Selfishness or solidarity? The case for faculty support of Stanford graduate students

The Stanford students graduated on Tuesday, November 12 go on strike – an action that is a first for our Stanford community, but is still on the rise increasingly common for graduate students across the country. As faculty, we have been following events closely and reading the university’s frequent reports updates on the bargaining process and the Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU) Frequently asked questions. In the spirit of a robust debate, we would like to provide an answer to our colleague Jonathan Berk’s recent op-edin which he criticizes graduate workers’ demand for a living wage as ‘selfish’.

Berk’s op-ed is misleading on several levels, including some basic facts. For example, he writes, “If you add Stanford’s tuition waiver to the current offer (about $53,000), you will find that the university is offering all its graduate students a subsidy of about $110,000.” Berk says that this salary ‘is realistic’. It’s not. Students only take actual classes for the first few years of their doctorate and spend most of their time researching, teaching, and writing their dissertations. What exactly would Berk pay $53,000 for during those years?

There is also a common misunderstanding about graduate student labor. Graduate students are both students and employees whose labor is essential to the functioning of a university. Most of us were graduate student workers before we became faculty. One of the profound distortions in Berk’s op-ed is his use of personal experiences as a reference point for graduate studies in general. Berk’s own Ph.D. in finance at Yale may have required little to no labor from doctoral students beyond their own research. If this is his point of reference, then it is no wonder he views our students as selfish. What he misses, of course, is that our students often perform an enormous amount of formally defined work (for example, in the Graduate School of Education there are many graduate students obliged to work 20 hours per week through various assistantships), which in many cases makes it very difficult for them to make progress in their own research.

Berk further argues that our graduate students deserve “a free, world-class education.” not a ‘living wage’. What does this mean for our university? That’s why not everyone can ‘dip’ into their savings College debt stands at $1.7 trillion. Should we use the Stanford Ph.D. Should students come from the ranks of public school teachers, social workers and the like? Or should academia only be open to those with a career on Wall Street or family wealth, or to those willing to starve themselves cancel health insurance for themselves and their families?

The Bay Area has some of the highest housing costs in the nation, and even subsidized housing on campus is expensive. According to The Stanford Daily, salaried graduate students working as teaching or research assistants typically spent about 40% of their income on campus housing each quarter in the 2020-2021 academic year. This has resulted in significant financial stress for graduate students. A 2022 Stanford Survey revealed that nearly 75% of Ph.D. college students are experiencing financial stress: 24% say it has affected their academic performance, 15% say it has affected their research or dissertation work, and 11% are considering a leave of absence or departure from Stanford as a result. In addition, 23% reported having to stretch their food or food allowance in the past 30 days because they were short on cash.

This situation is even more disturbing for the many graduate students raising families on campus. Although Berk seems to believe that the financial stress experienced by the students of his generation must be inexorably repeated for the next students, We don’t believe that a student should experience financial hardship while trying to get an education at Stanford.

It is no longer the case that a Ph.D. alone will, as Berk seems to believe, lead to “millions of dollars” through a “private sector job” or to the “luxury of getting paid to think about whatever you want.” Of course, it was arguably never a fair system to subject those seeking higher education to apprenticeship models, where more than half a decade of low wages and services to an advisor could be rewarded with a guaranteed tenure-track job – nevertheless in this current environment, where post-Ph.D. The number of placements has fallen and additions are increasing, the model is unsustainable.

In fact, for every STEM Ph.D. student who leaves Stanford with a high-paying job in industry, there are dozens from history, literature, area studies, philosophy and many other fields essential to the university’s mission who will struggle to find stable employment. As just one example, 68% of faculty members all U.S. colleges and universities had temporary appointments in fall 2021, up from 47% in fall 1987. It is no wonder that our graduate students are no longer willing to accept substandard working conditions to do essential research and teaching work for the university. The health and sustainability of a wide range of research areas are at stake.

Berk’s focus on what he calls graduate workers’ “ridiculous” demands for a living wage also ignores this fact: If you ask graduate students what upsets them most, they will tell you that one of the most important issues what they negotiate is a workplace free of discrimination And intimidation. These are issues that disproportionately affect women and gender non-conforming graduate workers, as well as graduate workers of color. Labs can provide major breakthroughs, but they can also reproduce toxic behavior, bullying and sexual harassment. It is naive to think that enrolling at Stanford University automatically provides a great education, when much of graduate training is designed to place these students at the bottom of a very high ladder. A union is a vehicle that ensures students can stay healthy and safe while working hard. Their work makes Stanford work.

Finally, we firmly reject the argument that our graduate students are “selfish.” Whether or not you agree with the specific salary requirements, faculty must recognize that our students invest an enormous amount of time and energy in these organizational efforts. Many, especially those soon to graduate, will not even personally benefit from this contract – yet they are still fighting for what they see as justice for future generations of graduate students. Calling for a strike in a context like Stanford, where this has never been done before and many faculty, including Berk, are hostile, is taking a huge risk. Dismissing our graduate students as “selfish” is an insult to their integrity and their principles.

It’s also worth noting that Berk’s op-ed attempts to pit our graduate students against our undergraduates, making the completely baseless claim that an increase in graduate worker wages could come from student financial aid. Suggesting that the money comes from the financial aid of other students is a well-targeted but unwarranted scare tactic. Immediately A $36.5 billion endowmentthere are more than a few other places the money could come from. Maybe, like the union has proposedthe increase could come in the form of reduced rents at Stanford-owned graduate housing. We encourage our colleagues to see through this fearmongering and embrace the strike as an opportunity to collectively reflect on our mission and ethical obligations as a university community.

SGWU has already achieved a major victory by sparking a public debate about what constitutes sufficient financial support and what the necessary conditions are for graduate students and the broader Stanford community to thrive. Let us support our students in exercising their legal right to suspend work and express their voices in their workplace.

Rebecca Tarlau, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education

Jonathan Rosa, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education

David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature

Subini Annamma, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education

Ramón Antonio Martínez, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education

Eujin Park, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Education

Natalie Zahr, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, School of Medicine

Antero Garcia, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education

Marci Kwon, assistant professor of art and art history

Sharika Thiranagama, associate professor of anthropology