, they're PhD students; they're supposed to be learning and researching in addition to grading. That's the tradeoff. You don't want them working one or more full-time jobs.


(I don't know what's up with their 50% and 100% designations, exactly; given the hours, I suspect that the arrangement on the ground is that almost all TAships are at "50%", and that the funding packages only guarantee such TAships, with the result that most students are left just about able to pay the rent. That likewise makes sense of media reports that the average TA earns about $24k. If the average grad student had a 100% TAship, paying $46 493.01/year, they wouldn't need to go on strike, and there wouldn't be so many accounts of grad students living in their cars.)

50% = 4 hours per day, 5 days per week
100% = 8 hours per day, 5 days per week

[mythbuster]

The 50% thing is like being a student-athlete. Each is supposed to leave time for the other. Of course the degree earning part is unpaid.

There is also in impact of the federal labor laws. Obama mandated that anyone employed at 50% or more was eligible for employee mandated healthcare. When that rule went into effect,  I had lots of students who lost hours at their jobs so that their employers made sure they came in below the cutoff. I'm guessing this had a similar impact on stipends, training grants, and other rules that would apply to this employee but not really relationship that grad students have.

Now it gets even more complicated when you are a post-doc. Post-docs are an even worse form of employee but not limbo. I LOST benefits as a post-doc when I was awarded my own funding.  I was almost audited as a post-doc for not filling out Schedule C. Schedule C is for those running their own business, and I was working for the federal government at the time. But because of how I was paid, I had MISC-199 form instead of a W-2. Thankfully, a few emails convinced the IRS that it was too complicated and too little money to be worthwhile!

[arcturus]

Our TA/RA contracts are for 20 hours/week, so 320 hours per 16 week semester. If you count the week before classes start (includes training, setting up classes, etc), then that would be 340 hours per semester, so identical to the UC contract.

Graduate students at my school complain about their wages/benefits and overwork, but it is entirely discipline dependent. My department (in the sciences) pays RAs substantially more than the school's minimum, and offers various additional fellowships to TAs to make their compensation closer to those of an RA. If you ignore the tuition benefit (i.e., just a salary comparison), a typical graduate student earns about 1/2 the salary of a postdoc, so there is no bonus for completing your PhD, just a change in the number of hours you are paid to work.

I understand that this is a touchy subject, but I don't think graduate students, working half-time, should earn more than the median wage in the US. Being a student is meant to be a temporary status and comes with sacrifices for what is hoped to be longer term benefits. Sometimes these opportunity costs are actual costs (i.e., not able to find a job that utilizes the skills you developed as a student after you graduate), and sometimes they pay off as they are expected to.  Making it so that it is more beneficial to stay employed as a student than it is to graduate creates very bad incentives.

[marshwiggle]

So, in other words, living on your own is tough with a half-time job?
In other news, water is wet.

Per Article 32 of their contract (32A.1.a.) a 50% TA appointment comes with a maximum workload of 340 hours per semester (220/quarter). For comparison, I don't know of any TA appointments in this country that come with more than about 180hrs/semester of work.

Remember, they're PhD students; they're supposed to be learning and researching in addition to grading. That's the tradeoff. You don't want them working one or more full-time jobs.

Sure, but that's like saying that if a parent (especially a woman) has a baby to take care of, since you don't want her working long hours that you should therefore simply double her pay for half the normal hours of work.

As arcturus said:

I understand that this is a touchy subject, but I don't think graduate students, working half-time, should earn more than the median wage in the US. Being a student is meant to be a temporary status and comes with sacrifices for what is hoped to be longer term benefits. Sometimes these opportunity costs are actual costs (i.e., not able to find a job that utilizes the skills you developed as a student after you graduate), and sometimes they pay off as they are expected to.  Making it so that it is more beneficial to stay employed as a student than it is to graduate creates very bad incentives.

[Parasaurolophus]

Our TA/RA contracts are for 20 hours/week, so 320 hours per 16 week semester. If you count the week before classes start (includes training, setting up classes, etc), then that would be 340 hours per semester, so identical to the UC contract.

To be clear: identical to the 50% contract. It looks to me like, according to the claims upthread, people would be advocating you cut your TA remuneration in half. But surely that would do real harm to your recruitment prospects (not to mention their lives!).

In other words, although below you characterize the UC grads as working half time, they actually work just as much as your own students, who work full time (at least, that's my understanding--please do correct me if you think they also work half-time, and should be paid accordingly).

