| Here's my high level summary, as a former instructor. 1. Berkeley offered tuition remission as a benefit to grad student instructors essentially as a stipend/subsidy of living. 2. The union representing instructors negotiated tuition remission for undergrad instructors doing the same job as grad instructors, primarily to protect grad students from being short-changed by departments trying to hire cheaper undergrad instructors over the grad instructors who had greater need for the income. 3. CS class sizes increased, and the CS department lacked the funds to hire both enough grad and undergrad instructors to properly staff, so they offered 8-hour positions to undergrads as an alternative. 4. Undergrads were more than happy to take these positions, spend a few hours a week teaching, earn some income, and get close to professors. As 20-hour-a-week instructor, I still felt like it was an incredibly cushy and privileged job. I wouldn't argue that the union is to blame here. It seems that only the CS department (as opposed to other departments) has hit this budgetary issue of being unable to afford enough instructors to staff its classes--the solution to me is that the university should look at the massive growth in the department and allot commensurate funding for instructors. Instead, the department took a (fairly reasonable) alternative solution which apparently has run afoul of some labor agreement. Also, as someone who knows some instructors who stand to benefit from this decision: almost no one is happy about it. No one gains except these instructors--the department, future students, and future would-be instructors are all getting screwed (unless the department gets much more funding as a result of this). |