MIT graduate students vote to unionize • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#81

Post by bombcar » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #68

bognition wrote: post #23

I'm very curious to see what the long term effects of unionizing will be in Academia. I'm hopeful and optimistic it will improve things in the long run. Yes there will be some unintended consequences but academic life is already very rough if you're not tenured. Academia likes to cast itself as a true meritocracy. If you work hard and publish good papers you'll do well. In practice it's more of a gerontocracy where s…

>Arguments against unionization from already tenured faculty usually sound like: An argument against a union at MIT came from un-tenured graduate student Kevin Wang : https://thetech.com/2021/10/21/why-we-do-not-need-a-gsu TLDR: he didn't think paying the 1.44% annual union dues (~$620/year) is going to be worth it. He based this on comparing MIT salary increase history to other universities with and without unions.…

It IS interesting to note that if most unions went dues-optional they'd starve from lack of money.

If their members were really convinced of the value that tragedy of the commons wouldn't occur.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#82

Post by bombcar » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #56

bognition wrote: post #23

I'm very curious to see what the long term effects of unionizing will be in Academia. I'm hopeful and optimistic it will improve things in the long run. Yes there will be some unintended consequences but academic life is already very rough if you're not tenured. Academia likes to cast itself as a true meritocracy. If you work hard and publish good papers you'll do well. In practice it's more of a gerontocracy where s…

> Academia likes to cast itself as a true meritocracy The more an organization/community says one thing, the more likely the opposite is to be true. Think about Google and “Don’t be evil.” Or companies that tout “work/life balance.”

What would that say about the organization that itself is the union?

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#83

Post by pas » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #25

Bilal_io wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's weird, I wish this included undergraduate students as well. But maybe there is a reason behind it that I don't understand.

Including undergraduates, who are primarily paying consumers, would have muddied the waters. Graduate students are clearly workers under any definition.

Aren't there paid graduate programs in the US?

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#84

Post by dls2016 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

hervature wrote: post #77

dls2016 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a math PhD at USCB, where grad students are represented by the UAW. I didn’t find any of this to be true, in particular the university would not be able to provide the same level of service without graduate student TAs.

> I didn’t find any of this to be true Any of what? You felt with the union that you could change your advisor on a dime? How many of your fellow students did so? > the university would not be able to provide the same level of service without graduate student TAs Just factually not true. The difference between a senior and a first year PhD student is quite literally one year. Plus, graduate student TAs are not the un…

At my institution the 9-month pay was less than $25k per year (from 2010-2016) with subsidized housing (still pretty expensive) and family on MediCal when my wife worked part time.

How are you going to replace 50 TAs with full time employees? Class sizes were already 700 students in basic calculus and up to 300 in engineering calculus.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#85

Post by mhh__ » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

bognition wrote: post #23

I'm very curious to see what the long term effects of unionizing will be in Academia. I'm hopeful and optimistic it will improve things in the long run. Yes there will be some unintended consequences but academic life is already very rough if you're not tenured. Academia likes to cast itself as a true meritocracy. If you work hard and publish good papers you'll do well. In practice it's more of a gerontocracy where s…

In an ideal world I think unionization at least has the potential to fight back against the "One bad letter of recommendation and your career is over" aspect. Whether it will work or not I have no idea.

There is simply way too many questions on the academia stackexchange about how to confront a superior without making them feel confronted (or wrong). The power dynamic is ugly.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#86

Post by selimthegrim » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

cowsandmilk wrote: post #16

Quillbert182 wrote: post #7

For the uninformed, what is the purpose of a student union?

1. Protect students from advisors who want them to work 100 hour weeks. 2. Get dental insurance for the students. Almost no US graduate school offers this.

Dental insurance is a scam.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#87

Post by temp8964 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

dls2016 wrote: post #78

temp8964 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really an employee-employer relationship with on the job training. I don't think so. When I was a Ph.D. student, I spent most of the time doing my own thing (learning and research), a small portion of my time was spent on working. I imagine this could be different by field, and I know some other departments pay way higher stipend than my department. I think the lowest paid graduate students belong to social sc…

Did you talk to students in biological or other lab sciences? At my PhD institution the materials science students were paid a lot more (and barely taught) because they essentially had a 9-5 job with plenty of overtime. (Compared to the math department where people would surf between commitments.)

Yes. What you said does not contradict what I said.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#88

Post by exdsq » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #35

I can’t imagine this actually producing better results long-term. Unions objectives are to limit competition amongst relative parties in order to combat the higher authority/ employer. The purpose of graduate school is to put compete your peers. What this will likely lead to IMO is more “equity” among the less capable (grants, funding, etc) which will reduce the opportunity for meritocracy and more capable (while ass…

My wife’s very recent PhD experience at Oxford was a little crunch time around conferences, a nice 20/25 hour week, and enough spare time to row with the Oxford Uni boat team. She stayed a year as a postdoc and it was much the same. She’s now a postdoc at Stanford and she’s working 16 hour days, weekends, and very stressed for it. Academic output is the same - it’s just different work culture. I know this is about PhD students but I imagine it’s no easier for them than early career postdocs, so this seems to make a lot of sense.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#89

Post by bumblebritches5 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

bognition wrote: post #23

I'm very curious to see what the long term effects of unionizing will be in Academia. I'm hopeful and optimistic it will improve things in the long run. Yes there will be some unintended consequences but academic life is already very rough if you're not tenured. Academia likes to cast itself as a true meritocracy. If you work hard and publish good papers you'll do well. In practice it's more of a gerontocracy where s…

No post body was provided.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#90

Post by canjobear » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

g_p wrote: post #45

For anyone not familiar with the world of academia, grad students actually have a good bit more power available to them by organising sensibly than you might think. The same is also true for early career postdoctoral research staff. This is because most of the work that actually matters is being done by these individuals, in a very pyramidical structure, but the money stops rolling in without the work that the base o…

> They win a grant, but the actual research work is then done by postdoctoral researchers and grad students. They do the actual work, write it up, and pretty much everything else.

In this scenario, which does happen but is not the only way it works, the convention is that the student or postdoc is first author and the advisor is final author on the paper. That seems fair to me.