top | item 15512066

University of Chicago Graduate Students Vote to Unionize

334 points| photoJ | 8 years ago |chicagomaroon.com

220 comments

order
[+] aresant|8 years ago|reply
In higher ED this seems like a long time coming.

Grad students essentially work as slaves for the Uni's & professors with triple-duty in lab time for professor + teaching + self-research.

Their reward comes in notoriety & bi-lines on research that helps them become professors in their own right in higher ed.

The cost is minimized rights to IP they've been crucial in inventing, outrageously low wages, and an average of $100k (1) in debt.

The brutality is sold as a right of passage, but the reality is the incentives are completely out of whack - uni's have an inverse incentive to admit Phd / grad students to benefit from the wage-slave / revenue generating aspect.

And it shows in the data - there are now a "glut" of PhD's that are far outpacing the very limited # of academic positions.

The system needs fixing and if unionization exerts some pressure on correcting the macro problem I am all for it.

(1) https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/03/25/how-much-out...

(2) https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2016/10/academic-job-market-...

[+] laGrenouille|8 years ago|reply
While these are valid issues, there are big differences between the concerns of Masters and PhD students in the US that I think you conflating together.

Doctoral students at major research universities rarely pay tuition, particularly at a place as highly ranked as UChicago, and usually are given a large enough stipend to live off of (1). Relative to the amount of work, however, the pay is low and the number of faculty jobs on the other end of this is shrinking. Masters students on the other hand typically do not engage in their own independent research nor do they teach their own classes. They are basically treated like undergraduates with a harder course load. The tuitions for Masters degrees (for which few scholarships are available), on the other hand, are outrageously high.

(1) [https://grad.uchicago.edu/admissions/funding/doctoral](https...

[+] _dps|8 years ago|reply
> Grad students essentially work as slaves for the Uni's & professors ...

The typical cost to a professor's budget of employing a graduate student with tuition covered and a basic stipend is somewhere in the range of $50k to $150k. The graduate student gets paid to be trained by a domain expert, and the cost to the "employer" is well above the median income. Outside the rather unorthodox software field, graduate degrees typically result in title advances and higher salaries (this is 100% true in government positions).

Calling this arrangement slavery is ridiculous.

Bias disclosure: I was once a professor, and also once a graduate student.

[+] twblalock|8 years ago|reply
The problems you mentioned still exist at universities where grad students are unionized.

Some fairly large university systems have had grad student unions for a long time, including the University of California, so I don't think it's a matter of waiting for a critical mass of unionized universities to develop before change can be made.

I think the root cause is one that you mentioned in your post: "there are now a "glut" of PhD's that are far outpacing the very limited # of academic positions". As long as that is the case, academic labor will be cheap and easy to replace, and there will always be enough students willing to work in the conditions you mentioned for professors who could help them in their careers.

[+] tiki12revolt|8 years ago|reply
> there are now a "glut" of PhD's that are far outpacing the very limited # of academic positions.

Professors have very little incentive to practice academic `birth control`.

[+] programmarchy|8 years ago|reply
It's baffling to me that academia, which is predominantly progressive, would treat its workers so poorly.
[+] mathattack|8 years ago|reply
There is some irony in this happening to one of the most anti-union Econ departments out there. :-)

What will this do? Raise the cost of grad students for schools, so perhaps they take less of them. But didn't the students know this was the situation before applying?

[+] kkylin|8 years ago|reply
Not to say that these are not issues, but the treatment of students is also highly field-dependent. In addition, in fields like mathematics (mine), most postdoctoral positions (even very good ones) come with a certain amount of teaching, and students who have not had significant classroom experience sometimes will have difficulty finding good positions.

Also, how much TAing one does really varies a huge amount between fields. AFAIK students do much more teaching in the humanities than in STEM, and within STEM departments that teach lots of service courses (e.g., math) will tend to have more TAships than departments that do not.

[+] mulmen|8 years ago|reply
I completely agree with you here. I also wonder what other effects this could have on public higher education. My university was largely funded by the IP created by grad students and other property owned by the university.

Undergraduate student fees were actually paid to the state board of education, the university then got only a fraction of that back. The state provided less than a third of the budget to a state university.

This was actually less than the cost to educate an undergrad and so grad students work was used to subsidize undergrads who in turn subsidized other public schools in the state.

