[aresant]

In higher ED this seems like a long time coming.

Grad students essentially work as slaves for the Uni's & professors with triple-duty in lab time for professor + teaching + self-research.

Their reward comes in notoriety & bi-lines on research that helps them become professors in their own right in higher ed.

The cost is minimized rights to IP they've been crucial in inventing, outrageously low wages, and an average of $100k (1) in debt.

The brutality is sold as a right of passage, but the reality is the incentives are completely out of whack - uni's have an inverse incentive to admit Phd / grad students to benefit from the wage-slave / revenue generating aspect.

And it shows in the data - there are now a "glut" of PhD's that are far outpacing the very limited # of academic positions.

The system needs fixing and if unionization exerts some pressure on correcting the macro problem I am all for it.

(1) https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/03/25/how-much-out...

(2) https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2016/10/academic-job-market-...

[laGrenouille]

While these are valid issues, there are big differences between the concerns of Masters and PhD students in the US that I think you conflating together.

Doctoral students at major research universities rarely pay tuition, particularly at a place as highly ranked as UChicago, and usually are given a large enough stipend to live off of (1). Relative to the amount of work, however, the pay is low and the number of faculty jobs on the other end of this is shrinking. Masters students on the other hand typically do not engage in their own independent research nor do they teach their own classes. They are basically treated like undergraduates with a harder course load. The tuitions for Masters degrees (for which few scholarships are available), on the other hand, are outrageously high.

(1) [https://grad.uchicago.edu/admissions/funding/doctoral](https...

[llccbb]

In many of the physical sciences both Masters and PhD students are usually paid a living wage, do not pay tuition, and work double or triple duty as student, teacher, researcher. These students usually do not accrue additional debt beyond what was needed for their undergraduate degree (if any). Despite their importance to many parts of the university system such as instruction, research, and funding (NSF proposals that don't have explicit funding for grad students are D.O.A.), they can still be treated pretty unfairly. Given the hours they work, it is still most common for them to be on the books as part-time employees (0.49 full-time) which cuts off access to employee sponsored health care that is mandated under the ACA. In almost all cases they have no benefits outside of tuition payment.

I think grad students unionizing is a fantastic idea. They are in every way the critical grease that keeps the capitalistic university system running. They should be able to protect themselves and have a stronger impact in how the universities are run.

The only concern I have is the huge turnover. Unions are most effective and most rationale when the members are committed for life. The longest any of these students could be there is 15 years (5 masters, 10 PhD). This would be very extreme. Most are looking to be out in 2-6 years.

Are there any other examples of unions for occupations that have mandatory turnover or term limits?

[kevindong]

> Given the hours they work, it is still most common for them to be on the books as part-time employees (0.49 full-time) which cuts off access to employee sponsored health care that is mandated under the ACA. In almost all cases they have no benefits outside of tuition payment.

As far as I'm aware, all reputable American colleges will do the following for graduate students who are teaching assistants: 1) waive tuition 2) pay for the majority of a health insurance plan 3) issue a modest living stipend that's enough to live on, albeit not very comfortably. I know this is the case for Purdue.

[spaceseaman]

These are precisely the kinds of things that unions will fight for though.

Just assuming that the university (out of its goodwill?) will do any of those things is kind of ludicrous. At my university, we had to fight tooth and nail (we had a union) to get the university to improve our health insurance and full waive our tuition (They did a tricky thing where they would waive all people with 50% TA-ships, and then they gave everyone a 49% one. Universities are not noble, altruistic actors. Far far from it)

[mathattack]

These things come at a cost. If the cost of grad students goes up, we'll see some combination of the following:

1 - Less grad students.

2 - More undergrads doing the work of grad students.

3 - More adjuncts doing the work of grad students.

4 - Grad students being asked to do more.

The irony is this is happening at the great home of Price Theory!

[Ar-Curunir]

The cost could be offset by administrators not taking a huge cut. Quite literally these administrators do nothing of worth; it's the work of grad students and not-yet-tenured professors that keeps universities rhnning., Not the endless circles of bureaucrats

[ntsplnkv2]

Will we?

Grad students are major drivers of funding and research for universities. Cutting them will reduce that funding further and make them look worse nationally as an institution.

Perhaps undergraduates SHOULD be welcome to do more of the work? I see no problem with offering cheap workstudies to help grad students and professors getting the little things done while they research and learn.

Adjunct professors might be a good thing-many tenured professors disdain teaching and it shows.

Grad students won't be asked to do more than they agree to because they have a union.

