donn@sdchema.UUCP (Donn Seeley) (07/26/83)
As an ex-graduate student who recently dropped out of a Ph.D. program at
the University of California, I found this article to be very interesting,
and I suspect that others will also be interested. My own remarks on the
content of the article will appear in a later submission...
Donn Seeley (ex-) UCSD Linguistics Dept. ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdamos!donn
From the LA Times, July 23 1983, Pt. I, p. 1 (used without permission):
GRAD GRIND: SCHOOL AIDES BATTLE BACK
by Anne C. Roark, Times Education Writer
In the mornings, some of them lecture on modern French philosophy, while
others lead discussions on the history of the Ottoman Empire. In the after-
noons, their colleagues in the sciences supervise introductory undergraduate
laboratories, before going off to conduct their own experiments in physics and
chemistry. In the evenings, those who specialize in the social sciences grade
economics papers and prepare political science exams.
They are not professors; they are graduate students and they are among
the most important researchers and instructors in the modern American univer-
sity. Not only are they often the first -- and sometimes, the only --
instructors that undergraduates actually meet in their first years of college,
they are responsible for a a substantial portion of new scholarship in the
fields they are trying to master.
Despite their importance, or perhaps because of it, graduate students
have also become one of the most troubled groups on campus today. Their work
is long and grueling. Their financial rewards are minimal, and, despite years
of training, their prospects for the future are dismal.
The problems are not all new, but they have become so severe in recent
years that graduate students have begun to fight back and university adminis-
trators have begun to worry.
For example, since April, 700 of UC Berkeley's nearly 10,000 graduate
students have taken the first steps toward organizing a student labor union on
campus.
Part of their concern is money. Although they carry a substantial por-
tion of the undergraduate teaching load and conduct much of the research on
campus, they do not receive employee benefits, and for the last two years,
while fees have risen 70%, they have not received pay increases.
Their concerns have been exacerbated by recent discussions among the
regents of the University of California and state legislators of raising fees
for graduate and professional students above the levels imposed on undergradu-
ates.
"Our consciousness of ourselves as employees, as a work force, is quite
strong," said Leslie Balie Bary, a fifth-year comparative literature student at
Berkeley.
"We are essential to the functioning of the university. This is what the
people in the general public don't understand. The faculty sometimes forget
how hard we work... and they rarely realize how little we are paid. Even
undergraduates themselves don't understand. Students often, mistakenly, call
me 'Professor Bary'..."
One former UC graduate student, who is now a professor in the system,
tells the story of being asked by her thesis adviser to carry half his teach-
ing load -- without receiving either academic credit or pay.
"I was clearly being used," said the professor, who asked not to be iden-
tified because of the embarrassment it would cause the adviser and the
department. "I was afraid to tell him to shove it," the professor laughed,
"so I did what he asked. But it's also clear that is partly why I got a job
teaching here. They saw I could do it...
"What really disturbs me, though, is that my department chairman called
me in recently to tell me I should start advising graduate students myself, if
I wanted to get tenure here.
"He told me that to get tenure, you need good graduate students. What he
meant is that graduate students will do your research for you and you will get
credit for it and will be able to publish because of it. And, of course, here
at UC or any other major university, it's research that counts. It's a real
bummer."
Graduate students complain that such attitudes have led to serious
abuses. The most common complaint, although few can document real cases, is
that faculty members use students' research without giving them credit.
Another complaint, which students say they can document, is that professors,
particularly in the sciences, spend too much time doing consulting work out-
side the university and thus have far too little time for their students.
A recent study of graduate students at UCLA found that to be one of the
"major complaints" among students, said Roberto Celi, a third-year graduate
student who conducted the survey.
Most university administrators strongly oppose unionization as a solution
to the problems. Although unions have been active at the University of Michi-
gan and the University of Wisconsin and a few other universities for a number
of years, most educators have successfully kept union activities to a minimum.
