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MIT graduate students vote to unionize

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Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#231

Post by toast0 »

ipsin wrote: post #64
_huayra_ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were discussing a potential hire at work a few days ago who suddenly turned down the company's offer for another company despite our team being his "dream place to work" and promising to not make a sudden decision without talking with us first. Turns out he was basically forced to go to this other company by his advisor, who had a lot of funding from this other company, or his advisor would "make graduating very d…

This sounds very much like extortion, and I'm curious how any school with a purported honor code or sense of academic standards could allow it. Even if the student didn't have proof of threats, the situation itself should be enough to get the student a new advisor or oversight with the existing one. I mean "should" in an ideal sense. I think this kind of shit is common.

I didn't go to grad school, but because changing advisors is generally a reset, there's no good outcome for the student in this situation.

Status quo: take job forced by advisor; student doesn't get dream job

Drop out and take dream job: student doesn't get degree they were pursuing

Advisor is fired over this: student must find an advisor that will resume advising on current thesis or more likely find a new advisor and start on a new thesis... But if it becomes known that this student was related to the firing, student may have a hard time finding a new advisor.

Advisor is disciplined over this: advisor may retaliate by no longer cooperating with student's progress, and then you're back to finding a new advisor.

Institution backs advisor and disciplines student for 'causing trouble': maybe find a new institution.

So... If there's no good outcomes for the student, it's tricky.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#234

Post by adminprof »

aardvarks wrote: post #161
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…

It's true that professors rely on grad students/postdocs to do work. And, at least in my experience, advisors are actually pretty good about giving students credit for their work -- having successful students reflects well on the advisor. But a student is even more dependent on their advisor than vice versa. It's not like undergrad where the main thing that matters to your future employment is to collect the diploma,…

I think your comment is pretty spot on. Just three things I'd add to, are that 1) the advisor is not intentionally downgrading your letter to "just good", but it's that they're obligated to write a better than "just good" letter for someone who has been more productive both in terms of research and in being a leader in the community (these two things go hand in hand). Writing the same letter for two students regardless of what they accomplish would be unfair.

And 2) sometimes getting more funding is simply not possible, as in the advisor has basically reached the limit of what they can do. There's a limit to the number of proposals that one can submit and the number of calls that fit their research agenda. So what I think you're missing is that if an advisor has less funding, there's going to be more pressure to finish sooner and less freedom to explore ideas beyond what's written in a previous grant proposal.

3) I've never heard of a tenured professor that concerned about their publication rate. In fact, most of them don't even update their CVs or websites with the last few years of papers. It's always the student who is trying to get more papers.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#235

Post by pas »

UncleMeat wrote: post #185
pas wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there paid graduate programs in the US?

Masters programs are typically where you pay tuition and receive training via classes. PhD programs don't have much classwork and instead are positions where students are paid by the university but are expected to perform labor to produce original research.

Hm, here in Hungary PhD students can opt to do zero teaching[0], and also the tuition is 4500 EUR/semester (and students from the EU can apply for grants that covers 100% of tuition). And on top of all this it's possible to work for the university, which apart from the salary also results in the elimination of certain costs (eg. if someone is not employed by the university they have to pay to have their thesis examined and pay for the exam committee or something).

https://www.inf.elte.hu/en/content/doctoral-training.t.1616?...

[0] I expect that if someone wants to do a PhD in teaching methodology they might have to still do some teaching

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#236

Post by hypersoar »

pas wrote: post #83
ethbr0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

All Ph.D. programs nominally charge tuition, but hardly any students (at least in STEM, don't know about elsewhere) pay it. They get a stipend plus a "tuition waiver".

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#237

Post by watwut »

rajin444 wrote: post #214
logifail wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you expand on what regulations you feel are lacking [..] It's fundamentally wrong for one human (the PhD supervisor) to have so much unchecked power over another (the PhD student). Without changing how the entire system works, I'm not sure how you fix that by means of regulation.

> It's fundamentally wrong for one human (the PhD supervisor) to have so much unchecked power over another Why is this fundamentally wrong? Short of a truly equitable society (which I think most agree would be a dystopian nightmare), I don't see this as fixable. The problem is that the power is abused. The best way to fix this is high trust societies, not creating one more institution with a disproportionate amount o…

If there is nothing to stop the abuse, abuse escalates and gets normalized. This happens any time there is large system with unchecked large power.

That is why it is fundamentally wrong. Because it ensures widespread abuse.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#238

Post by xur17 »

memish wrote: post #209
selimthegrim wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dental insurance is a scam.

Because it pays out so little or what?

Yeah, basically. Most dental insurance I've seen has a "benefit maximum" [0], the maximum amount the plan will cover in a 12 month period, I've seen numbers from 1.5k to 3k for this. Since the coverage is capped, and capped so low, it's arguably not really "insurance", and isn't really protecting me.

That said, to a graduate student, $3k can be a non-negligible amount of money, and the school is likely kicking in money to pay for the plan. In my position, if my company didn't subsidize the plan, I'd be happy to just go without.

[0] https://deltadentalks.com/knowledge/what-is-an-annual-maximu...

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#239

Post by paulcole »

bombcar wrote: post #82
paulcole wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I don’t know. I’m not very smart.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#240

Post by ModernMech »

logifail wrote: post #229
rajin444 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's fundamentally wrong for one human (the PhD supervisor) to have so much unchecked power over another Why is this fundamentally wrong? Short of a truly equitable society (which I think most agree would be a dystopian nightmare), I don't see this as fixable. The problem is that the power is abused. The best way to fix this is high trust societies, not creating one more institution with a disproportionate amount o…

> Why is this fundamentally wrong? It's the unchecked nature of the power. Politicians have upcoming elections to worry about. Tenured professors ... what do they worry about?

> Tenured professors ... what do they worry about?

Class assignments and number of classes taught per semester, teaching times and locations, class sizes, advising assignments, committee assignments, TA allocations, grader allocations, internal grants, withholding or revoking consulting permission, withholding internal department funding, lack of promotion (there is still a ladder after tenure), and most of all reputation, which in academia has higher currency than currency.

Tenured professors still have a job to do and they still have a boss (lots of bosses, as I said), and if they don't do their job they can still get fired (I've seen it happen), or their lives can be made miserable.

If there's an issue of academic dishonesty then there there are processes at journals, conferences, and funding agencies to address concerns. I've also witnessed these processes work as intended.

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