I understand that this is a touchy subject, but I don't think graduate students, working half-time, should earn more than the median wage in the US. Being a student is meant to be a temporary status and comes with sacrifices for what is hoped to be longer term benefits. Sometimes these opportunity costs are actual costs (i.e., not able to find a job that utilizes the skills you developed as a student after you graduate), and sometimes they pay off as they are expected to.  Making it so that it is more beneficial to stay employed as a student than it is to graduate creates very bad incentives.

The median US wage seems like a bad benchmark, given that the city of San Diego itself deems any income below $27 350 "extremely low" (and eligible for poverty benefits). This seems to me like a case of the incentives making it incredibly undesirable to be a graduate student in the first place.

We were not paid much as grad students. But we did have the reasonable expectation that we wouldn't need to take on debt to do so (and we didn't; some of us did take on debt, of course, but it wasn't necessary, insofar as our stipends actually covered the cost of living, if not much else). I don't see any good reason to demand that grad students be forced to rely on poverty benefits. It seems to me, rather, that if you can't afford to pay them enough to live on, then you can't afford to have them in the first place (which, in turn, means you need to work harder--which, to be clear, seems bad to me).

[arcturus]

Our TA/RA contracts are for 20 hours/week, so 320 hours per 16 week semester. If you count the week before classes start (includes training, setting up classes, etc), then that would be 340 hours per semester, so identical to the UC contract.

To be clear: identical to the 50% contract. It looks to me like, according to the claims upthread, people would be advocating you cut your TA remuneration in half. But surely that would do real harm to your recruitment prospects (not to mention their lives!).

In other words, although below you characterize the UC grads as working half time, they actually work just as much as your own students, who work full time (at least, that's my understanding--please do correct me if you think they also work half-time, and should be paid accordingly).

I understand that this is a touchy subject, but I don't think graduate students, working half-time, should earn more than the median wage in the US. Being a student is meant to be a temporary status and comes with sacrifices for what is hoped to be longer term benefits. Sometimes these opportunity costs are actual costs (i.e., not able to find a job that utilizes the skills you developed as a student after you graduate), and sometimes they pay off as they are expected to.  Making it so that it is more beneficial to stay employed as a student than it is to graduate creates very bad incentives.

The median US wage seems like a bad benchmark, given that the city of San Diego itself deems any income below $27 350 "extremely low" (and eligible for poverty benefits). This seems to me like a case of the incentives making it incredibly undesirable to be a graduate student in the first place.

We were not paid much as grad students. But we did have the reasonable expectation that we wouldn't need to take on debt to do so (and we didn't; some of us did take on debt, of course, but it wasn't necessary, insofar as our stipends actually covered the cost of living, if not much else). I don't see any good reason to demand that grad students be forced to rely on poverty benefits. It seems to me, rather, that if you can't afford to pay them enough to live on, then you can't afford to have them in the first place (which, in turn, means you need to work harder--which, to be clear, seems bad to me).

Our contracts are for 20 hours/week. As I noted, the graduate student stipends are about 50% of a postdoc salary in my field. So, no, I don't think that anyone is advocating that they be reduced by 50% from where they are now to account for the fact that students are working part-time.

Please note, it is perfectly possible that I could employ someone as an RA on my grant to work on grant-related research that has nothing to do with the student's dissertation research.  This would be similar in concept/time commitment as someone appointed as a TA.  However, for practical reasons, my grant-supported RAs are working on research that is related to their dissertation. Thus, they get paid for 20 hours per week of work, but 100% of their time is working toward the goal of completing their dissertation.

[Parasaurolophus]

And is their stipend sufficient to pay the rent, or must they take on other work (or loans) to make ends meet?

I take it that's the point of the strikers. Is it not?

[apl68]

Our TA/RA contracts are for 20 hours/week, so 320 hours per 16 week semester. If you count the week before classes start (includes training, setting up classes, etc), then that would be 340 hours per semester, so identical to the UC contract.

To be clear: identical to the 50% contract. It looks to me like, according to the claims upthread, people would be advocating you cut your TA remuneration in half. But surely that would do real harm to your recruitment prospects (not to mention their lives!).

In other words, although below you characterize the UC grads as working half time, they actually work just as much as your own students, who work full time (at least, that's my understanding--please do correct me if you think they also work half-time, and should be paid accordingly).

