Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site sdchema.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn From: donn@sdchema.UUCP (Donn Seeley) Newsgroups: net.college,uc.general Subject: Welcome to Hard Times (I) Message-ID: <776@sdchema.UUCP> Date: Tue, 26-Jul-83 16:46:18 EDT Article-I.D.: sdchema.776 Posted: Tue Jul 26 16:46:18 1983 Date-Received: Thu, 4-Aug-83 23:29:22 EDT Organization: U.C. San Diego, Chemistry Dept. Administration Lines: 209 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."