Wow – sort of shocking and really makes you question the quality of life and education at Yale and other schools that use graduate students so extensively! Yale has so little respect (read the article - it’s outrageous!!) for the graduate students that are actually doing much of the work of teaching their students… I give the graduate students a lot of credit for standing up to this abuse and wish them well!
@WellHello - Firstly, the piece you provide a link to is an op-ed essay, not a news article. Secondly, the problem with the grad student election is that the union “cherry-picked” certain departments where support for unionization was strong and didn’t include other departments where student support was weak or uncertain. So it is unclear to me that the vote was democratic and genuinely representative of grad student feelings about unionization. Finally, while there is no question that non-tenure track, “adjunct” faculty do deserve the right to unionize, there is room for disagreement that grad students - who spend on average five years pursuing a Ph.D at a university tuition-free, with housing, meal and health-care subsidies that can total up to at least $40,000 per year - are actually employees, in the the way janitors, kitchen staff, groundskeepers are. The problem I have with the pamphlets and the op-ed piece in the NYT is the dearth of hard data about the specific - not national - economic, work, health conditions that Yale grad students are protesting. I don’t think that drawing parallels between Yale grad students, whose working conditions are heavenly compared to service workers in the fast food, hospital or agricultural industries, (as the history professor does in her Op-Ed piece), is helpful. When there are so many service workers in this country who have no health care, job security and work in dangerous conditions out of necessity, rather than choice, it is difficult to say that the priority of unions should be grad students whose lives are blessed compared to the folks who are working physically challenging or dangerous minimum wage jobs, without the prospect of a non-union, tenure-track or secure, job with good pay and benefits in their future.
The essay is not about the priorities of unions. It is about these specific graduate student teachers at Yale who unionized to try to negotiate salary and pay with Yale. My dismay is more at the way that Yale is treating them… in particular denigrating their knowledge and ability at the hearing.
@WellHello I think that the “denigrating” you’re referring to is more about Yale attempting to establish that doctoral candidates fall closer to the student end of the spectrum running from student to teacher, rather than an intentional impugning of the intelligence or dedication of the individuals involved.
When I was a doctoral student and my department gave me an opportunity to teach a course, I was very happy and I did not ask what additional compensation would I get. I already got free education along with some stipend to pay for my lodging and meals. The opportunity of teaching a course was more about training and experience so that I was able to land a academic teaching job subsequently. For me, my teaching assistantship and research assistantship was a part of education and training, and I did not view it as a “job.” Just my 2 cents.
While I think it may well be that graduate students aren’t treated well, that op-ed confuses things by lumping grad students in with adjuncts at some points, and not others. For example, it’s not really the case that grad students teach much of the coursework at Yale, Most commonly, they are TAs for larger classes, and lead discussion sections. They may also teach intro sections of some courses–like (I think) basic math and foreign language classes. Adjuncts are a completely different issue, and many of them do teach lectures and seminars.
I agree with @prof2dad. I was thankful for the free education and for money to pay for housing and food. A graduate student is a student, it shouldn’t be a career.
The writer raises a few relevant points about the university’s refusal to negotiate with the Union, but the rest of the article is shrouded in hyperbole and conflates the issues faced by adjunct professors or non-tenure track faculty with those of grad students.
For example, she writes “The measures these graduate student teachers are taking are dramatic. But their cause — a fight for decent, secure wages and comprehensive benefits — has implications for the entire labor market”. In reality however, no Yale PhD student has to pay any tuition fees, and they get some of the most generous stipends (>$30,000 per annum) of any university in the world. In addition, their teaching loads are some of the lightest and they get full health insurance coverage for themselves and their families.
This isn’t a fight by ‘graduate student teachers’, it’s a political tussle by a minuscule proportion of grad students in a few departments who have their own agendas.