Grad students do deserve fair compensation for their work but if that happens it will exacerbate the problems caused by under funding public education. I hope I see the time when we solve these problems and I think this is a step in that direction.

[+] weberc2|8 years ago|reply
I'm not opposed, but where will the higher wages come from? You make it sound like someone is making a killing off their labor, but I understand universities to be perpetually strapped. These aren't meant to be challenges to your point; I just don't understand university economics.
[+] bzbarsky|8 years ago|reply
> and an average of $100k (1) in debt

First, the USNews article you cite says the average is $57k. The $100k number is the 75th percentile number.

Second, the article you cite is pretty freely mixing "graduate students" and "graduate and professional degrees", to the extent that it's not clear whether the average numbers it cites are just for the former, or for the latter. It obviously makes a big difference, because while law school and medical school have their own problems they don't have the (very real) problems you describe PhD programs as having.

So I looked at the actual report your linked article is citing. The $57k number is the _median_ (not average!) debt across all graduate and professional students. Same for the $100k number: 75th percentile across all graduate and professional students. See page 1 of the report.

Page 3 of the report cites some "typical" (I assume they mean "median", but they don't define it) numbers for various graduate degree debts, including law and medicine, but conveniently leaves out the number for "PhDs". Those make up about 23% of all graduate degrees, according to the chart on that page, by the way, so your typical "graduate or professional student" is not a PhD candidate, but is aiming for an MD, JD, or Master's degree, all of which have _quite_ different funding models from PhDs.

All the tables on page 12 and following conveniently exclude PhDs as well.

So this report tells us pretty much nothing about PhD debt. The law and medicine numbers inflate everything involved, obviously, and most of the rest are masters degrees of various sorts. All PhDs could have a debt of 0 and still get the reported median and 75th percentile numbers.

OK, so how this works in practice (or at least did 10 years ago) at the universtity of Chicago, while I wad doing my PhD there.... Grad students in the _sciences_ generally did not take on debt at all: their tuition was covered, and they were paid a stipend that was enough to live on reasonably, in return for the teaching and whatnot that they did. Grad students in the _humanities_ were an entirely different story. So even within the PhD bucket it really depended on the field of study. The number of students who took on debt and had "lab time" of any sort was quite close to 0, if not exactly 0.

Now there are real problems in PhD programs, including in the sciences, and grad students and especially postdocs _are_ underpaid in various ways. But you're not having science PhDs with $100k in grad school debt, typically.

[+] lambdaphagy|8 years ago|reply
Why will unionization solve the glut of PhDs? If there are already too many grad students when conditions are miserable, why will improving the conditions reduce the supply?
[+] stale2002|8 years ago|reply
The solution is less people becoming PHDs.

Unions, and the like, just move around the real problem, which is that we have too many people in academia, and that those people should move to industry.

[+] autokad|8 years ago|reply
if they are saying they are employees, not students, then international students should have to get the appropriate visas, and should not be here on a student visa.
[+] roel_v|8 years ago|reply
* by-line * rite of passage
[+] Shivetya|8 years ago|reply
well it likely is too late to matter, with the ever connected world people will get their education from anywhere for the best price.

the end result is the many US colleges will have to reign in costs and this could put a lot of pressure on all positions.

[+] politician|8 years ago|reply
> An e-mail from Executive Vice Provost David Nirenberg on Sunday cautioned that unionization would introduce a “third party” that could interfere with graduate students’ relationships with the University.

That, of course, being the point.

[+] sjg007|8 years ago|reply
It's funny that the liberal ivory tower academics in charge don't want unions...... Oh the... I'd say irony but it is really hypocrisy.
[+] djsumdog|8 years ago|reply
I'm excited about this. I had the advantage of working full-time while in grad school, and my company paid for most of it, but I missed out on being a TA and getting classroom experience.

I watched a lot of fellow grad students struggle, constantly worrying about grants and funding. Some just took loans, others rushing so they could get through before their fellowships ended.

Meanwhile you watch new buildings, dorms and student centers go up as undergrad tuition goes up. Most professors I know who are my age are all adjunct or part time, but it's their full time gig.

Adjuncts positions were meant for professionals in the field who wanted to teach a class or two. The position is really being abused to keep from paying hard working professors a full-time wage and keeping them from a tenure track.

