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MIT graduate students vote to unionize

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Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#281

Post by ModernMech »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #270
ModernMech wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They do the actual work Used to think this as a grad student. Now as a professor I see how naïve this attitude is. There is so much work beyond what grad students are tasked with including getting research funded, staffed, and results out the door. Grad students are cogs in a research machine, cogs that need to constantly be readjusted and recalibrated because they are quite green (sorry, it's true) for a number of…

I’m sorry, but you sound like a terrible, patronizing advisor; anyone who views their students as “cogs in the machine” is someone I would not want to work with. Yes, professors work hard, but let’s not kid ourselves that they’re involved with the nitty-gritty research work. You just sound like someone who’s bitter at young people.

Again, kindly see my reply about attacking me personally. If you feel affronted by my calling grad students cogs, make a case for why they are not. I spend plenty of time shaping those cogs into fine researchers, and they're all better for it, so my results speak for themselves. But you're kidding yourself if you think a green 22 year old fresh out of undergrad is able to perform at a level much higher than a cog in a research lab. There's usually a researcher in there, but it takes a lot of work, usually years, to properly shape their minds.

I'm quite young myself so I don't understand why you would say I'm bitter at young people, but I guess it just goes to show I hit a nerve and you want to lash out at me even though you know nothing about me, not even my age. You want to form an opinion about me and my personality and my entire professional posture based on a rant go ahead, but keep it to yourself.

As for professors not being involved in the nitty gritty research, there's just no basis for this statement. Like I said I've spent almost a literal decade getting my research agenda up and running, and that's pretty much the common case. It takes at least 6 years to get tenure. Students joining me today are getting involved in a project that began when they were preteens. Students claiming full credit over research done at that point is pure hubris.

How do you think research labs come to be without professors getting involved in the "nitty gritty"? Research happens over a long timescale, longer than any one grad student's tenure.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#282

Post by wardedVibe »

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…

The UC grad students have been unionized for decades, and just added gsr positions in addition to the teaching positions. Mostly right now it serves to protect student's research time from heavy teaching requirements.

But honestly, professors are also increasingly far away from the levers of power to create more permanent positions. There's a lot of bureaucrats making decisions who are mostly accountable to themselves.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#283

Post by dehrmann »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #254
dehrmann wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What might be different about grad students is the weird market dynamics. They're well-educated, overworked, and underpaid. They should be able to get a decent job outside of academia from hiring managers sympathetic to not being in academia. Except for foreign students and people who really want to be in academia, there's a lot of pressure that should have made work conditions much better. If someone ready to pay yo…

Aren't graduate students there in order to get credentials that help them land all those better jobs outside of academia? I think you're imputing hiring pressure that they're pursuing, not experiencing.

Ignoring professional degrees like MBAs, MDs, and JDs, you either go to grad school to do research and/or teach in academia or to learn very specialized skills and go into industry. For the most part, there are usually less specialized roles in industry for people with bachelor's degrees.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#284

Post by lumost »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #269
lumost wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> biographies of groundbreaking researchers they all have one thing in common, they have dedicated virtually their entire time to work. I'd argue that most ground breaking researchers had the benefit of researching their own ideas for prolonged periods. Putting in 40 hour a week on your own ideas for 10+ years is an awful lot of time. Many ground breaking researchers such as Feynman and Einstein had extended sabbatic…

We're also in an era where groundbreaking research is seldom done by lone unicorn researchers expanding on a stroke of genius. The Nobel Prizes are still awarded to individuals but often only because that's how Nobel decided the prize had to work over a century ago. Prizes are most of the time awarded to the heads of research groups who's discoveries are made of the backs of dozens of researchers and graduates often…

> Newton could see so far from standing on the shoulders of giants, the modern researcher can see so far from standing on the pyramid of overworked untenured researchers.

On the flip side, is this partially responsible for the declining productivity of science? We're effectively tying brilliant new talent to the whims of elders. ultimately as anyone who runs a large organization will tell you - you aren't going to get ground breaking work from a large org.

