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

#161

Post by asdff » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #123

aaomidi wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like protests is meant to cause a disruption. I really have a terrible place in my heart for people who criticize protests because it caused a disruption. That's the point of a protest. I'm very happy for you that you've never felt the need to take these drastic steps, but they're protesting real issues and real problems they're having. The grades are ultimately the universities problem

Protesting by making the lives harder for your fellow students is just a dumb strategy. It doesn't hurt the administration, it hurts the students. Now the students are backing the administration!

Whether or not it hurts the students is up to the administration. Professors can grade their own exams, as they do in many courses already. The university doesn't even have to dip into their own pockets, they can use federally subsidized work study labor if they were short on labor.

However, by hurting students and adhering to draconian policies that serve to hurt more students, the school is paradoxically increasing support because the administration knows students are going to be enraged without looking into the nuance of why these things are happening to them, and who decides why these things should happen the way that they do.

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

#162

Post by cycrutchfield » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 1:38 AM UTC

gyrgtyn wrote: post #135

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…

You paid a bunch of money, then the school provided you with instructors that have to worry about where their next meal is going to come from.

Hyperbole is not really helpful for this discussion.

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

#163

Post by refurb » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 1:40 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #161

refurb wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protesting by making the lives harder for your fellow students is just a dumb strategy. It doesn't hurt the administration, it hurts the students. Now the students are backing the administration!

Whether or not it hurts the students is up to the administration. Professors can grade their own exams, as they do in many courses already. The university doesn't even have to dip into their own pockets, they can use federally subsidized work study labor if they were short on labor. However, by hurting students and adhering to draconian policies that serve to hurt more students, the school is paradoxically increasing…

From what I’ve gathered, the exams were turned over to the grad students for grading. The school asked for the grades, the grad students refused.

Has the school asked for the exams to be returned, so they could be graded? I don’t know. I assume the graduate students wouldn’t turn them over anyways.

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

#164

Post by cycrutchfield » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

gyrgtyn wrote: post #124

A bunch of people that make 500K try to explain why people that make 28K shouldn't make 45K. In a town where rent is 20K.

I survived in grad school on much less than 28k in a very high cost of living city. If anything, graduate student compensation is ridiculously high these days. I don't see anything but money-grubbing here.

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

#165

Post by p1esk » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

thanatosmin wrote: post #143

I see a lot of discussion about the consequences of TAs withholding grades. This situation is a consequence of poor management at UCSC. Every other university I'm familiar with makes faculty responsible for submitting grades. It's inconceivable to me why TAs would be responsible for grades. TAs should be teaching assistants, not adjunct faculty. Edit: I read "assigning grades" to mean assigning the final grades for t…

Most faculty does not want to grade anything. I've TA'ed 6 courses, the professor just showed up for lectures and reused last year's exams/homeworks. Students had the solutions, >70% of the class copied them exactly. The prof didn't care. And TA's were handling most complaints about the grades. This was common for majority of undergrad level classes I took (a different UC campus).

Also, it was my job as a TA to explain the material during my TA sections (which were basically lectures, only with more questions and more examples, and I used a blackboard while the prof just read PP slides).

Even though the above was the norm, there were a few great professors who cared, and taught very well.

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

#166

Post by michaericalribo » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

nostrebored wrote: post #71

acdha wrote: post #12

I feel like these stories should mention the compensation for the people attacking graduate students for demanding a living wage. Someone making well into 6 figures really doesn’t have a good basis for summarily dismissing that need: https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/university-o...

Why should they expect a living wage for sub-demand fields of research? Why do my choices to achieve financial stability override my experience prior to that? When you're from a poor family the decisions that these striking students are making are befuddling.

That might be a valid claim if STEM students made more than eg humanities students, but it’s unfortunately not the case in the real world that supply and demand dictate resources in a state university...I just graduated with a STEM PhD and comfortably make six figures, but that’s after five years of making $20k and teaching courses required by unrelated subjects, as the only professor. And I was lucky to have such a stable income for such a long time, which actually covered my rent...

Generally, grad student pay is not calibrated at the department / subject level, and that’s especially true of a large multi university state system like CA has...

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

#167

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

RijilV wrote: post #42

nabla9 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simpsons grad student sketch is different kind of funny for different people. For most people it's funny because it's exaggeration, for others it's funny because it's so close to reality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqrCoyVK80I --- On more serious note, grad student working for next to nothing serves similar function as unpaid internships in companies and politics. Some positions are designed to help young people…

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.

Of course, not everyone can work in big tech.

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

#168

Post by dantheman » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #156

ajross wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously no, strikes and labor actions can't change the microeconomics. But regardless of whether or not the wages are sufficient, and whether the agreement is just or not, it's an agreement . Breaking it only hurts things for future students, it doesn't help. Consider the union sitting down to the next contract, how do they negotiate successfully if UCSC doesn't believe their members will honor the agreement?

On the other hand, what to the grad students at UCSC do if they weren't represented at the bargaining table by their own union in the first place? The agreement is not one the grad students at UCSC and UCSC, but with the grad students at all UC campuses with the University of California, et al. 83% of UCSC grad students opposed the original UC wide negotiation because the salary minimums did not take into account the…

That's between them and their union - they can stop paying union dues, they can leave the union.

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

#169

Post by rmwaite » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

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…

It’s about sending a message.

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

#170

Post by inferiorhuman » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

pergadad wrote: post #40

gist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you (and others) think that education and academia is somehow special and not the same as, say, acting (or any career) where people regularly earn no money and work bad 2nd jobs just to survive and do something they love or want as a career? In a free market system nobody is telling you to choose that career and a University and (typically) a non-profit doesn't have any particular incentive to not act in their…

In the Netherlands every PhD will be paid fairly decently. That's how it should be. Nor excuse for rich universities like those in UK & US to exploit those dreaming of s research career.

Even worse the UC system (and by extension UCSC) are state run institutions that get a hefty chunk of their operating budget from the state. They also prioritize foreign students over domestic as they pay higher tuition (nee fees as it was illegal in California for UC and CSU schools to charge tuition for a very long time). The state should not be in the business of exploiting cheap labor. Period.

It's fucking absurd how top heavy the state run universities (especially UC) are. I would hope that grad students at other UC campuses would strike in solidarity, but knowing that UC's got them by the short and curlies I doubt that'll happen.