[tomjen3]

Grad students are already the cheapest, and universities are flushed with cash and can't outsource so while they may cut a bit on the numbers mostly they will have to suck it up.

[munin]

Many won't pay for health insurance, or if they do, it is the health insurance that only gets you access to the student health center, which is basically just a dispenser of tylenol and condoms. Most will waive "tuition" but won't waive "fees" which can still be substantial (10% of your take home pay, in my case). This was at a top-10-for-CS grad program.

[gehwartzen]

That was the case at VCU and every other state school I looked at in VA. Only for Science/Engineering though. All other subjects had very few if any TA/RA positions and a ton of people competing to get them.

About 10 years ago the stipends were around 25-35k/year. Plenty to live off of in Richmond or Charlottesville.

[djsumdog]

My masters program offered really affordable health care to students (both undergrad and grad). That was around 2005 though. Not sure if that's still the case.

[TJSomething]

My experience in my CS MS was that there was ~50% discount on tuition, a subsidized health insurance plan, and not quite enough to live on.

[secabeen]

MS is often a different deal that PhD or MS/PhD.

[Fomite]

Indeed, in my field, terminal Masters students are a profit center.

[azinman2]

Top tier usesally doesn’t have terminal MS. MS means you didn’t cut it or you want out. In either case they pay you.

[luckydude]

I think that's not completely accurate. In physics and math and probably other hard science disciplines, yeah, you are correct, a masters means "thanks but you're not gonna make it to a PhD".

I have a masters in Computer Science from UW-Madison and I had nothing to do with the PhD track. I just wanted more learning and the CS department was happy to provide it. There was no stigma associated with a masters degree there and it's definitely helped me in my career.

[Spooky23]

Unions work out pretty well in retail and hotel trades where there is a mix of high turnover and longish tenure people.

When I worked retail in high school and college, one of my employers was a union shop. It was nice in that there was less abusive and capricious scheduling behavior. I moved up to a level where I saw store P&L and the economics looked to be about the same — but it was more equitable and predictable for the employees.

[dnautics]

I would have concern in that unions are typically great when labor is fungible. If there's a wide spread in individual productive value, unions are not so great. Unionizing is basically capitulation to the ethic that grad student labor is a commodity, which it may already be, but is certainly not the aspiration. If I were a grad student at the uofc I would almost certainly be a strike breaker. Your experiment waits for no one.

[Symbiote]

There are highly skilled professional unions in Europe, such as for doctors, pilots or engineers.

Before striking, there's working to rule. The experiment can continue, but the extra hours spent grading papers or doing additional tutorials are not worked.

[CPLX]

Your premise is dubious.

The entertainment industry unions are among the most longstanding and effective and there are no greater spreads in economic value than there are between a novice actor or screenwriter and a global movie star.

[dnautics]

I think you've made my point for me: the unions in acting basically serve to cement and magnify inequality in the system.

[dredmorbius]

Extending the scope of the union to post-docs and adjuncts may help. You're now talking a decade or so in many fields.

[foobarian]

I feel like Masters degrees have become a way for immigrants to get a foot in the door by buying some time to get a H1 job. Citizens in master's programs that I've seen usually just end up there by tacking on a bit of extra time to their undergrad tenure.

[spamizbad]

UChicago is notoriously stingy stipend-wise for top-tier school. A good friend ultimately went to Yale because their stipend nearly double.... also they were Yale.

[santaclaus]

> also they were Yale

Depends what you are studying. Their CS department is notoriously shoddy (I know the Yale undergrads were up in arms about this a few years back).

[kchoudhu]

It's also undergrad, so the quality of the department doesn't actually matter. You also get to put Yale on your resume.

[luckydude]

Masters from UW-Madison here. Got it in 1987. Back then, I did pay tuition but it was super cheap, like $2400/year. The TA pay (I taught the intro to programming class) was about $16K/year for 2 semesters of teaching. It was just enough to live on.

I've got a kid going into math who wants a PhD. I'd love to see what that looks like for him at various good universities (maybe it's lower in the comments).

[_dps]

> Grad students essentially work as slaves for the Uni's & professors ...

The typical cost to a professor's budget of employing a graduate student with tuition covered and a basic stipend is somewhere in the range of $50k to $150k. The graduate student gets paid to be trained by a domain expert, and the cost to the "employer" is well above the median income. Outside the rather unorthodox software field, graduate degrees typically result in title advances and higher salaries (this is 100% true in government positions).

Calling this arrangement slavery is ridiculous.

Bias disclosure: I was once a professor, and also once a graduate student.

[mattkrause]

The tuition part is a little bit shady.

