NYU Grad Students Want Their Union To Be Recognized

OK. My last comment was overly harsh. This article doesn't accurately present the labor dispute at NYU. NYU eliminated its Teaching Assistant positions and replaced them with fellowships. Accordingly, these students are primarily employed as researchers. Some are claiming that they are still being assigned teaching duties - this is likely what has caused confusion among the press.

Allow me to step back from the nastiness here and present a point in good faith, and one which speaks specifically to the issue of Teaching Assistants, even though that isn't the primary topic of dispute at NYU. Junior faculty at large research institutions are appointed almost exclusively based on their research output. Teaching is viewed as secondary in importance. The prerequisite knowledge base needed to teach effectively doesn't require years of research. In many fields, the material taught to undergrads is fairly standardized and the marginal returns of research experience are fairly minimal. Teaching experience does likely improve one's teaching abilities, but it is of relatively minimal concern to many departments when they are seeking new faculty. These are the grounds upon which I disagree with your economic argument. The free-market process in play at large universities is not one that seeks to maximize teaching quality as a primary endpoint, but rather research productivity. A fairer comparison may indeed be adjunct faculty, but adjuncts are competing in a market crowded out by researchers. They occupy a second tier of the system, and simply don't get to compete for the best positions based on their skills as educators. In summation, the "teaching market" at large universities is highly distorted, and the competitive process does not necessarily lead to efficient or optimal outcomes.

Also, and this returns to my original point, the market in which PhD students are competing assumes defrayed compensation. The length of time necessary to achieve that compensation is so long, however, that the likelihood of a catastrophic event is considerable given the degree of economic vulnerability that graduate students must endure (it really is closer to 10 years than 5). Raising wages and benefits to reduce this vulnerability is a moral obligation premised on principles of social justice, over and above market-based appraisals of worth. It appears that we disagree on this last point as a matter of underlying philosophy. I suspect you vote for Republicans. I tend to vote for Democrats. To each his own...

Actually, the lab I work at studies the basic processes of visual cognition. We receive grant funding in the seven figure range from NIH, NIMH, The Army Research Office, Homeland Security, and others. Dime-a-dozen? The bulk of academic psychology is converging with neuroscience, as advanced technologies now allow us to study cognitive and emotional processes at both the behavioral and biological level. I'm not pompous, I'm a PhD student. I know what I'm talking about, and you are clueless. Your desperate attempt to justify your ignorance by invoking half-baked free-market rationales is unpersuasive. You occupy an entirely different world, and simply lack the knowledge to contribute meaningfully to this discussion. I'm presently engaged in contract negotiations on behalf of Research Assistants. The arguments presented in opposition to unionization usually refer to the direct-costing of grant funds. Principle Investigators (PIs) pay Research Assistants out of the research grants they are awarded. The amount of funding available to PIs varies substantially, so minimum salaries and other compensation requirements may reduce the number of Research Assistants that can be hired or force a redirection of funds away from equipment and other valuable investments. Our union is attempting to alleviate these concerns by seeking economic concessions from the foundation that administers administrative costs (which come from a distinct portion of the grants). Despite the very strong opinions that have been expressed by both sides, I have yet to encounter anything similar to your arguments. You offer nothing of value to either side of this debate. You don't even know what the debate is about. You're nothing more than a spiteful, ignorant little sh*t, injecting your tired and trite worldview into matters that are clearly over your head. Nobody who matters cares about what you have to say. I'm only responding because I find you so noxious that I consider it a point of honor to pound home the extent of your obliviousness, which contrasts rather unflatteringly with your jealous tantrums and evident feelings of inferiority.

A rather pervasive misconception about Phd students has been expressed in previous comments. It is true that Phd students usually pay no tuition. The benefit of this is in most cases largely superficial. Many Phd students have few class to take (the psychology Phd program I'm in at Stony Brook University requires that I take a mere 8 classes in total, while the average time from entry to dissertation defense is about 5 years). Only a few of these classes are likely to be highly valuable. A Phd requires narrow specialization within your field, so the majority of relevant learning occurs through independent research. Upon graduation, the job market you enter is one that assumes the tuition remission you've received. Assistant Professors don't get paid gobs of money - certainly far less than lawyers or MBA's at an equivalent stage in their careers. In addition, these jobs are increasingly difficult to come by. The percentage of teaching done by tenured or tenure-track professors, as opposed to graduate students or adjuncts, has dwindled to around 30 percent. Many aspiring academics spend years working as postdocs, after the 4 to 8 years they spent earning their Phd, only to land an extremely demanding (at least until earning tenure) job making 60k a year. The proliferation of low-paying graduate student teaching and researching positions not only keeps students in a state of near impoverishment for years while earning their degrees, but also cannibalizes the job market they're seeking to enter once they've earned them. This whole "they're getting paid to go to school and should just shut-up" nonsense reflects ignorance on the part of those expressing the sentiment. As a general point of etiquette, I'd advise that if you don't know what you're talking about, it's probably best to keep your opinions to yourself.

