All Quiet on the Ivy Front: Keeping Students Happy

Although Yale's teaching assistants have gone on strike to protest low salaries, graduate students at Ivy League colleges, Stanford and MIT have not unionized and are not likely to do so in the near future, officials at the schools say.

At Stanford, the graduate students' most recent run-in with the administration took place 15 years ago. Graduate school research assistants (R.A.'s), frustrated with low salariesand long hours, staged a walk-out and refused to resume work. The university took legal action against the R.A.'s, forcing them to return to work, says Mollie Goetz, student service officer at the graduate school.

"The R.A.'s demanded more compensation for their lab work. Eventually the university proved that their workload was in fact a necessary part of their education," Goetz says.

Since that time, Stanford has raised teaching assistants' salaries "significantly" and tried to cater to their specific needs, Goetz says.

"Ever since then, the university has been extremely sensitive to graduate student issues. There has been a determined effort to raise teaching assistant salaries over the last several years," Goetz says.

"There is a Center for Teaching and Learning which helps graduate students with their teaching responsibilities, but no university-wide organization or union to handle their complaints. It is more likely that any student concerns would be submitted to their individual departments," Goetz says.

Close But No Cigar

In a move that had less drastic consequences than similar actions at Yale, T.A.'s at the University of Pennsylvania recently formed the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GPSA) to ask the administration for a pay increase to compensate for a higher cost of living.

The GSPA obtained half of its request for a $1000 increase to students' yearly stipend of $6500, says the GSPA's Wayne Glasker.

Still, the yearly stipend "doesn't really cover the cost of living," Glasker says. Since T.A.'s are not allowed to be employed outside the university, they "are forced to take second jobs covertly," he says.

T.A.'s are not permitted to take outside jobs because they are expected to divide their time evenly between teaching and taking courses, says Donald Fitts, associate dean of graduate studies at Penn's School of Arts and Sciences. Whether or not T.A.'s salary is enough to live on "depends on your standard of living, doesn't it?" Fitts says.

Last year, Penn instituted a training program for T.A.'s, Glasker says. "I think the workshops have helped," he says.

Since then, "there is an improvement in T.A. teaching as registered by the lack of complaints by undergraduates," Fitts says.

Despite the presence of GPSA, T.A.'s at Penn are unlikely to unionize in the near future, Glasker says. The administration at Penn is very anti-union and the large number of people who want to teach would make it "very difficult" to form an effective union because "scabs" would fill any position left vacant in a strike, Glasker says.

Happy at Harvard

While graduate students at many schools teach to pay their tuition, students at Harvard and Dartmouth teach to fulfill degree requirements, receiving tuition breaks from outside funds.

"We have a rather unique situation here at Harvard," says John B. Fox, administrative dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). Tuition breaks for the 2400 graduate students do not depend on how much teaching they do. Instead, individual departments require some 1000 graduate students to teach a certain number of "fifths," one section per semester, to fulfill degree requirements.

"We charge low tuition rates outright for every one," Fox says.

Student tuition rates decrease steadily after the first two years of graduate school. If students need to stay on for additional years to finish work on their degrees, they are charged only minimal tuition, Fox says. Figures decrease from an initial rate of $12,015 for the first two years to only $1100 by the fifth year.

Harvard's first-and second-year teaching fellows are paid an average of $2147 to teach one section for one semester, while third and fourth year T.F.'s are paid more, Fox says.

Although Harvard does not have an organized teaching assistant association as does Yale, graduate students may bring any problems they have before the student-faculty Committee on Graduate Education, Fox says. Right now, there are no issues before the committee, he says, but he adds, "We always try to be alert to the needs of every T.F."

Like Harvard's Dartmouth's graduate students teach primarily to fulfill degree requirements. "We do not have T.A.'s at Dartmouth," says Bruce Pites, associate dean of the Faculty of Sciences at the Dartmouth's graduate school.

"All graduate students are granted what we call Dartmouth Fellowships, with no specific teaching duties attached. Students then participate in a specific amount of teaching as dictated by their personal degree requirements," Pites says. "Any financial contribution attached to their efforts is consistent with the payments of other universities."

A graduate student organization, the Council of Graduate Students, functions as a forum to address any graduate student complaints.

Paying for Princeton

Unlike teaching assistants at Dartmouth and Harvard, graduate students at MIT and Princeton, Brown and Cornell Universities usually teach to earn tuition, as well as to fulfill degree requirements.

More than 60 percent of all Princeton graduate students teach at some point while pursuing their degrees, says Carolyn Schindwolf, associate dean for Budget and Financial Planning at the graduate school.

A first-year graduate student at Princeton normally receives upwards of $8600 for full-time teaching duties, which average 20 or more hours per week, Schindwolf says. By the second year of teaching, they earn up to $10,000.

These numbers have kept the Princeton graduate students quiet. "There haven't been any organized complaints by graduate students regarding teaching benefits, but there have been some concerns expressed that the University Fellowship, once taxes have been taken out, doesn't amount to very much," Schindwolf says.

Similarly, at Brown and Cornell, administrators say teaching assistants feel there is no need for unionization, although these schools have significantly fewer graduate students teaching.

About 28 percent of all Brown graduate students work as teaching assistants, says Virginia Baxter, an official in the graduate school department.

"Brown is very proud of our Center for the Advancement of College Teaching. The program basically teaches our graduate students how to teach," says Bernard Bruce, associate dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Isabel Gardner, assistant dean of Cornell graduate school, says, "a Graduate School Committee functions to address any concerns voiced by the T.A.'s, but we don't have a union. There haven't been any specific complaints over salaries or benefits, but of course we would all like to see them paid more."

About 25 percent, or 1500, of Cornell's graduate students teach approximately one course per semester and receive a basic stipend of $6400, plus a tuition benefit, Gardner says.

At MIT, T.A.'s are paid full tuition and they receive an average monthly salary of $360.

Most of MIT's graduate students teach before taking their general exams, after which they become research assistants for professors. Since most people write their dissertations on the topic for which they are research assistants, this helps them in the long run, says Jeffrey Meredith, president of the Graduate Student Council.

The T.A.'s responsibilities range from teaching sections and doing grading to giving actual lectures. "Some faculty leave the real teaching to the T.A.'s and come in only for lectures they can do off the top of their head," Meredith says.