I took some great classes as a grad student, but the NIH also paid my university a lot for "Disseration Research in Progress" courses, which met 0 times a week for 0 hours, and certainly did not cost the university much to organize....

[dgacmu]

It's how your research advisor's salary gets paid.

[mattkrause]

No, it's not. That money definitely did not go directly to him or his salary.

My research advisor--like most faculty at med schools--was in a soft money position. His salary was--or at least was supposed to be--covered by the grants he brought in and the 68%ish overhead on those grants.

[dgacmu]

To be precise: Overhead does not pay salary. Overhead is only for a subset of indirect costs associated with the project as a whole (e.g., it takes place in a building, with staff and janitors and lights). PI salary must be specified as a direct cost on awards.

Second, there's theory, and there's reality. The reality of funding, even for soft-money faculty, is that schools tend to be (recognizing that not all fit the mold) a little bit flexible about how they calculate these things. Money comes in, salaries get paid, and the bean-counting happens at a slightly more fuzzy level of abstraction. The exact requirements on soft-money funding are typically negotiable, and in many cases, can be pooled across multiple researchers to create a bit of a backstop in the event of temporary funding drops. The tuition fees that your advisor's grants brought in will usually be split between the university and the departments in various (ungodly annoyingly complicated) ways, but it's fairly common that the department -- who pays the salary -- sees some fraction of indirect benefit from grad student tuition paid.

So I agree with your statement as phrased: "directly to him or his salary", but there's a ton of indirect money flow in universities.

(Source: I've had the ... mis? fortune of serving on some of the finance committees in the past, and discuss this issue regularly with colleagues at other universities, including those at medical schools.)

But as a non-me source, here's Wisconsin's definition: https://www.education.wisc.edu/soe/about/leadership/committe...

"Other types of soft money may include generated program revenues and flexible internal monies such as those funding credit outreach timetable courses." -- your tuition was generated program revenue.

[dredmorbius]

Fully-loaded costs is typically on the order of 2x income in cases I'm familiar with. The working hours for grad students are extensive. And yes, that's accounting for the education.

Even allowing for some slack, I'd suggest that a grad student is seeing a pre-tax equivalent of $25k - $100k, and probably skewed to the lower end of that, based on your numbers.

Given that the educational (and academic publishing) systems exist as gateways into a highly-limited cabal, the arrangement cannot reasonably be called free-market.

I'm in favour of unionisation.

[garrettdc]

No one anywhere else gets to count hours being educated as hours worked, so that isn't a fair comparison. Also, if you were to pay for the degree out of pocket, then you are looking at something in the realm of $40-50k / year. That would be $60-75k / year pre-tax. Add a stipend onto that that provides basic necessities of room, board, insurance, and money for necessities like clothes, and you easily reach into the realm of $100k total compensation for someone in this field.

There is a lot of work to be done, but there are many people who work 80 hrs/week to be paid < $100k / year.

I'd love to see the numbers on what the all in dollar value of benefits provided to the students is, as I think that would shift the opinion of quite a few people here.

[kiliantics]

> No one anywhere else gets to count hours being educated as hours worked

Work experience is education. That's why you get paid more for past experience - it saves the company on a cost they would otherwise have invested in you. Doing a PhD is just another way of getting work experience, except you get paid a lot less.

I think it's reasonable to claim that PhD's are compensated a lot by virtue of the "cost" of educating them and other benefits. But this education is something you receive in a normal job too. And just like in a normal job, the employer gains a lot more out of the exchange. Grad students are typically worth a lot more to universities than they cost, otherwise there would be no sense in admitting so many. I'd wager the ratio of value to cost is perhaps greater in academia than it is in a lot of other industries.

[jacalata]

Comparing cost to the employer against the median income is nonsensical. At least try and estimate "median cost to an employer".

[_dps]

There's slack, sure. But "nonsensical" is obviously false -- the two must be correlated else profit margins would be detached from labor costs, which we know is false at a macro level.

Do you think there could possibly be enough slack to justify calling this arrangement "slavery", which was the crux of my point?

[jacalata]

Yes, they're correlated. If that's the only understanding you have of the relationship, would you agree with my assertion that the cost of employing a grad student is about 10% of the median cost of an employee?

[_dps]

I think we're off on the wrong foot here. I agree with you that median cost to the employer and median income are not exactly the same thing. I asked if you thought that changed the substance of my argument, and you didn't reply.

I assume your 10% figure here is purely rhetorical, since per my estimate and sibling comment's the cost of employing a graduate student is at least $50k. So your 10% estimate would imply the median cost of an employee is $500k, which is obviously not true.

