71–80 of 400 posts
Coming from Sweden I'm surprised they aren't already. Do you also not have student unions to represent you until you reach undergrad?
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.
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…
If a professor is only taking credit for underlings' work he / she will, at some point, stop getting good students...
The comment above is right about the general structure (professors pitch, students deliver), though. And perhaps right about claiming credit in some fields, although not mine.
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.
As for the honor code I cynically suspect it's more about having an item go use against someone when the university chooses, rather than a true standard that all are held to at all times. If nothing else, it's just tough for a large institution to handle all of its problems at once.
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…
Then I don't understand your ambivalence. Who would complain about getting more money?
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…
It might be interesting to consider how much worse the pay or conditions could have gotten in the union's absence.
As someone who just finished their PhD, I fear these unionization efforts will have the exact opposite effect that the students are aiming for. In particular, many universities provide subsidized housing in some of the most expensive places in the US. Housing is not a bargainable. The direct consequence is that universities will kick graduate students out of the housing, replace them with undergrad students to pay fo…
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.
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 university's only source of TAs. At $100k/year, there would be many former PhDs willing to work at the university full time. That's what I meant by full time equivalent. My stipend as a PhD student was $35k plus subsidized housing. That's already pretty aggressively close to the upper bound.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really an employee-employer relationship with on the job training. Specifically your final promotion is a certificate (Ph.D.) that has some industry wide accreditation. The fact that they charge for tuition actually seems legally tenuous (akin to a company town) which is why I think they all have these tuition waivers for RA and TA positions. The more I think about it, it seems like there is a bunch of legal iss…
> 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…
(Compared to the math department where people would surf between commitments.)
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…
On the other side of this equation, I think international students comprise a potent reservoir of strikebreakers.
And then there's the argument they use to justify why immigration is good, like diversity, inclusion, globalization, ... which may be valid or not.
But isn't it just perfect when your objectives are so closely aligned with what is considered morally right.
To regard these agents as moral actors instead of self-serving profit seekers is just lunacy.
I can understand the value of unions in a situation where you are the employee. But Jesus, if you don’t like the school just go to a different school.