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Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

phillymag.com

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Re: Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

#151

Post by WalterBright »

komali2 wrote: post #138
throwawaysleep wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the high cost of tuition, are people really going to want to pay grad students higher salaries? A lot of nice things in life require that someone make a low wage so they are affordable to you.

Require? Genuinely require? It seems to me the high cost comes from attempting to create profit margin. If the profit is basically eliminated, the person can have the high wage, and we can have the nice things.

> If the profit is basically eliminated, the person can have the high wage, and we can have the nice things.

Somehow, however, such Marxist implementations never deliver those nice things.

Re: Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

#152

Post by hypomanic »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #92

Why would they be paid during a strike? As far as I know, it is pretty common to shut off benefits to strikers as they aren’t working.

Tuition remission is just a made up number. It's not like money you get paid or have to pay tax on our anything like that. Half the time you don't even have any corresponding coursework.

Re: Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

#153

Post by juve1996 »

72948957 wrote: post #86

To be honest, I don't really get the point of the strike. The grad students are not only getting a free education, they're also getting paid a stipend on top of that. Grad students tend to have extremely flexible schedules, freedom to pursue their intellectual interests, the ability to attend seminars and travel to conferences, etc. At least in STEM fields, anyone in grad school probably could have gotten a higher-pa…

A stipend on average of $19,500 a year:

"On average, such workers make $19,500 a year, according to the Temple University Graduate Students' Association (TUGSA), a union that represents nearly 750 affected workers. In recent negotiations, the university had proposed increasing base pay to $22,500 by 2026." https://www.businessinsider.com/temple-university-suspends-f...

> Grad students tend to have extremely flexible schedules, freedom to pursue their intellectual interests, the ability to attend seminars and travel to conferences, etc.

The flexibility doesn't mean less hours. A majority work 40 hours or more. Many work way more:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03419-8#:~:text=G....

It's amazing how we continually look down on others for wanting better conditions. In general, not many on here would trade places.

Re: Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

#154

Post by hypomanic »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #92

Why would they be paid during a strike? As far as I know, it is pretty common to shut off benefits to strikers as they aren’t working.

Like imagine your job decides not to pay you (fine) but then finds a loophole to charge you twice your salary.

Re: Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

#155

Post by bradleyjg »

nightpool wrote: post #36
akavi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are companies not allowed to stop paying wages to striking employees? Or is it that tuition remission is viewed as distinct from wages legally?

Yes, they're separate from wages that graduate students earn. Roughly—graduate students attend college for free, but for financial aid / regulatory / internal budgeting reasons the college can't say they attend for free, so they instead set extremely high tuition numbers and then "pay" that tuition for the students, from one hand of the college to the other hand. But also AIUI Temple took away the whole of the tuitio…

but taking away tens of thousands of dollars for the entire semester simply for participating in a strike action during a tiny piece of it is absolutely beyond the pale

Beyond the pale morally or legally? The grandparent claim is that this is a slam dunk violation of labor law, but I’m not sure that’s true.

That said, I’m not a labor law expert. I’d like to hear from one without an ax to grind. Too often advocates conflate what the law currently is with where they think it should go. I’m often interested in both, but want to know which is which.

Re: Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

#156

Post by elashri »

jltsiren wrote: post #147
72948957 wrote: post #86

To be honest, I don't really get the point of the strike. The grad students are not only getting a free education, they're also getting paid a stipend on top of that. Grad students tend to have extremely flexible schedules, freedom to pursue their intellectual interests, the ability to attend seminars and travel to conferences, etc. At least in STEM fields, anyone in grad school probably could have gotten a higher-pa…

I don't like "grad students" as a category. Master's students, or early stage PhD students, are typically continuing their undergraduate education. They should be considered students for all intents and purposes. People doing research for a PhD should be considered junior professionals rather than students and paid accordingly. When I was doing it, the pay was 2/3 of what you could reasonably expect in the industry.…

>the pay was 2/3 of what you could reasonably expect in the industry

I think this is very high amount compared to the situation today. We are talking about people here making ~19k per year in a city where the minimum cost of living is ~30k.

Re: Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

#157

Post by riversflow »

WalterBright wrote: post #149
komali2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's easier to optimize for profit, so what? How can your core mission be education but "you're optimizing for profit?" Either your core mission is education or it isn't. I feel like this is the kind of goal setting miss I see businesses make all the time. They'll be doing be doing some version of the ubiquitous value setting activity, and as ideas are pitched someone will be like "wait, isn't our most basic value…

The beauty of the free market is that the way to maximize profit is to maximize customer satisfaction.

Invoking the free market in a discussion about a market as distorted as higher education is laughable. No, the way to maximize profits is to get government(s) to ensure that you are in a favorable position to earn profits. In this case, demanding that most well paying jobs necessitate tertiary education and providing free credit.

Re: Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

#158

Post by troops_h8r »

WalterBright wrote: post #149
komali2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's easier to optimize for profit, so what? How can your core mission be education but "you're optimizing for profit?" Either your core mission is education or it isn't. I feel like this is the kind of goal setting miss I see businesses make all the time. They'll be doing be doing some version of the ubiquitous value setting activity, and as ideas are pitched someone will be like "wait, isn't our most basic value…

The beauty of the free market is that the way to maximize profit is to maximize customer satisfaction.

Note that customer satisfaction != customer well being (i.e. heroin)

Re: Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

#159

Post by jltsiren »

cabaalis wrote: post #19

Matching tshirts and signs for a decent sized group aren't cheap. I see stuff like this often in protests. Who pays?

Your intuition fails here. Resources generally scale with the size of the group, while the price per individual goes down. If you order in sufficient quantities, you should be able to get a decent t-shirt with a single-colored print for ~$5.

Re: Temple Student Strike Turns Ugly as School Ends Some Tuition Aid

#160

Post by lotsofpulp »

WalterBright wrote: post #149
komali2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's easier to optimize for profit, so what? How can your core mission be education but "you're optimizing for profit?" Either your core mission is education or it isn't. I feel like this is the kind of goal setting miss I see businesses make all the time. They'll be doing be doing some version of the ubiquitous value setting activity, and as ideas are pitched someone will be like "wait, isn't our most basic value…

The beauty of the free market is that the way to maximize profit is to maximize customer satisfaction.

Let us bring forth this beauty by removing taxpayer funded loans for higher education.
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