I don't want to drive this further into nitpicking so I will conclude this exchange by conceding, again, that median income and median cost to employer are not the same thing. Have a good day.

[jacalata]

I think your argument was a bad one which you attempted to shore up with an irrelevant and misleading rhetorical sleight of hand, comparing money grad students don't get to money other people do get and implying that because it was a high number that made them well off.

[kiliantics]

Usually a professor gets a grant with money specifically allocated for paying grad students. It's not like there's an opportunity cost involved since there's nowhere else that money can go.

A graduate who spent the 6 years getting experience in industry instead of doing their PhD can expect to be at a similar salary level as the person being hired out of the PhD. They also earned more through those 6 years and so they are on average better off overall.

[Fomite]

Out of curiosity, I looked up a recent grant of mine and you're spot on. Costs me about $65K a year to support a grad student on a grant.

[conanbatt]

If it really were slavery, there wouldnt be grad students doing this work. It is a preposterous argument to say the students are not getting a deal they want.

The question is , however, if they can get more.

[twblalock]

The problems you mentioned still exist at universities where grad students are unionized.

Some fairly large university systems have had grad student unions for a long time, including the University of California, so I don't think it's a matter of waiting for a critical mass of unionized universities to develop before change can be made.

I think the root cause is one that you mentioned in your post: "there are now a "glut" of PhD's that are far outpacing the very limited # of academic positions". As long as that is the case, academic labor will be cheap and easy to replace, and there will always be enough students willing to work in the conditions you mentioned for professors who could help them in their careers.

[Fomite]

Indeed, in some places things get really odd because there are several different "types" of graduate student, and unions don't necessarily manage to negotiate equally advantageous contracts for all of them.

[hyperbovine]

This is correct. At Berkeley the GSIs are unionized at the GSRs are not. As recently as two years ago they tried to organise the GSRs and as far as I know it was voted down. GSRships tend to skew towards STEM and there seems to be little interest among the GSRs themselves in worker protections. Most of them arrive knowing they're there to work their asses off for little pay in return for a better life down the road. It's a very different mentality than in the humanities.

[mattkrause]

It's not the mentality per se; the conditions are very different in humanities versus STEM.

For humanities students, the department or division makes a lot of decisions that affect grad students, including the assignment of TA and RA positions, providing funding for conferences and other travel (e.g., to archives). Issues like fairly distributing TAships and keeping class sizes reasonable are things that a union could address. Their advisors were literally....advisors; some of my friends met with their advisor monthly or even less and their research was usually related to--but not an integral part of--their advisors' work.

In contrast, science PhD students (especially in biomedical fields) usually work for ONE professor and their work is usually a piece of that prof's overarching research plan. The prof (through grants) usually provides funds for salaries and research-related expenses, rather than the department. The department has very little effect on their lives; bad interactions with their advisor are the main source of misery. It's less clear to me how unions could solve this. They could prevent students from being dismissed for not working insane hours, but they can't force advisors to actually help students do and publish experiments, write them useful letters of recommendation, or things like that.

[tiki12revolt]

> there are now a "glut" of PhD's that are far outpacing the very limited # of academic positions.

Professors have very little incentive to practice academic `birth control`.

[Nomentatus]

They have a strong perverse incentive to glut the PhD market since their control of grads then becomes nearly absolute - the graduate students' futures depend on their profs letters of recommendation. Not just wage slavery but "Weinberg benefits" and "pump and dump" (steal the graduate students ideas and then kill their careers and publish those ideas) results. One helluvan incentive.

[mattmanser]

With such a power disparity, I wonder how long before the stories of professors sexually abusing their positions start coming out. The situation sounds like a breeding ground for that sort of exploitation.

[mjg59]

"start"? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/24/sexual-harassm... andhttp://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/03/23/top-uc-berkeley-... are recent stories from one college alone.

[skybrian]

I'm not going to do the search, but there are already quite a few stories of that.

[Fomite]

Follow female scientists on Twitter for like, a week. It'll be an eye opening experience.

[neuromantik8086]

I will echo what has been said earlier- "start?"

http://academiaiskillingmyfriends.tumblr.com/

[balladeer]

I often wonder whether a much older professor sleeping with a much younger student (with consent; both adults obviously) is always a case of attraction based on intelligence and maturity as is often portrayed - esp. in books and films? e.g., One I watched recently - Pelican Brief. Just a random example really but my curiosity is broader in the sense that I want to know from people’s experiences - what they have seen around them.