So where the hell is all the money going. Yes there are cuts, but we still see new buildings and programs. I realize these are different budgets a lot of times, but it's still getting really ridiculous.

If universities want to do something real, they need to stop worrying about unions and start tackling the student debt situation. They draw students deeper into debt than they've ever been in history to fund their institutions. You can no longer work a part time job and pay for many state schools. And what if those kids graduate and decide they really hate engineering or business or whatever they got. Now they feel like slaves, working jobs they hate to pay off that debt.

We desperately need student debt forgiveness. It has to happen. The bubble needs to burst, the system needs to collapse and schools need to scrap and rebuild programs that are affordable, that work and that are significantly better and different than their shitty for profit counterparts, which they're becoming more like everyday.

[+] sjg007|8 years ago|reply
Administration is like a giant vacuum.
[+] dmitrygr|8 years ago|reply
A PhD student at UChicago whom I know well told me that they significantly limited who was allowed to vote to make this happen.

Not allowed to vote if:

* Not currently onsite (field work or pre-grad research elsewhere for a year)

* If you were not onsite in the previous year (anyone who did field work last year)

* Anyone who took a year break from teaching was not allowed to vote even if returning to teaching this year

* Anyone in 1st or 2nd year not allowed to vote (despite most years left to live under this union)

[+] dcre|8 years ago|reply
“They” being who? The criteria were negotiated by the union organizers and the university, with the NLRB mediating.
[+] vkou|8 years ago|reply
This seems to contradict the criteria in a child post, citing. [1]

Is there any citation for your claims?

From the cited list, it seems that anyone who got paid on a regular basis by the university over the past two years could vote.

[1] http://knowthefacts.uchicago.edu/

[+] rflrob|8 years ago|reply
Any idea what the criteria were? Was it by department? Degree status? Teaching vs fellowship status?
[+] earksiinni|8 years ago|reply
I wonder how many of the responses here are from folks who went through CS/STEM graduate programs and who have no idea what their current/former colleagues in the humanities go through. One person alluded to how privileged a grad student is to have their tuition paid while being afforded the opportunity to become a "domain expert" in their field. Tell that to the average history Ph.D. in the US who takes 7-9 years to complete her degree, spending the prime of her youth to end up working 4/4 course loads as an adjunct in some godforsaken community college with no health insurance. And yet that individual carries with her the collective knowledge of thousands of years of human intellectual endeavor.

As for the news from UChicago, I congratulate my former colleagues, and yet I also know that it's not enough. I started a Ph.D. in the humanities at Illinois and left after 2.5 years. Our union was great, but no union is enough. We were fighting to prevent the administration from docking our meager $17k/year pay for frivolous BS reasons, and while I'm grateful for what the union did for us, in another way it was so shortsighted. Why were the stewards of civilization making $17k/year in the first place? Why couldn't we make far, far more, worthy of the years of specialized knowledge that we had developed at great cost?

The union could never answer these questions. Actually, most people thought I was crazy for even asking them. We spent all day denouncing capitalism, and yet we were enthralled to the myth of the Protestant work ethic, that compensation is somehow tied to our self-worth. And that misguided albeit well-meaning hypocrisy why I left academia and joined Silicon Valley.

[+] ptero|8 years ago|reply
I got my PhD a while ago, but I think unionizing is a terrible idea. First, while the hours are long, tuition is usually paid for / waived and we got a small stipend and OK health insurance for 2-4 hours of teaching a week. I graduated with no debt.

Much more important though is that most unions make work predictable. Hours, duties, etc. However, most PhD research is highly unpredictable. If I want to set up the test while the conditions are good, I may want to work NOW; hearing that I'm out of hours and need to do it tomorrow is the last thing I need. If I got my test set up (in shared lab) and going great I may want to go as long as I can stand it -- it may be broken tomorrow.

At least last 2 years of grad school my #1 desire was to finish and go use my new PhD in real world for real money. If union imposed policies add 1-2 years to the process I would not want them.

[+] gravypod|8 years ago|reply
Why do a group of people need permission to start a union? Can a group of people unionize without permission of their employer? Does the employer need to sign a form or something?

I thought unions were just groups of people who bargained with collective power. Why don't all researchers at these universities just use their abilities as leverage? Most people in universities are hired because they're one of a few thousand people in the world who are up to speed on a specific topic. That makes them very difficult to replace, one would think.