Today, the only graduate-student union now working under a contract is at the
University of Oregon.
"What is important to understand," said Edward J. Blakely, vice president
for academic personnel at the UC system headquarters in Berkeley, "is that the
university does not view (graduate students) as a cheap labor pool...
"Graduate students are paid stipends, not salaries. We are not paying
them to teach or to do research. That is just a part of their education...
"I sympathize with their complaints...," he added. "But, in some ways,
if we pay them more we defeat our purpose. Our goal is to get them out of
here. The higher the wages, the longer they will stay."
Thomas J. Linney, director of governmental and association relations for
the Council of Graduate Schools in the United States, agrees that the current
system of graduate education is full of problems for students, but he contends
that it also offers tremendous advantages:
"They're exploited. There's no question about that...," Linney said.
"On the other hand, you get experience you can't buy on the open market. You
get to practice teaching with real-life students in real classrooms. You get
to work, side by side, with Nobel laureates."
The question that remains, he said: Will there be a place for them in the
university when they finish their training?
Some experts believe that the outlook for academic jobs is not as bleak
as they once thought. In some high-technology disciplines, particularly com-
puter science and certain areas of engineering, there are already plenty of
openings for trained academic personnel.
In addition, large numbers of scholars who were hired in the universi-
ties' great expansion of the late 1950s and early 1960s will begin to retire
in the late 1990s, thus opening new jobs for young scholars. About the same
time, demographers predict, here will be a new surge in college enrollment,
thus increasing the demand for new instructors.
But such long-term prospects offer little encouragement when compared to
the near-term outlook.
In the past decade, the number of job openings in academic institutions
where Ph.D. recipients traditionally find employment has dropped dramatically.
If predictions hold true, the situation will get worse before it gets better.
According to estimates by William G. Bowen, president of Princeton
University, there will be 100,000 academic openings for Ph.D. holders in the
next decade and a half. Yet, each year during that same period, Bowen esti-
mates, the nation's graduate schools will continue turning out 30,000 doctor-
ates. That could mean an excess of 350,000 academicians by the mid-1990s.
Paralleling the drop in job openings has been a precipitous decline in
the amount of support provided by the federal government for post-
baccalaureate study.
In 1968, according to official estimates, the federal government financed
over 50,000 traineeships and fellowships. Today, there are fewer than 8,000
government scholarships -- a decline of more than 80%, at a time when graduate
tuition is spiraling upward.
Private support for graduate study also has dried up. Many of the foun-
dations that traditionally financed graduate education -- Ford, Woodrow Wilson
and Danforth -- have gotten out of the business almost entirely.
As the fellowships have dwindled, many more graduate students have turned
to teaching or research assistantships to support themselves. Such jobs allow
graduate students to become generally proficient in their fields but also take
time away from their own particular areas of specialization and burden them
with as much as half of the undergraduate teaching load and a substantial por-
tion of the research of the university.
Such pressures are pushing graduate education in the United States to a
state of crisis, said Clarence L. Ver Steeg, dean of the graduate school of
Northwestern University in recent congressional testimony.
"Graduate students are the intellectual leaders of tomorrow," Ver Steeg
said in an interview. "They are the single most important resource for the
future of higher education, for the future of the nation. They will do the
teaching; they will make the discoveries. They will be the leaders in high
technology... There is a famous phrase and it's true: Graduate students are
the 'seed corn' of our future...
"Yet we are not providing them with the support they deserve... The best
and the brightest are being discouraged from coming..."
Neil J. Smelser, sociology professor and chairman of the Berkeley Faculty
Senate, put it this way: "The life of a graduate student has never been easy,"
he said. "Today, it's harder than ever."
"The image that graduate students spend their days in coffee houses and
their nights in pizza places is just not accurate," said Bob Argenbright, a
third-year geography student at Berkeley.
"It is a long and grueling process... Anyone who goes through it has to
ask at some point: Is it worth it?"