My example seems to make my question sound like having fixed gender roles in this context - it kind of is so. I mean I rarely come across examples of such relationships with reversed gender roles. In fact when it’s an older female faculty member and a younger male pupil it’s often portrayed as, directly or subtly, something perverse or an abuse of some sort and isn’t shown to be as open and accepted as its counterpart (my example). Maybe the historical patriarchy or so?

Anyway, this has always intrigued me. Partially because where I am from this is rarely heard of and is a not at all socially accepted. In fact it was a taboo till very recently (maybe it still is), where as in the west it seems to be at least socially accepted (I am not sure how the reaction is at much smaller like concerned families level) and very common (unless I read it wrong from the films).

(typed on mobile)

[logicchains]

>I mean I rarely come across examples of such relationships with reversed gender roles. In fact when it’s an older female faculty member and a younger male pupil it’s often portrayed as, directly or subtly, something perverse or an abuse of some sort and isn’t shown to be as open and accepted as its counterpart (my example).

The current President of France met and fell in love with his wife when she was his teacher.

[balladeer]

True. But in popular culture it's not depicted in the same proportion at all. Right? How is it in reality there, comparatively?

PS. Why the down-votes?

I am not asking directly to @logicchains (I can't edit that comment now so adding it here). I am really perplexed. I was not trolling or being offensive (hope I didn't turn out to be so) and it is one of the aspects of western culture I don't understand and tried to understand it from the people who live there or have been there since I noticed a comment on the same lines (or perceived so). Also I assumed there would be lots of (ex) grad students here. I was thinking is there intimidation, misleading, fear of losing career chances involved in such relationships (and a whole lot of things)?

I have noticed this quite a few times. Comment down-voted that were neither offensive, nor unconstructive (I would like to know if mine was either of these or something else and learn from my mistakes).

I have recently got the ability to down-vote (seeing the up and down arrows both) and I hardly down-vote (on other forums too I've the same habit). Am I doing it wrong? The saying that "don't down-vote just because you disagree or don't like something" is just for saying and in practice we should just down-vote based on whims and likes? Or is there a methodology to it?

[_pmf_]

> The current President of France met and fell in love with his wife when she was his teacher.

Conincidentally, she also has a very rich father.

[Nomentatus]

Ooops. That should be "Weinstein benefits", of course.

[llccbb]

In the physical sciences (soft sciences too, perhaps) NSF proposals that don't have explicit funding for graduate students are D.O.A.

[Fomite]

This was really surreal to me the first time I worked on an NSF proposal, because the NIH is far more accepting of straight postdoc proposals.

[Fomite]

Little incentive, but some of us try to as good stewards of the field.

[programmarchy]

It's baffling to me that academia, which is predominantly progressive, would treat its workers so poorly.

[Nomentatus]

Camouflage. I well remember a real Chinese Marxist dropped into a supposedly Marxist-dominated academic department here a few decades ago who was astounded. How they could reconcile all being wine collectors and snobs with their trumpeted socialist views he asked me? The answer is that their progressive views masked very regressive and antisocial behavior in general, and that was quite purposeful.

[UncleMeat]

Marxism as an analysis technique and as a political philosophy are totally different. This is not surprising.

[gt_]

Please cite something or elaborate. This is a fair statement, but it's hardly an excuse in this context. I think you are stretching the meaning here. Marxism is not an ambiguous term.

[Obi_Juan_Kenobi]

Academic Marxism - or "Marxist Critique" - is really better referred to as dialectical materialism, historical materialism, or even more generally as Hegelian dialectics.

The political philosophies, namely socialism and communism, are a product of such thinking, but are not the same.

For instance, many feminists make heavy use of dialectics and are considered Marxist critique, but may not identify with e.g. communism.

[TillE]

Marx was first and foremost an analyst of class in history, and capitalism. That's Marxist analysis, which can be largely divorced from specific communist implications.

[gt_]

That makes sense. I question assuming that self-identified "marxists" are merely analysts of class and capitalism.

These things are necessarily correlated and I'm not sure the necessity of drawing the line. Why not just use another term?

It seems to me we are making a rhetorical space for bourjois marxists. Why?

[Nomentatus]

They didn't make such a distinction - it would have lessened the camouflage.

[programmarchy]

The elitism is something I've noticed, but espousing socialist views is purposeful to what end?

My best guess is that the behavior is an unconscious projection due to underlying narcissistic tendencies of people who are put on an intellectual pedastal...

I suppose it could be camouflage for being an asshole but that just seems too exhausting to be sustainable. And if they don't genuinely hold those beliefs, then what do they actually believe?

[spaceseaman]

I would say that these abuses of power are intrinsic to having power. Also it's usually not the faculty vs the students. If you asked any single faculty member if they would rather

1.) Overwork their students, stretch them thin doing everything.