Do we need more diffuse science?

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#285

Post by 2ion »

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…

> However, the power structures in academia are heavily skewed and toxic. Individually graduate students have little recourse when they are wronged. Life in academia is hard. You have to work long days, the chance of success is very low. At every stage the probability of getting that next job is very low.

A "research precariat" is what keeps German universities going as well. This is an international issue; even the OECD seems to have studies on the subject. Would be interesting to see a cross-country comparison of who really has the "best" universities --- or university systems, as this kind of issue does not tend to be specific to one institution.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#286

Post by ipaddr »

lumost wrote: post #129
ipsin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An advisor is your gateway into your field of interest. To graduate, a student must publish a notable work in the field. If you lose your advisor, then you will likely need to start over with someone else - delaying your graduation by 2-6 years depending on the field. Even if the university offered a new advisor, it would be unlikely to help the student.

Would a death or a retirement have the same effect?

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#287

Post by caminante »

asf9b8hqw4n wrote: post #277
_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 is definitely abusive, but it's not clear how a union would go about solving this? The CBA could prohibit it (but it's already against policy) or the union could file a grievance (students could already do this), but nothing really prevents this from happening with a union. I don't even think the union has jurisdiction over "academic" matters like graduation. The Harvard CBA explicitly points out that academic m…

That's a material exclusion.

Regardless, for the parent's example, it sounds like a mis-alignment in expectations between the PhD candidate and their advisor.

I wonder "Why is this coming up now?"

For options, I don't know why the PhD candidate can't accept the lesser option, graduate, and then switch jobs. Or...maybe the candidate made a crafty tale to accept another job without getting called out for a disingenuous "love letter."

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#288

Post by wardedVibe »

karaterobot wrote: post #55
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…

Half the reason I'm ambivalent about unionization is that I was involved with the graduate student union when I was in school. The nominal reason for it was to improve working conditions and pay for grad students. In practice, it improved very little, and added a modest amount of overhead, in the form of a union apparatus which fed itself by taking a little bite out of those paychecks every month. To be clear, the ne…

Fwiw, UAW has recently had a major shake up, where the corrupt leadership of the overall union just got prosecuted, and actual one person one vote is being voted on, so I expect you (and I) caught them at the worst possible time. I'm definitely more weary of large cross sectoral unions than before my time at UC though.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#289

Post by topaz0 »

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…

While it's not particularly widespread, there are places in the US where grad students have been unionized for decades. The Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin are two of the oldest, dating from the 70s iirc. As a grad student falling under the collective bargaining agreement for the University of Michigan, I feel pretty good about it. Not only do they pay us pretty well and give good healthcare, but the union has been essential in making the administration set up better-than-average covid policies, like free asymptomatic testing and non-retaliation for choosing to work remotely (sometimes). There are also a ton of corner cases where subpopulations of the grad students have a specific issue, where the union has been a very good advocate.

Re: MIT graduate students vote to unionize

#290

Post by polygamous_bat »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #254
dehrmann wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What might be different about grad students is the weird market dynamics. They're well-educated, overworked, and underpaid. They should be able to get a decent job outside of academia from hiring managers sympathetic to not being in academia. Except for foreign students and people who really want to be in academia, there's a lot of pressure that should have made work conditions much better. If someone ready to pay yo…

Aren't graduate students there in order to get credentials that help them land all those better jobs outside of academia? I think you're imputing hiring pressure that they're pursuing, not experiencing.

Not necessarily; I myself and a lot of my friends in academia are here because we really do care about the research we are doing, and believe what we are doing here is really going to impact society in 10-20 years in the future. I'm sure there are some people here who are only doing a Ph.D. to get a better job afterwards. But at least for myself I know I rejected a job that has a 5x base salary (even without counting the RSU) because I really believed in what I wanted to do. If you take the opportunity cost in account, it really doesn't make sense in 100% of the cases to get a Ph.D. first to just go into the "better jobs" in industry afterwards.
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