UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay • Hacker News Board

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#221

Post by readhn » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #183

jostmey wrote: post #177

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?

For a subset of students: You get deported, because you're on a visa that doesn't exist without your university affiliation.

i bet none of the 54 fired students were on student visas. they are not that dumb, i hope. it was hard enough to get into us school system just to get deported for striking.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#222

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 2:46 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #208

cycrutchfield wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cursory examination of Craigslist shows that you can easily rent a nice 4 bedroom house for $4000/month in Santa Cruz. Get a couple of roommates to split the rent and you're only paying $1000/month. Perhaps Arjona should consider that she could have more money for living expenses if she was more economical with her housing choices. After all, she was the one who chose to sign a lease for $1700/month on a $2200/mont…

Are you seriously telling this graduate student (with a child!) that she should find more roommates when she apparently has some already?

> when she apparently has some already?

Where are you seeing that she has roommates? It's not mentioned in the article I read, and I don't see any evidence that the units are shared at https://housing.ucsc.edu/family/. In fact, it says the rent for a 2br is $1700 a month, the same as what she says she's paying.

In any case, the mistake seems to be earlier in the decision-making process, when she decided to become a anthropology graduate student while having a child to care for and without the financial resources to complete the program.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#223

Post by readhn » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

cycrutchfield wrote: post #164

gyrgtyn wrote: post #124

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.

even 5-10 years ago rents were much lower. unless you just graduated in 2019 this is irrelevant as rents have in many cases doubled since then in many HCOL cities.

i "survived" in HCOL city then but even then it was not as expensive as it is today.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#224

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 2:54 AM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #222

saagarjha wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously telling this graduate student (with a child!) that she should find more roommates when she apparently has some already?

> when she apparently has some already? Where are you seeing that she has roommates? It's not mentioned in the article I read, and I don't see any evidence that the units are shared at https://housing.ucsc.edu/family/ . In fact, it says the rent for a 2br is $1700 a month, the same as what she says she's paying. In any case, the mistake seems to be earlier in the decision-making process, when she decided to become a…

Ok, so now we have a complaint that she shouldn’t have tried to join the program with a child? I think we’re done here.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#225

Post by thanatosmin » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 2:57 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #210

thanatosmin wrote: post #143

I see a lot of discussion about the consequences of TAs withholding grades. This situation is a consequence of poor management at UCSC. Every other university I'm familiar with makes faculty responsible for submitting grades. It's inconceivable to me why TAs would be responsible for grades. TAs should be teaching assistants, not adjunct faculty. Edit: I read "assigning grades" to mean assigning the final grades for t…

As an undergrad Instructional Aide (aka IA aka TA) at the University of Michigan I taught labs/discussions as well as graded homeworks and exams.

Edited my comment. I'm pretty sure at UCSC TAs were also responsible for assigning the final grades in a course.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#226

Post by legolas2412 » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 2:57 AM UTC

allovernow wrote: post #139

dntbnmpls wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get paid by market rate; I love how people dismiss injustice with an appeal to "the market" as if the market was a force of nature rather than a manmade and human manipulated entity. Markets are created by a handful of people and affected by laws. And supply and demand is also an man-made creation. For example, by creating laws allowing seasonal migrants, you could affect the wages of farm workers. The same thi…

>than a manmade and human manipulated entity. The market is an emergency force. It isn't determined by a secret cabal of evil capitalists. It may not be a "force of nature" (although that is debatable because it is a direct consequence of natural properties like scarcity), but that doesn't mean it can be simply up and changed. >Markets are created by a handful of people and affected by laws I bake a bunch of bread. Y…

Not the OP.

Maybe the protests and the media coverage are an important part of spreading information and correcting the demand problem for academic positions. We need to tell the world that academia is not what it is presented as.

Your position is akin to opposing online restuarant reviews because why put reviews online if the market will put bad restaurants out of business..

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#227

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 3:01 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #199

gyrgtyn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it doesn't include administrative type people? The chancellor makes about that much

It does include them. I saw the chief investment officer mixed in amongst the MDs.

Being cheap with your chief investment officer doesn't sound like a good idea. Besides, a proper CIO's pay is tied to getting good investment returns.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#228

Post by michaericalribo » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

cycrutchfield wrote: post #209

saagarjha wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my university, graduate student housing is already like this. Graduate students are doing this already.

Great, that's as it should be. At your university, are graduate students able to afford such a living situation on their stipends?

I can’t speak to GP’s situation, but TFA makes clear that the university grad student housing available at UCSC in this specific real-world case is in fact not sufficient for the graduate students to afford such a living situation on their stipends.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#229

Post by lobotryas » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #148

lobotryas wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it Ok to strike when that will hurt innocents? I think we can all agree that having nurses strike and abandon care of their patients is unfair to those patients. This fight should be between UCSC and the graduates, not holding innocent undergrads hostage in the middle.

The only reason why undergraduates are 'held hostage' is due the policies of the university. The reason why grades are not posted is due to the university. The reason why people aren't able to graduate is due to policies stipulated by the university. In most other universities, professors submit grades and are free to grade their own exams. TAs are there to just get through the stack of exams a little faster than the…

You wrote a lot but I am struggling to see your point. The TAs tried holding student grades hostage as leverage in their strike. Now some are withholding those grades for work they reviewed out of spite after being fired. They are hurting innocent students and potentially wrecking/derailing careers and lives. This latter part is a fact. The difference is that sone people here think this is an acceptable price to pay for the TAs to make more money. The rest of us think that’s a BS position.

Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay

#230

Post by SolaceQuantum » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

papeda wrote: post #108

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…

The UC System has been defunding their academic positions and putting billions of money into upper management positions for generations. [0]

"UAW local 2865, a labor union representing UC student workers and teaching assistants, recently estimated in over two decades about $1 billion dollars have been wasted in upper-level UC administrative costs. UC Berkeley Professor Charles Schwartz, who has conducted extensive research on this subject, estimated that the total cost of UC administrative bloat had been $600 million per year. He has also estimated that UCLA in particular squanders about $54 million per year, the most out of all the UC’s."

0. https://scaleatucla.weebly.com/ucla-senior-management-growth...