[+] snomad|8 years ago|reply
I wonder if this will spark student athletes in major football and basketball programs to follow suit.
[+] sgillen|8 years ago|reply
This would be a long time coming. In my experience athletes at big programs are even more vulnerable and more exploited than graduate students.

It's a similar situation, but there are even less professional jobs, less alternatives after graduation, and a n increased risk for injury.

[+] chris_7|8 years ago|reply
Do they get to take advantage of labor laws protecting organizing since they're not actually, like, employed? Obviously the minimum wage doesn't apply to them...

If they don't have the protection, doing that could jeopardize any chance they have of going to the NFL (not that most of them make it anyways).

[+] maxerickson|8 years ago|reply
There are already a fair number of graduate student unions so probably not.
[+] sjg007|8 years ago|reply
They definitely should.
[+] wheaties|8 years ago|reply
The sad thing that they will learn which my wife's school learnt was that, as a union employee, you are no longer a student. That is, all the tax breaks, ability to not pay SS, etc. all those fees come right back. In the end, they raised student wages but the take home pay was cut. Then they paid union dues...
[+] YesonID|8 years ago|reply
~1600 students participated in the vote, but on wikipedia the school has 10k postgrads. How does this work?
[+] Halladie7|8 years ago|reply
This is very interesting. Having been a graduate student who threw off the reins to do basically the same work in industry at 6-7x the compensation with better benefits I support them.
[+] Aardwolf|8 years ago|reply
The comments here are giving me more questions than answers...

I genuinely don't know what it's about. At my university, the work to do (5 years in my case) existed out of studying for exams, sometimes group projects to build something (not something usable outside of a presentation for points), and in the last year a thesis (not at all as publish-worthy as a phd paper). This spanned "bachelor" and "master" but those names were actually retrofitted to an older system.

The article and comments talk about labor by students in university.

My university was in Europe. Please enlighten me, do students do actual labor in US universities? I'd love to understand what this is about. Thanks!

[+] photoJ|8 years ago|reply
Of the 2,457 students in the bargaining unit, 1,103 students voted in favor, 479 students voted against, two ballots could not be counted and 873 did not vote.
[+] santaclaus|8 years ago|reply
University of Chicago is private, right? So this falls under Federal purview (unionization issues at state schools are under state jurisdiction). With the NLRB in the current administration, I can't imagine a friendly ruling towards the graduate students when the university administration's inevitable appeal boils up.
[+] interloper13|8 years ago|reply
Several things to note in this issue.

1. Regarding huge number of grads and few people voting - wiki and other aggregate sources of info will only tell you the total number of students listed as "enrolled" at the school. Not all of them taught in the previous five quarters. That actually reduces the number of grads eligible to vote drastically.

2. Regarding the comments linking union to money. It is by no means guaranteed that a union can increase the salaries paid to grad students. And in fact most grad students (at least at the PhD level) survive off the stipend not the TA/RA salary. As far as I understand the union has no bearing in the stipend amount. There is also the thing that UChicago is cash strapped. It doesn't have the liquid assets to increase anyone's salaries. (Look up the aggressive campaign to sell UChicago owned buildings in HP if you are curios).

3. A union, as an organization of people, by definition caters to the average contributor. In a factory where the workers provide similar enough service that 'an average' is still a meaningful concept, a union can do some good. In my opinion, in a union of all grad students across all departments, 'average demand' is meaningless. Each department can't even agree internally on what their students need, so I'm not sure how a union will find common ground among all the departments. On the one hand limiting the number of hours in a work day sounds good, no? But ask a science grad - they will likely complain that they no longer have time to finish their experiment in time. Giving students a choice in which class they want to TA sounds good, no? But ask a student in humanities - they will tell you that seventeen of them apply for the same spot that only one person can have so they would prefer assigned positions not chosen ones. Etc, etc, etc.

[+] losteverything|8 years ago|reply
Grad students aren't grad students forever, right? So it must be darn hard to have union membership turn over.

Grads today in the union will leave in a few years and not stay decades.

Unions i know work when lives in the same job are represented. And contracts last 4-6 yrs.

Not sure i see a chance for long term benefit.

[+] kiliantics|8 years ago|reply
Awesome news! I hope this rapidly growing network of graduate unions somehow jumps over to infect the tech world. Strong unions in tech could really make big changes in US politics.