181–190 of 445 posts
More grad students should refuse to turn in grades. After all, it is the grad students doing the grading and work. What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? You find a job that pays the same but requires fewer hours of work?
Not sure how you can reasonably downplay that...
A bunch of people that make 500K try to explain why people that make 28K shouldn't make 45K. In a town where rent is 20K.
I survived in grad school on much less than 28k in a very high cost of living city. If anything, graduate student compensation is ridiculously high these days. I don't see anything but money-grubbing here.
More grad students should refuse to turn in grades. After all, it is the grad students doing the grading and work. What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? You find a job that pays the same but requires fewer hours of work?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most faculty does not want to grade anything. I've TA'ed 6 courses, the professor just showed up for lectures and reused last year's exams/homeworks. Students had the solutions, >70% of the class copied them exactly. The prof didn't care. And TA's were handling most complaints about the grades. This was common for majority of undergrad level classes I took (a different UC campus). Also, it was my job as a TA to expla…
No offence, but that sounds like a really shitty school to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You paid a bunch of money, then the school provided you with instructors that have to worry about where their next meal is going to come from.
Hyperbole is not really helpful for this discussion.
There are about 1800 UCSC graduate students [1]. From this 2014-15 UCSC budget report [2] there is a very near 2:1 masters:phd graduation ratio. Assuming there are 2 years of masters students and 6 of PhD at any one time, that makes PhD students 60% of “graduate students”. Let’s make this easy by saying 1000 PhD students (if anything I imagine it’s way less than this — as I understand, monetizing masters students has…
Note that I'm not making any _moral or normative claims_ about not striking vs striking vs wildcat striking, nor about the interplay of rights and obligations between individual workers, unions, and employers. I'm speaking purely strategically here, in the same frame as your comment.
You're only looking at first-order dynamics here, while second-order ones are often in play. In this case, the 54 students weren't just striking, they were wildcat-striking: striking in defiance of not just the university they work for, but the union that represents them, who had already agreed to a contract with the university.
When the union has already agreed to, ratified, and entered into a contract, capitulating to a wildcat strike a couple of years later is a significant departure from even relatively pro-labor norms. Again, from a purely strategic perspective, the costs of this specific incident are potentially a lot less significant than the future costs of the university signaling that they're okay with contracts becoming meaningless if the other party changes their mind in the middle of the term.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I’ve gathered, the exams were turned over to the grad students for grading. The school asked for the grades, the grad students refused. Has the school asked for the exams to be returned, so they could be graded? I don’t know. I assume the graduate students wouldn’t turn them over anyways.
And again, this is brought upon by the university and their adherence to policies designed to strike the biggest wedge between the student body. I've had classes at my university where if you miss one exam your grade is averaged from all the rest. If the building that housed the exams was engulfed in flames and all the exams were lost, this is probably what the university would do in response. The university is free…
Even if they did average all my other work, I'd be pissed I put all that effort into something that has zero impact on my grade.
You're acting like the grad students have clean hands here which is clearly not true. They joined the union with the intent they would negotiate on their behalf. The union did so and promised to stop any wildcat strike. The students didn't like the job the union did, so they went on strike, violating the contract.
I think this is a wake-up call for these grad students of how the real world works. > Instead of firing TAs who are standing up for a decent standard of living for themselves, UC must sit down at the bargaining table and negotiate a cost of living increase. Sitting at the negotiations table where you hold none of the cards means you are not getting the pay increase you are asking for. Striking is for workers who know…
There are about 1800 UCSC graduate students [1]. From this 2014-15 UCSC budget report [2] there is a very near 2:1 masters:phd graduation ratio. Assuming there are 2 years of masters students and 6 of PhD at any one time, that makes PhD students 60% of “graduate students”. Let’s make this easy by saying 1000 PhD students (if anything I imagine it’s way less than this — as I understand, monetizing masters students has…
https://www.sacbee.com/news/databases/state-pay/
Chancellor Larvie made $364,754 last year at UCR.