2.) Have more graduate students.

They would always pick #2. Professors are notoriously short-handed. They are typically not the ones who are outright abusing the power. It's usually the administration tying the professor's hands in these matters.

As a graduate student, your boss is usually the administration more than the professor - especially w.r.t. things a union would care about (workplace safety, wages, benefits, overwork...). Professors do not like to overwork their students - it's just they don't care if you are overworked.

[Fomite]

"As a graduate student, your boss is usually the administration more than the professor"

This is important to note. I have very little control over how much my students are paid, their benefits, their course load, etc.

And, for the record, I do care if my students are overworked. Burnt out students produce shitty science.

[spaceseaman]

> I do care if my students are overworked. Burnt out students produce shitty science.

Good point and apologies for the slight. I suppose a better way of putting it is that faculty are often ignorant of their students' issues / difficulties due to their busy schedules.

[nerfhammer]

Ever also wonder how it's ethical to put a 19 year old $100,000 into debt for an economically worthless bachelor's degree?

[programmarchy]

Absolutely. It's predatory lending in many cases. There is a choice on behalf of the students, but they are often completely ignorant about finance and the job market. The K-12 education system is failing to equip young people to understand and deal with the real world, so I see that as a root cause of these problems.

[nerfhammer]

And what's the deal with universities pursuing stupendous multi-billion dollar endowments and never lowering tuition?

It's like a competition between universities to see who can get the biggest war chest. Lacking any market concerns they're just looking for some variable to maximize just to keep themselves occupied. It seems largely orthogonal to any social purpose a university is supposed to have.

[closeparen]

Endowments are there to provide "passive income" for the university and not to be spent. One of the main things interest on an endowment funds is financial aid. Endowment size is a pretty decent proxy for how generous a financial aid program is.

Spending down an endowment could provide lots of free tuition... for a few years. Universities (like the Church) think in centuries.

[Fomite]

Pretty much this. Whether or not my alma mater could go to a "need blind" admissions policy was entirely a function of whether or not the endowment was in the right shape.

IIRC they managed it in 2007 and then...in 2008...well, that went away.

[maxxxxx]

It's probably the same phenomenon like unions who fight for worker rights are often very abusive employers themselves. I have seen this in Germany and in the US.

[lr4444lr]

Is it really any different than the most obstreperously puritanical religious zealots harboring plenty of scandalous sin in their personal life? Whether our ideals have a God at the top or not, we aren't any more or less prone to psychologically projecting our failings.

[Fomite]

It should be noted that this is not universal, and varies heavily, down even to what lab you're in within a university.

[gt_]

It treats it's students no better. The student loan crisis is by far the biggest foot in Academia's mouth. Academia's politics don't apply to academia.

[r00fus]

Is Academia one entity? Do you consider Adjunct Professors to be part of Academia?

Perhaps ... the system is the result of organizational dynamics and some basic rules that some exploit and others get exploited by.

[gt_]

Academia is essentially a class of institutions and/or an industry concerned with higher education. Of course adjunct professors would be associated here.

Apparently you are missing the irony in such critical theory, post-structuralism, marxism, etc. having been so vigorously theorized that it's application was overlooked! The "system" here is quite late to blame itself and the brazen approach to doing so is a bit humurous.

Are you seeking to divide academia into smaller parts; innocent ones and guilty others? Where have we seen that before?

[r00fus]

Adjunct professors are notoriously overworked by the rest of "Academia"... they're like the H1B workers in tech.

Face it, the entire system probably needs an overhaul but isn't governed by some sort of "evil overmind". Small regulatory or incentive-based changes or movements like unionization will probably cause the system to re-adjust.

[gt_]

You are misunderstood about my point. I do not assume any authoritarian presence.

I guess it's just textbook components of neo-liberalism: priorities which lead to bloated administration and marketing initiatives.

I agree unionizing is a good solution. One would think the experts would have acted sooner; that's all. The trajectory has been obvious for a very long time.

[kd0amg]

Academia's politics

Does this refer to political attitudes typically associated with faculty?

academia

And this to decisions made by university administrators?

If so, then no, I don't expect one to apply to the other.

[gt_]

By Academia's politics I am referring to the faculty'sgeneral leftist views, which I myself widely share.

By academia I mean the whole thing.

The faculty has maintained these these acclaimed leftist views for many decades, sat back and drank Kool-Aid while the administration took on the bloat. They were too busy climbing the ladder and forgot to critique it; no better than than the rest of the average neo-liberals.

