Is it possible to accrue vacation hours during graduate study as a research assistant (GRA)?

Graduate School
1

I currently work full-time for the Department of Defense. I usually get three-weeks worth of paid time off every year. This has been helpful because I like to go back home to visit family for about two weeks or take a long weekend and visit friends around the country.

I will be starting my master’s degree program this coming fall and I have managed to obtain a part-time graduate research assistantship (GRA). In reading the student handbook, I noticed that GRAs are required to work year-round and only allowed to observe certain holidays. There is a provision that you can work more hours over several weeks in order to get some consecutive days off.

My question is, in the graduate student lifestyle, is my dream of maintaining 2-3 vacation weeks a year completely thrown out the window? Will I be expected to stay on campus and work every single possible day? Do GRAs grant vacation hours that you can accrue?

Thank you for your time.

2

Vacation time would vary by school and researcher. The chances of getting PAID vacation time is practically nil.

3

I remember filling out some questionnaire in grad school once asking me questions about how many days off I’d taken, vacation, etc. It all seemed pretty silly. I was a TA, not an RA, and I just worked whatever days I had classes to teach (plus preparation time, which I could do on my own schedule), and exam grading days, and so on. If I taught on TR, I could take 4 days “off.” But as a student, I also had my own classes and studying to do. TA/RA stuff for the summer was separate applications so that seems pretty easy to take off if you want to, plus winter break is a good few weeks, and a week off for spring break. RAships are different, but it’d probably depend on your advisor. I know many grad students who met their advisors once every week, sometimes once every two weeks. I doubt it’d be hard to take some time off if you don’t have to be in class or anything.

4

I know some schools in Europe allow this for PhD candidates (e.g. TU Delft), but I have never heard of anyone in the US doing that. The sad reality is that in the US, graduate students are treated like students when it suits the school/is cheaper, and like employees when that is cheaper.

5

When I was finishing up my thesis, I worked through my Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s holidays. At the mere suggestion to my advisor that I might take some of these regular holidays off, he became noticeably upset.

The mention of GRA accrued vacation days would likely generate laughter where I got my PhD…seriously, this is a strange question.

6

There are breaks in the university calendar, usually at the end of each semester; many universities have Spring break during the second semester as well. Seems like that would be the perfect time to get away and visit family.

7

Breaks in the university calendar and spring break mean essentially nothing to most graduate students. I went on spring break one time out of the 6 during graduate school, and it was early in the program when I wasn’t doing anything all that important anyway. I went home for Christmas probably 2 out of 6 times (though actually taking Christmas break was a lot more common).

8

It really, really depends on your university, the nature of your GRA, and your supervisor.

In my first GRA I was technically an employee of the university, paid a salary, and technically also governed by the university’s part-time officer rules re: vacation time. In practice, none of that mattered; I arranged my days off with my supervisor/PI. My supervisor (and most of the faculty at my department) were thankfully real people who had families and lives outside of work, so he encouraged taking time off. I think I went home twice for about a week in my first two years. I definitely took Christmas and Thanksgiving off; we weren’t expected to work through the entire break (although if you have 4 weeks off of school for Christmas, you might get one week off but work the other 3). I took off EVERY Christmas and Thanksgiving for the 6 years I was in graduate school; I didn’t always go to my parents’ or other relatives, but I wasn’t working. Nobody worked those days! However, like I said, I never took the entire 3 weeks. At most, I got a week, but usually I just took a couple of days. I never took spring break off, though. That was a prime week to get some work done, because I didn’t have to teach or go to class.

So whether or not you are expected to be in the lab 7 days a week, 10 hours a day really depends on your PI. There are some PIs out there like that, who want to see you all the time, and who assume that if they don’t see you you’re not working. Then there are PIs like mine, who wanted to see products - if I turned things in when I was supposed to, he assumed I was working, and I could work from anywhere, including my parents’ home or the beach or whatever.

It also depends in part on the university - some universities do govern GRAs like any other employee, and you accrue vacation, sick time, etc. If you have a grad student union you are more likely to be governed by that. However, a lot of PIs will completely ignore those rules. Or, you might be grudgingly allowed to take the time, but your PI’s estimation of your work ethic and quality as a student will be affected. May or may not be right - but that’s the case.

On that note, I think 2 weeks are normal (spread out), but 3 weeks might be pushing it a little. But it’s only 2 years. You have to put your nose to the grindstone for two years, but after that you can do what you want.

9

A few things, for my 5 Christmas vacation, I took 3 off, cut 1 short, and worked through one. I worked through all, but one Thanksgiving though. My point is that grad student don’t always get the basic vacation to which they are entitled…let alone accruing vacation days.

