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

#341

Post by phaus » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:12 AM UTC

geodel wrote: post #277

RijilV wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, in the case of big tech, Internships pay six figures . There are other perks of being a grad student than just the pay though... : sure, the internships aren’t typically a year long, but if you do the math for what’s paid for their duration it’s an incredible amount if it did last a year.

Then what's stopping unpaid interns to take big tech internship?

For one thing most tech internships want you to contribute to the business. Unpaid internships that involve doing real work are illegal in many industries/locations.

In some places if you have an unpaid tech internship, everything you do has to be an artificial training exercise for the sole benefit of the students.

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

#342

Post by Symbiote » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:27 AM UTC

cycrutchfield wrote: post #247

rovr138 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where did I say anything like that? I was just saying that $1700/month for rent is clearly above both the market rate for living with roommates, and above what she can reasonably afford given her salary.

Children living with unrelated adult roommates, or without their own bedroom (shared with siblings until age 10), is considered a strong indicator of poverty.

I expect a graduate student parent to be making significant material sacrifices to support a child (no big parties, no trip to Thailand in the summer) but they shouldn't be in poverty.

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

#343

Post by metaphor » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:33 AM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #27

daly wrote: post #2

I lived on 54 cent pancakes covered in free butter and honey, 9 cents per can baked beans (turns out I don't like baked beans, I like good sauce which this was not), and candy bars out of a broken and never fixed candy machine. I don't recommend it. I weighed 110 pounds by the time I left. All of my money went to dorm housing (paid to the school). Later when I was a researcher I found out that the Provost takes 55% o…

In college, a professor recommended me for an academic award from industry. It was $1000. So I go to the yearly awards dinner and a month later got a check for $800. Apparently the university takes a 20% as administrative cost!

Imagine how this team[1] felt when the University of Florida screwed them over not only a $750K preliminary prize (that would have been applied towards funding the next year's research agenda) but a subsequent $2MM prize for taking 1st place in DARPA's Spectrum Collaboration Challenge.

[1] https://www.alligator.org/news/uf-engineering-team-wins-mill...

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

#344

Post by Karishma1234fff » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:38 AM UTC

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.

>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.

That is very definition of 'Unions'. As an individual you have limited resources to take on a big adversary (employer) hence few people come together and pool in money. If this process is voluntary it is entirely up-to them to come up with the terms of engagement. Once you agree to those terms going back on those terms must be seen as dishonesty. If the union membership is forces them obviously union leaders have zero incentives to actually offer better terms to members.

The only way this can be resolved is by having some kind of "enlightened" union leadership. The superhumans who will instantly know what is the right thing to do and will have 100% freedom to do so. Sadly, such humans are very very rare.

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

#345

Post by Karishma1234fff » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:45 AM UTC

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…

I think your analysis is spot on.

This is all about what principle you are applying and whether it scales or not. It is a bit like restraining order. In some specific instances it might be safe to let the person in your house. However that kind of hurts the overall restraining order terms and sometime in future you can get into trouble.

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

#346

Post by Karishma1234fff » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:46 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #289

baryphonic wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem from the university's perspective is that while $13M is a low-ish amount of money (by university standards), the university has no reason to believe it would "put the problem to bed." If the university backs down, the strikers will be able to dictate any terms they want in the future, and any such strikes (i.e. illegal ones) would certainly have many more participants. The disruption to university operati…

Grad students at UCSC didn't arbitrarily think the deal they struck isn't good enough anymore, they never thought it was good enough in the first place. 83% of UCSC grad students felt the minimums outlined in the agreement, which was a UC wide agreement and not between UCSC and the UCSC grad students by the way, were insufficient for the growing rents in Santa Cruz. This 13m number isn't arbitrary. In fact that $1400…

Did the students know this beforehand and despite knowing this joined UCSC ?

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

#347

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:46 AM UTC

geodel wrote: post #277

RijilV wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, in the case of big tech, Internships pay six figures . There are other perks of being a grad student than just the pay though... : sure, the internships aren’t typically a year long, but if you do the math for what’s paid for their duration it’s an incredible amount if it did last a year.

Then what's stopping unpaid interns to take big tech internship?

Nothing, except that:

a) not everyone who figured out higher education is a racket wants to do 180 degree career turn

b) many people would like to make their future in something else than easy code monkeying money

If everyone goes to write NoSQL serverless CRUD for adtech, who will be left to do research or something actually materially productive in the economy?

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

#348

Post by thescriptkiddie » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:49 AM UTC

valid4life wrote: post #83

I'm an undergrad at UCSC right now and have found the entire strike to be more detrimental to their cause. They've lost so much undergrad support after disrupting a STEM midterm and shutting down campus causing us to miss the classes we have paid for. I even lost my grades last quarter as my TA was fired ( of the 54 ) and he has refused to hand them over post firing. What it has done to the undergraduates is a little…

At the risk of getting banned for this comment, fuck this. I was an undergrad as UCSC and I supported the strikes then, and I support the strike now. Yes the strike interferes with undergrad education, but that is the entire point. I never went to class when a strike was on, just like I would never cross a picket line. Professors deserve to be paid well, and grad students in teaching or TA positions deserve to be paid well too. With the absurd tuition the UC system charges, that is the least they can do.

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

#349

Post by logifail » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:59 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #227

lisper wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Besides, a proper CIO's pay is tied to getting good investment returns [...]

Q: What happens to the typical CIO and his/her package when returns aren't "good" ?

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

#350

Post by cycrutchfield » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:59 AM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #342

cycrutchfield wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did I say anything like that? I was just saying that $1700/month for rent is clearly above both the market rate for living with roommates, and above what she can reasonably afford given her salary.

Children living with unrelated adult roommates, or without their own bedroom (shared with siblings until age 10), is considered a strong indicator of poverty. I expect a graduate student parent to be making significant material sacrifices to support a child (no big parties, no trip to Thailand in the summer) but they shouldn't be in poverty.

They are a student. As much as it sucks they have to support a child, this was a decision that they consciously made. We shouldn't have to throw around money to every grad student just because some small fraction of them are parents.

If you want to talk about programs specifically for supporting parents working towards their education, I'm all ears. But that is orthogonal to the current discussion.