Student debt swallowed at least 2 generations whole while the faculty did nothing. They didn't have to. But, they'll be the first to commend a proletariat revolution which remains a safe enough distance from their job. I cannot help notice the hypocrisy here.

[mathattack]

There is some irony in this happening to one of the most anti-union Econ departments out there. :-)

What will this do? Raise the cost of grad students for schools, so perhaps they take less of them. But didn't the students know this was the situation before applying?

[kkylin]

Not to say that these are not issues, but the treatment of students is also highly field-dependent. In addition, in fields like mathematics (mine), most postdoctoral positions (even very good ones) come with a certain amount of teaching, and students who have not had significant classroom experience sometimes will have difficulty finding good positions.

Also, how much TAing one does really varies a huge amount between fields. AFAIK students do much more teaching in the humanities than in STEM, and within STEM departments that teach lots of service courses (e.g., math) will tend to have more TAships than departments that do not.

[mulmen]

I completely agree with you here. I also wonder what other effects this could have on public higher education. My university was largely funded by the IP created by grad students and other property owned by the university.

Undergraduate student fees were actually paid to the state board of education, the university then got only a fraction of that back. The state provided less than a third of the budget to a state university.

This was actually less than the cost to educate an undergrad and so grad students work was used to subsidize undergrads who in turn subsidized other public schools in the state.

Grad students do deserve fair compensation for their work but if that happens it will exacerbate the problems caused by under funding public education. I hope I see the time when we solve these problems and I think this is a step in that direction.

[weberc2]

I'm not opposed, but where will the higher wages come from? You make it sound like someone is making a killing off their labor, but I understand universities to be perpetually strapped. These aren't meant to be challenges to your point; I just don't understand university economics.

[classwarsteve]

Universities have vastly expanded the percentage of their budget that goes towards administrative and brand building roles. Redistributing it towards teachers and grad students would be a good start. In addition, public universities could receive greater public funding.

[adharmad]

Also sports budgets.

[driverdan]

Big budget, popular sports teams typically pay for themselves through ticket sales.

[throwawayjava]

Which does not describe U Chicago...

[stale2002]

Uhh, no thanks. The research money should be spent on research, and the student tuition should be spent on students.

That research and undergraduate education are combined together is the real problem here.

[acdha]

There’s a natural connection between the two: you need qualified people to teach students and many of the best students are looking for research experience in labs doing real work. Given what tuition runs these days, any place which doesn’t have those is going to see students passing for other institutions.

The problem isn’t pairing the two but generations of overhead growth combined with a decline in the federal funding which used to support researchers, both of which mean compensation has fallen behind in real value.

[stale2002]

Researchers are extremely unqualified to be teachers. That's because researchers are good at researching.

And this skill has very little overlap with teaching undergraduate students.

And on the other end, a fairly small percentage of students end up doing any research in college.

In an ideal world, researchers would research, and people who specialize in teaching would teach.

You do NOT have to be some cutting edge leader in your field to teach undergrads. Simple skills, like being an engaged and interesting speaking are way way way more important than how many papers you've published.

[newen]

In my opinion and experience, the process of teaching itself makes you a much better researcher. People can get bored doing research, epecially if it is primarily solo research. Plus, teaching forces you to learn a subject much more thoroughly than you would otherwise. And if you want to expand your research to a slightly different topic, teaching that topic can give you a lot of knowledge and confidence in that topic. I feel like teaching+research institutions do better research than pure research institutions.

[Fomite]

One of my best teachers was a hard core researcher.

Some of my worst teachers were teaching specialists.

And the most influential person in my undergraduate career? A researcher.

[Fomite]

I started my research career as part of my undergraduate education.

[durgiston]

The wages will never be high. Thats just the nature of the job. But unions can fight for things like working conditions for TAs and helping students deal with abusive advisers. Students are strongly incentive not to bring complaints against professors since they hold all the power over potential career advancement. Unions could help here too.

Really more than students unionizing its adjunct faculty that are being severely exploited. Whereas PhDs at least get a degree for their troubles, adjuncts just get straight up robbed, and too many of them are living on public assistance and non-guaranteed contracts.

[Fomite]

"...and helping students deal with abusive advisers."

This is one thing I hope the unionization movement will genuinely change. There's not much room to move the needle on pay, but having students have a means of addressing abuse besides "Throw myself on the mercy of the department and hope they don't shred my career" would be a huge step.

Interestingly, one of the grad student union's arguments in a place I was at was, essentially, "You're flooding the university with cheap adjuncts, and it's devaluing our career path", which I thought was, at the very least, an interesting take.