Given all the problems, it is hardly surprising that interest in graduate
education should wane, not only among legislators but also among students who
are potential applicants.
To be admitted to graduate school, most students are required to take
standardized exams. The number of those exams administered in recent years
has fallen. Between 1975 and 1981, the most recent year for which data is
available, the number of tests given by the largest of the testing services,
the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., dropped 14%, from 299,300
to 256,400.
The drop has been so great in some disciplines -- geography, German and
philosophy -- that the testing service announced recently its plan to discon-
tinue tests in those subjects next year.
The Council of Graduate Schools in the United States, an organization of
380 research universities, reports that, after decades of growth, actual
enrollment at its member institutions has fallen by about 1%.
There have also been shifts away from the traditional liberal arts and
toward the more scientific and technological fields that offer lucrative
employment -- a trend that has greatly troubled many university administra-
tors.
Equally troubling has been a sharp decline in the number of minority stu-
dents who attend graduate schools, a change suggesting that universities may
be unable to keep their affirmative-action commitments in the years ahead.
The situation at Stanford is perhaps typical. There, new enrollment of
minority groups in graduate and professional programs fell 42% last year, from
151 to 88.
The overall drop in enrollment has been somewhat masked by a substantial
increase in the number of foreign students attending American universities.
At UCLA, applications from U.S. citizens have declined in the last six
years by over 15%, while the number from non-citizens has risen by over 50%.
It is unclear whether it is the top student of the marginal one who is
turning away from graduate education.
There are indications that fewer of the top students are opting for
advanced training and that many of those who do undertake graduate programs
are not staying.
At Harvard, for example, only 34% of the summa graduates planned immedi-
ate graduate study in the early 1980s, compared to 75% in the mid-1960s.
Carla Mortenson, a graduate student in education at UCLA, is one who
began a career in graduate school three years ago but probably will not fin-
ish. Instead, she expects to join the U.S. Foreign Service.
"It means I'll earn a decent salary. I'm sick of being broke," she said.
"It means I'll have a job with status. As a graduate student you have NO
status."
To ensure a top-notch supply of talented, young scholars for the future,
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is providing $25 million over the next 10
years for fellowships in the humanities. This fall for the first time, 96
college seniors and recent graduates will receive awards of $7,000 plus tui-
tion and fees. The awards can be renewed if the recipient's university so
recommends and agrees to put up a third of the costs for the second year of
study.
But, most educators agree, much more needs to be done before graduate
education in the United States is once again on sound footing.
The "response to date can fairly be described as minimal...," wrote
Bowden, Princeton's president. "(The) next 15 years will not at all be like
the past, however much some of us wish them to be."donn@sdchema.UUCP (07/26/83)
This is another LA Times article submitted to the net without permission...
I hope nobody on the staff there gets netnews. Anyway, I will postpone
comment on this material except to say that when Bobby Inman and his MCC
money were trying to decide between locating at UC San Diego and UT Austin,
Uncle Duke, our dear governor, tried to persuade Inman that UC was not
going down the drain by claiming that he planned to increase funding to
UC by as much as 10% next year. Inman weighed Uncle Duke's word and took
his cash to Texas... Smart boy.
Donn Seeley (ex-) UCSD Linguistics Dept. ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdamos!donn
From the LA Times, July 27 1983, Pt. I, p. 3:
INCREASES IN FEES FACE STUDENTS AT UC AND CAL STATE
by Anne C. Roark, Times Education Writer
Students attending the University of California and the California State
University systems this fall, rather than professors or administrators, will
bear the brunt of cuts in Gov. George Deukmejian's budget for the state's sys-
tem of four-year colleges and universities.
Under the final budget approved Thursday by the governor, students at Cal
State system schools will be asked to pay an additional $230, bringing their
total annual fees to $1,380.