I understand that this is a touchy subject, but I don't think graduate students, working half-time, should earn more than the median wage in the US. Being a student is meant to be a temporary status and comes with sacrifices for what is hoped to be longer term benefits. Sometimes these opportunity costs are actual costs (i.e., not able to find a job that utilizes the skills you developed as a student after you graduate), and sometimes they pay off as they are expected to.  Making it so that it is more beneficial to stay employed as a student than it is to graduate creates very bad incentives.

The median US wage seems like a bad benchmark, given that the city of San Diego itself deems any income below $27 350 "extremely low" (and eligible for poverty benefits). This seems to me like a case of the incentives making it incredibly undesirable to be a graduate student in the first place.

We were not paid much as grad students. But we did have the reasonable expectation that we wouldn't need to take on debt to do so (and we didn't; some of us did take on debt, of course, but it wasn't necessary, insofar as our stipends actually covered the cost of living, if not much else). I don't see any good reason to demand that grad students be forced to rely on poverty benefits. It seems to me, rather, that if you can't afford to pay them enough to live on, then you can't afford to have them in the first place (which, in turn, means you need to work harder--which, to be clear, seems bad to me).

Yes, if a school is in a location with extremely high cost of living, it's not unreasonable to expect grad student pay to reflect that to at least some extent.  It may not be unjust to expect students to live frugally and make certain sacrifices while getting their education, but they shouldn't be expected to live like paupers.  They shouldn't have to sleep in their cars or on somebody's couch, or borrow money to make rent on one room.  That's exploitation. 

I can remember semesters when, as a grad student, I did teaching assistant work, worked part time at the library, and had my grad student research.  I put in as much as 80 hours a week between these three things, but was paid for well under that.  By the time I'd put in all the uncompensated hours I was expected to put in with my grad assistant work, I was actually making less than the then minimum wage.  That's for the work I was ostensibly being paid for, not my studies.  I had to borrow money from my parents to pay the rent.  It was a modest amount and they didn't begrudge it, but it was also not easy for them.  Even in the 1990s grad study was becoming the privilege of those with money in the family.  And believe me, I was living  very, very frugally.  I walked to work, ate peanut butter sandwiches for lunch every day, and never, ever visited the doctor.

[Wahoo Redux]

I understand that this is a touchy subject, but I don't think graduate students, working half-time, should earn more than the median wage in the US. Being a student is meant to be a temporary status and comes with sacrifices for what is hoped to be longer term benefits. Sometimes these opportunity costs are actual costs (i.e., not able to find a job that utilizes the skills you developed as a student after you graduate), and sometimes they pay off as they are expected to.  Making it so that it is more beneficial to stay employed as a student than it is to graduate creates very bad incentives.

This statement is getting some attention, probably because it is an interesting discussion prompt.

I think the whole issue with the strike, if I understand Californian economy, is that it is virtually impossible to survive in that state on the funds provided to grad students.  I think it is that simple.

There is the expected moralizing about "work" from people probably not in the situation that most Cali grad students are in, but whether or not the situation of an RA or TA is temporary is not the point, I think.  And we must remember that this is a "temporary" situation that can take anywhere from 4 to 6 years (sometimes even more depending on discipline and if one is doing the Masters/PhD or just the PhD) before the degree is done.

As a grad student I did take on some parttime work (student newspaper, university PR writing, teaching at the local CC) but these were primarily to boost my CV and worked around my schedule.  My stipend kept me in poverty, but the cost of living in the region was low, there were plenty of safe student ghettos to find reasonable rentals, and I walked to work and ate peanut butter sandwiches.  Most importantly, the PhD track was a fulltime job.  I could not have taken on outside work and finished.

[dismalist]

Here is a couple 'a years worth of U of California PhD student numbers and other fascinating data from 2016/17 to date: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/doctoral-program You gotta click a bit to get the various years. Looks like the number of students has not changed, but that's due to policy, for whatever reason.

Let's not forget tuition remission -- 78% of students after the first year.

Most important, the number of applications has gone up. This indicates to me that everything is OK, i.e. U of California graduate school is a good deal as is.

[jimbogumbo]

The link below shows info for math TAs at Purdue. Big 10 public, and while lower it is much cheaper to live in West Lafayette than SoCal or NoCal. Clearly very low with respect to living, but as dismalist points out still "plenty" of applicants. What is missing to me is the fact that R1 grad students are essential to US research interests. We've funded universities to do what many think is vital to our national interest, and haven't invested in it in a way that attracts quality US students in the sciences.

https://www.math.purdue.edu/resources/gradta/policies.html