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

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

#231

Post by michaericalribo »

jseliger wrote: post #211
michaericalribo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The operative word here is ‘should be.’ In practice, at the state school where I did my doctorate, more than half of undergrad courses are taught by grad students...academia is a broken system that doesn’t work very well for anyone involved in it Edit: this was the case in my department, a STEM subject required for graduation in multiple unrelated majors

academia is a broken system that doesn’t work very well for anyone involved in it It works extremely well for administrators and professors with tenure, who are the exact constituencies most in favor of stasis and least in favor of change or experimentation.

Meh, it works well enough. I’d ask Napolitano or the UCSC faculty whose grad students are striking if it’s working extremely well for them. Grants are scarce. CA negotiated a single contract for grad students across nine different campuses all over a huge state, and no one seems happy with the outcome...sure I’d rather be chancellor, but ‘extremely well’ is a stretch

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

#232

Post by refurb »

saagarjha wrote: post #173
dantheman wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it exploitation? These people are students who are compensated while learning -- they're not full time staff. They get a degree at the end.

Many of these students are paid part-time to do essentially full-time jobs, and often find it difficult or even impossible take up outside employment.

These graduate students are TAing labs. It's nowhere near a full time job.

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

#233

Post by kova12 »

wutbrodo wrote: post #187
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…

> I get that a lot of people on HN probably see the current low wages as a natural function of supply and demand in different academic disciplines. But heck, just looking at this from the point of view of the university, which is allocating resources to fight this, the calculus is odd. Note that I'm not making any _moral or normative claims_ about not striking vs striking vs wildcat striking, nor about the interplay…

Which just underlies the problem with unions: not only they are compulsory institutions that force you into their ranks whether you want it or not, but even those who join them don't get a fair representation and have to strike on their own.

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

#234

Post by refurb »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #99
csomar wrote: post #49

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…

With time, the supply of graduate students should fall. Nobody should want to accept such a deal when these folks could go work in industry and make far money than the UC system will ever pay them. Getting 50-some replacement graduates could be a challenge for UC Santa Cruz. Usually enrollment is on an annual cycle.

I think this is an important point.

The grad students want more pay because housing is so damn expensive in Santa Cruz. Why is it expensive? Because the city refuses to build enough.

If their pay doesn't go up, I assume more an more applicants will just pass on Santa Cruz and go for a school where housing is more reasonable and their pay covers most of their expenses.

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

#235

Post by refurb »

andrepd wrote: post #88
csomar wrote: post #49

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 is a power asymmetry between the worker class and the capitalist class. By that Gilded Age logic, certainly all unqualified workers -- and many qualified ones as is this case -- do not have the right to strike. It's because of that power asymmetry that there are utterly basic protections such as it being illegal to fire strikers, hire scabs, etc. Your "free market" approach makes for a very dystopic world indee…

Capitalist class? The government owned and run UC system?

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

#236

Post by rovr138 »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #212
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?

Nobody forced her to make these living arrangements that consume such a large percentage of her monthly salary. While it is regrettable, it's not the responsibility of the university to make sure that its students make good life choices.

We don’t know her life to say this wasn’t her best choice.

Besides that, people with different backgrounds and life experiences bring different things to the table which is great for a research environment.

If everyone came from the same background and experiences it wouldn’t be great for research.

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

#237

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

saagarjha wrote: post #224
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I only mentioned it as a major contributing factor to her having insufficient financial resources to complete the program. Plainly, she would be able to accept a cheaper housing situation if she did not have a child, and housing is her dominant expense. You yourself called that out, so I don't think it's out of bounds for me to mention it.

What I'd really say is that a single, low-income parent-or-other-person-who-won't-have-roommates should probably not move to Santa Cruz (or Beverly Hills, Monaco, Chelsea, Dumbo, the Chicago Loop, etc.). I get that this is a controversial viewpoint for some folks, but it just seems like fundamental personal finance to me.

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

#238

Post by unethical_ban »

kova12 wrote: post #233
wutbrodo wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get that a lot of people on HN probably see the current low wages as a natural function of supply and demand in different academic disciplines. But heck, just looking at this from the point of view of the university, which is allocating resources to fight this, the calculus is odd. Note that I'm not making any _moral or normative claims_ about not striking vs striking vs wildcat striking, nor about the interplay…

Which just underlies the problem with unions: not only they are compulsory institutions that force you into their ranks whether you want it or not, but even those who join them don't get a fair representation and have to strike on their own.

Define "fair representation"

And, tell me how not having any union is better for all than an imperfect union.

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

#239

Post by legolas2412 »

nostrebored wrote: post #92
throwqwerty wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because they perform a service. they teach classes. that's literally what they were withholding - grades for classes they TA. so there is plenty of demand for that service. it has nothing to do with the labor market after they graduate. god some people just fall all over themselves to be smug.

If you want to have an actual conversation, I'm happy to. If not, let me know so I don't waste my time. They do perform a service, sometimes teaching classes, sometimes grading papers, sometimes assisting with office hours. They get paid $2400/mo, putting them above median salary for full-time TAs. Nobody is forcing them to go to graduate school in California and accept this job. This isn't something that they were c…

> This is why you'll see stipends and grants to assist students in higher demand fields, like computer science.

They get the same salary more or less. The only difference is that they don't have to TA, but only research.

Doesn't change how low that salary is.

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

#240

Post by late2part »

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…

This is not regional in scope. UCSC is part of UC. If the wall breaks here; wages go up everywhere else.

UC had to break the union before they got everyone involved.

Your calculus disregards the additional carry-on costs for parity when the 9 other UC campuses follow suit.

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