@juillet mentioned GRA unions. Yes, unions may get policies implemented to allow you to accrue vacation, but I’d be vary wary of GRA unions. By the way, I agree with TA unions, and even think that faculty unions may be ok sometimes. I have a family member in a faculty union, and he has found the union helpful. GRA unions are another matter. The issues are…

  1. You have union dues. You don't get paid much as a GRA, and you are expected to pay union dues.
  2. Grants profs receive to fund students are not setup to provide 20 hour a week jobs. They are setup to provide students and opportunity to make progress towards a degree. GRAs are not functional as 20 hour a week jobs. As a GRA you compete with other students in classes, quals, conferences, journal paper, etc. You don't go and meet job expectations. If a union is forced on profs and GRA, it will limit opportunities for GRAs. Profs will be more likely to hire post-docs instead of GRAs.
  3. I actually think students could lose control over their research if a GRA union is instituted. Let's say you work on a project on part of your grant for 20 hours a week for 6 months, and you get great publishable results. If you acknowledge this as unionized GRA work, this publishable work is primarily controlled by your PI. It may be published in a way where you are not first author in a journal that is not the best for you, and you have no say because you've just been "paid" for the work. Without unions, All of the work you do should advance your career and be part of the progress towards your degree. If you do great work on a grant, you legitimately have significant say as to how and where it gets published.
  4. At Michigan, the unions tried to get GRAs unionized. The first thing the unions wanted to do, was control hiring of GRAs. This was both baffling and scary. No good can come out of allowing unions in the GRA hiring process.

Even at Michigan, liberals were adamantly opposed to GRA unionizing. Michigan former president, Mary Sue Coleman, was adamantly opposed to unions. She is far more liberal than me. She though it would change the relationship between the advisor and student. I agree.

10

I wasn’t debating the merits of a union. I was simply saying that if one already existed at your university, the union might have specific guidelines about what kind of vacation time you can take.

University presidents have a vested interest in being opposed to unions because of the financial commitment and loss of more unilateral control they have over grad students.

That said, #2 and #3 are true even at non-unionized universities. For example, NIH grants often have 20-hour-a-week GRA positions written into them. I actually had one in my first two years in my PhD program - an actual salaried employee position at my university, in which my hours were nominally 20 hours a week. Ha. I definitely worked more than 20 hours a week. Having a specified number of hours doesn’t mean anything. NIH grants also specify the amount of time that you’re supposed to work on each grant, but in reality life doesn’t really work like that - it’s honestly just to specify how much of your salary comes from each pot. Having a salaried 20-hour-a-week position does not mean that you can’t work more hours voluntarily to get your work done, publish papers and collaborate with faculty.

And your project work is primarily controlled by your PI anyway, if you’re using their data. A good PI will acknowledge you for your work and let you pick your own journals for first-authored work. A bad PI will force you to work on uninteresting projects, insist on being first author and publish in journals of their choosing, and because you are a GRA (regardless of whether you are unionized or not) you have little power to argue. And actually, if you take a responsible conduct of research course, you learn that your research (the data and any notes about it) is actually owned by your university. What happens beyond that really depends much more on how good your mentor is.

Again, I’m not offering these as a debate of the merits of graduate student unions (which would be veering into a political discussion that I am uninterested in having). It’s moreso just to be realistic about the options and expectations that will be afforded you. The bottom line is that vacation time is likely to be a case-by-case thing unless your university has specific guidelines for graduate student vacation time.

11

I appreciate all your replies and your help. Basically, I am going to be going to graduate school away from my family. It takes about 12 hours of flying time to go back home and all I’m asking is at least once a year where I can take two weeks off to go back home to be with family. I say two weeks because if I’m going to fly 12 hours back and forth, I want to be there a while.

12

You could probably take off two weeks at a time once a year, but you’ll have to discuss it with your PI.

13

And whether or not you get paid for those 2 weeks is a highly department- and advisor-specific question. Some advisors won’t care and others will. Sometimes you will have an advisor who doesn’t care but whose hands are tied by departmental or university policy.

At my school, if you were gone for more than a week without it being an official school vacation, you had to take leave without pay regardless of how your advisor felt about it assuming he/she wasn’t willing to risk breaking those rules (and most people I know didn’t risk it).

14

That’s fair. I would much rather be able to take a vacation to be home with family even if it means without pay. Not a big deal to me.

15

The problem is that this isn’t true. I’ve literally seen a my University come down, pull the advisors name completely off a student’s work, allow the student to publish without an advisors name, and grant a PhD without an advisor’s approval. I knew a situation where this actually happened…a very bitter argument between an advisor and student. The advisor actually ended up leaving the University…maybe this just happens at umich…who knows.

I know this is slightly off topic…the issue is whether a PhD student is an employee (who can accrue vacation days) or a student. If a student forces this issue, they can potentially have far more control over their research than an employee ever could. This is why I ask “Why would you ever want to be an employee (who accrues vacation days) when you could be a student?” I would take the control over my research over vacation day accrual any day.