Speaking of sticking to subjects you know something about, why don't you leave the etiquette lessons to Emily Post, you pompous, dismissive jackass. You sound most PhD candidates I've known--endlessly overstating the obvious and ignoring anything that tends to disagree with your thesis. So psychology PhDs are a dime-a-dozen. What else is new? And just like every overstocked item in the market, they, like most PhDs in the social sciences and humanities, are available cheap. And you completely avoid the subject no PhD student teacher wants to address: you aren't a professional teacher yet. Without your degree and years of teaching experience, you wouldn't have the adjunct position you have if you had to compete for it in the open market. So if you haven't prepared yourself adequately for 5 or 6 years of living on low wages and savings while you study full time and teach part time, then maybe you should think about leaving the program and helping to reduce the supply of PhDs.

I had a graduate teaching fellowship as a grad student at a university with unionized grad assistants. The union's rhetoric used to drive me crazy. They'd be at these rallies hollering about poor working families and never mention that Ph.D. students with teaching fellowships are some of the most privileged people at the university. They have tuition and fee wavers, health insurance, and a adjunct lecturer's salary for a teaching job that few of them would qualify for on the open market--in many cases without even having completed a Master's degree and with little or no teaching experience. Ask a random undergraduate where they're working and what they're getting paid, who's paying their health insurance, and how much student loan debt they have. And then ask them with a straight face to participate in your walk-out.

Is it an all white union, or is it just a coincidence that they're all white?

not all of these people are white. and i'm a gsoc member and i'm not white. i've got some white friends, though...

Look for the worst, most bored, most inefficient, apathetic, lazy employees at Columbia and they will be the unionized ones.

Let them join the union but make them pay for the education they are receiving.

Wish I could work like a grad student instead of pay 50k/yr for my degree. How about we trade?

When you graduate, "ano ne mouse", I sincerely hope that you have a job that pays you a living wage. I can't claim that for myself, not in NYC. And if you don't, I bet you will have a very different attitude about collective bargaining.

And about tuition remission: If John Sexton upped tuition to a million dollars, but then said I didn't have to pay, would you call me a millionaire?

I wouldn't say you're a millionaire, but if the tuition was truly valued at a million dollars a semester (I say valued at, as in actually worth that much, not simply set at), then you are certainly recieving a fantastic deal even if they paid you nothing for teaching.

As a current NYU student, I'm with the GSOC. The grad students do a huge amount of work for almost nothing while John Sexton spends all the tuition money moving the WSQ arch a few inches or building a campus is Abu Dhabi.

Let them organize so they can at least sit down with the school and try to work something out.

I'm pretty sure that Abu Dhabi (and indirectly US commuters who buy their oil) paid for the NYU campus there and not your tuition.

Your tuition is going towards buying Governor's Island.

Thats the whole point though, isn't it? No one really knows where the tuition money is going, and we don't get a say. If only Take Back NYU had limited their demands to financial transparency...

Yawn.

Oh God. I was a freshman at NYU when they went on strike back in 2005. A couple of my professors either cancelled class or held it off-campus in solidarity. I just wanted to shake them all and point out to them the fact that they seemed to have missed: this is NYU. They couldn't give less of a shit about you.

I was too. I had to fucking schlep to random-ass buildings for class, I don't know, ATTEND THE CLASSES I PAY FOR.

You don't seem to understand. PhD Students aren't paying for classes. They are receiving tuition remission and a stipend to teach classes at the university. The university is paying PhD students to actually teach the classes (that you pay for) much less than a tenure tracked professor. The university is getting an inexpensive labor pool and it keeps their full time faculty happy since it means the grunt work is shunted to the graduate students.

Cheap labor? These people are getting paid at least $30,000 by not having to pay tuition, and they get direct pay for whatever job they are doing. It's a nice deal.

Same comment I want to make, except replace NYU with Columbia.

I wonder if Columbia's gonna join in on the fun here.

(future readers, it was fixed)

Is the headline some sort of jargon that I am not familiar with?

Idiots...

"We want to join the union so that you can charge us more in tuition!"