[newen]

There's actually a lot of room to move the needle on pay even. I know a CS department that is giving it's grad student a >$5000 yearly raise from $25K because it's grad student union (unofficial) found out that CS students are getting much worse pay compared to the other engineering grad students. 5000 is a lot of money for grad students.

[rubidium]

Agreed. It's about balancing the power dynamic, not the wages.

[BaronVonSteuben]

ICOs. The time to invest in UCoin is now!

[neuromantik8086]

"BaronVonSteuben"? Are you some sort of Utican?

[bzbarsky]

> and an average of $100k (1) in debt

First, the USNews article you cite says the average is $57k. The $100k number is the 75th percentile number.

Second, the article you cite is pretty freely mixing "graduate students" and "graduate and professional degrees", to the extent that it's not clear whether the average numbers it cites are just for the former, or for the latter. It obviously makes a big difference, because while law school and medical school have their own problems they don't have the (very real) problems you describe PhD programs as having.

So I looked at the actual report your linked article is citing. The $57k number is the _median_ (not average!) debt across all graduate and professional students. Same for the $100k number: 75th percentile across all graduate and professional students. See page 1 of the report.

Page 3 of the report cites some "typical" (I assume they mean "median", but they don't define it) numbers for various graduate degree debts, including law and medicine, but conveniently leaves out the number for "PhDs". Those make up about 23% of all graduate degrees, according to the chart on that page, by the way, so your typical "graduate or professional student" is not a PhD candidate, but is aiming for an MD, JD, or Master's degree, all of which have _quite_ different funding models from PhDs.

All the tables on page 12 and following conveniently exclude PhDs as well.

So this report tells us pretty much nothing about PhD debt. The law and medicine numbers inflate everything involved, obviously, and most of the rest are masters degrees of various sorts. All PhDs could have a debt of 0 and still get the reported median and 75th percentile numbers.

OK, so how this works in practice (or at least did 10 years ago) at the universtity of Chicago, while I wad doing my PhD there.... Grad students in the _sciences_ generally did not take on debt at all: their tuition was covered, and they were paid a stipend that was enough to live on reasonably, in return for the teaching and whatnot that they did. Grad students in the _humanities_ were an entirely different story. So even within the PhD bucket it really depended on the field of study. The number of students who took on debt and had "lab time" of any sort was quite close to 0, if not exactly 0.

Now there are real problems in PhD programs, including in the sciences, and grad students and especially postdocs _are_ underpaid in various ways. But you're not having science PhDs with $100k in grad school debt, typically.

[lambdaphagy]

Why will unionization solve the glut of PhDs? If there are already too many grad students when conditions are miserable, why will improving the conditions reduce the supply?

[mattkrause]

Grad students are not supply-limited. UChicago--and many of the other places flirting with unionization--are never going to have to worry about finding enough grad students.

Improving conditions might let them recruit better grad students, which has obvious knock-on effects for the university, even if they retain fewer of them. In general, it is not the case that one researcher yields one interchangeable unit of knowledge. We might be better off (in terms of happiness and productivity) with N calmly productive researchers than 2N miserable researchers desperately flinging stuff at the walls.

[stale2002]

The solution is less people becoming PHDs.

Unions, and the like, just move around the real problem, which is that we have too many people in academia, and that those people should move to industry.

[lsh123]

Bingo! It’s free country — you don’t like to be in academia, go somewhere else!

It is also a free market — you get paid how much you are worth.

Disclaimer: dropped out of PhD program many many years ago for this and other reasons. Don’t regret it for a second.

[scarecrowbob]

I don't regret leaving either.

I do wish that 24-year-old me had either enough wisdom (or perhaps, say, an ethical advisor) to skip getting into massive debt.

I don't agree that folks get paid what they are worth, but that's probably a deeper disagreement than warrants discussion on this forum.

[mpcomplete]

Going in to academia is always on my mind because I would love to be on the cutting edge of research, but I can never justify leaving my job to work twice as hard and get paid 4x less.

It's a shame that you need to be rich to continue your education past a point, but it just doesn't make sense to keep going.

[HarryHirsch]

Industry left to China: https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i41/Chinese-chemistry-PhD-gr...

The only thing that the US is producing these days is student debt.

[autokad]

if they are saying they are employees, not students, then international students should have to get the appropriate visas, and should not be here on a student visa.

[roel_v]

* by-line * rite of passage

[Shivetya]

well it likely is too late to matter, with the ever connected world people will get their education from anywhere for the best price.

the end result is the many US colleges will have to reign in costs and this could put a lot of pressure on all positions.