The Cal State system board of trustees has not yet approved the fee hike,
but the board's finance committee has been authorized to act for the entire
board at a special meeting scheduled for Monday in Long Beach.
Overall, the nine-campus UC system will receive $1.056 billion, 9.4% less
than the Legislature approved and 2% below last year's spending level. The
18-campus Cal State system will receive $906.1 million, 9.2% below the
Legislature's level but 4.8% above last year.
At San Diego State University, that translates to a cut of $2,567,000,
money that was to have built laboratories and faculty offices inside the
university's old library building, officials said.
"The real losers are the students," said Patrick M. Callan, director of
the California Postsecondary Education Commission.
But employees of the two four-year systems also face a struggle under the
new budget. In some cases, faculty members will be denied promotions. Main-
taining buildings and facilities properly will become an increasing problem.
After strongly supporting Gov. Deukmejian all year, Cal State Chancellor
W. Ann Reynolds said that she is "shocked and dismayed" at the governor's
final budget.
"California's position as a state that prizes knowledge and skills, and
opportunity and access to higher education has been dealt a deep and serious
blow in the Budget Act of 1983," Reynolds said.
"Fundamental changes in our system must be made in the next few days.
Fees will rise to levels that will be unacceptable for low-income students,
and graduate students will face additional financial burdens. Nine hundred
faculty will be denied promotions..."
UC Vice President William B. Fretter said: "In the spring, when the
governor announced additional proposed cuts in the budget, we said the univer-
sity was at a crossroads. The quality of the university is now at risk, as is
access to it for the students of this state. The people of California need to
know that.
"The governor perceives these cuts to be the appropriate solution to the
state's current financial problems. He has, however, stated that he expects a
major improvement in the next year and that adequate funding should be avail-
able for the university then.
"If he is correct and translates into action his encouragement that we
seek significant additional funding next year, then we can survive this year
with temporary measures...
"If the improvement does not happen, we will have no alternative but to
make additional program cuts that will inevitably affect the quality of the
university and the numbers of programs it can offer to prospective students."
Specific budget cuts for UC include $20.7 million the Legislature had
budgeted to cover some effects of inflation, $7 million for academic promo-
tions and staff merit raises, $6.2 million for replacement of instructional
equipment and maintenance, and $14.7 million for such student support services
as the registrar's office.
Because the governor did not include adequate funds for faculty merit pay
increases and UC is committed to providing those increases, the university
will have to make program cuts in other areas, UC officials said.
The budget cuts also defer the state's entire 1983-84 contribution to the
UC retirement system, which amounts to $101.4 million. That sum is to be
repaid to the retirement fund over the next 30 years.
As a result of the $14.7 million cut in student support services, the
$167-per-year increase in educational fees, which was approved on a contingent
basis by the UC board in March, will finance the student service program and
will provide additional funds for financial aid that will be needed as a
result of the increase in fees.
In the Cal State system, the governor cut the instructional budget by
$3.2 million and eliminated more than $1 million that he originally included
in his proposed budget for faculty promotions.
For both systems, the governor imposed a 5% increase in graduate student
fees, above the increase proposed for undergraduates in the budget.dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (08/05/83)
Graduate students at U of Toronto have been unionized for years.
The Graduate Assistants' Association (GAA) negotiates primarily
rates and loads for teaching assistants in courses. As a result,
the pay isn't as bad as it might be.
Dave Sherman, Toronto
--
{linus,cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!davedonn@sdchema.UUCP (08/19/83)
This is in place of comments of my own that I'm still working on... My
only remark on the article is that I want to direct your attention to
the fact that that computer users are getting the short end of the
stick; this is particularly short-sighted, especially since UCSD has
already committed itself to computer education. The current Computer
Center resources are so overused that individual departments have
sought outside funding for computers (the CC Unix VAX 11/780 runs at
capacity with 64 users and a load average between 30 and 60, 24 hours a
day, at the ends of quarters). I have misplaced the paper that this
article occurred in; it was in the LA Times San Diego Edition, Pt. II
p. 1, but I don't have the date.
Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. RRCF ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
UCSD Officials Told to Make Cuts:
University Loses $4 Million in Funds Axed by Deukmejian
By Lanie Jones, Times Staff Writer
UC San Diego division heads were told Monday they will each have to trim
1.8% from their coming year's budget to cope with state funding cuts.
The $1.7 million in across-the-board cuts for university divisions is
part of the $4 million in cuts facing UC San Diego because of the $48.6 mil-
lion Gov. George Deukmejian slashed from proposed University of California
system funds before signing the state budget July 21.
Each of the university's eight major divisions -- from the UCSD Medical
Center to the Academic Senate -- will be affected by a 1.8% reduction, said
Vice Chancellor Wayne Kennedy in letters sent Monday.
Measures could include cutting supply budgets, deferring hiring and pos-
sibly even laying off staff members later in the year, John Woods, associate
vice chancellor, said in a morning briefing session for reporters.
However, he said there will be no layoffs immediately and none among the
faculty.
The move was in sharp contrast to the way the president at San Diego's
other state-funded university has decided to make cuts over the past five
years.
At San Diego State University, President Thomas B. Day has repeatedly
rejected across-the-board cuts, saying they ultimately sap all the resources
of a university. Instead, Day has favored "narrow, deep" cuts in areas he has
not viewed as central to the university. For instance in 1979, he proposed
doing away with recreation and industrial studies departments; last year he
threatened major cuts in the student health service.
Day's proposals for cuts, however, have often been met by cries of
outrage from affected faculty and students. Money has usually been found to
avert their full impact and Day's proposed "deep" cuts have never been fully
implemented.
At UCSD, however, Woods said, the across-the-board cuts were the con-
sensus of a committee of top university executives and heads of those divi-
sions affected. The cuts were not likely to be opposed, he said. The divi-
sions involved are academic affairs, the UCSD Medical School, Scripps Institu-
tion of Oceanography, business and finance, resource management, the
chancellor's office, undergraduate affairs and the UCSD Medical Center.
But, if faculty and staff are expected to accept across-the-board cuts,
they and campus budget officials still regard them as serious. Five years
after the passage of the landmark property-tax cutting initiative, Proposition
13, UCSD is fighting an uphill battle to remain a top research university.
In addition to the $1.7 million in across-the-board cuts, the university
must cut $330,000 from its instructional materials budget this year, putting
off purchase of new, badly needed computers. It plans to forgo $158,000 in
deferred maintenance in the 1983-84 year.
Also, because Deukmejian did not fund a $1.9 million budget item to cover
utility increases, the university may be forced into another round of 2%
across-the-board cuts later in the year if it cannot find another source for
the money, Woods said.
The governor cut out merit increases for faculty and staff, but the UC
system is cutting other areas to put those expenses back in.
Even with the reductions, the university's overall budget is up slightly
over last year -- by 1.9% to $118.2 million. But it is not keeping pace with
inflation, Woods said. "If you look at the budget for the last three years,
state funds have increased 15% and inflation has increased by 16%. So that's
pretty close to a wash," he said. "But the kicker is that over the same
period our student enrollment is up by 19%. So with the same real dollars, we
are trying to educate one fifth more students." (This year about 12,500 stu-
dents are expected to attend, up from 10,300 three years ago.) Woods predicted
continued long waits for use of university computers and fewer sections of
come classes this fall. Some campus roofs leak and cannot be fixed now, he
said.
Also, Woods said, although students may not notice it, many UCSD comput-
ers are outmoded. To remain a "high-tech" university, UCSD should be replac-
ing many of its computers every two years, but instead is updating them at
earliest every five.
In addition, he said, the engineering school had only 55% of the space it
should be allotted, according to state standards for its enrollment and
faculty. The result was crowded classes and two or more professors sharing
research space designed for one professor.