About Berk’s lack of understanding of the student crisis

On Tuesday evening, the Stanford Graduate Workers Union announced that this is the case canceled an expected strike because the negotiating committee had reached a provisional agreement with the university. The union was scheduled to strike on Wednesday morning.

The letters below were sent in response to those from Jonathan Berk Op-Ed. Berk is the AP Giannini Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

—

At first I was simply annoyed by Professor Berk’s op-ed. His language drips with disdain and disdain for the graduate workers who rely on him. But on reflection, I now find his argument strange.

It is the artifact of a conservative, classist sensibility. Conservative with a lowercase ‘c’: the status quo has probably served Professor Berk well enough. It is charming in its simplicity. It makes his point bitterly, but without actually addressing the reasoning of his opponents. He lives in a world where most students, like many of his MBAs, will easily make up for lost tuition and wages after they graduate. He does not live in a world where the number of tenure-track jobs is decreasing by the day; where adjuncts earn less than $30,000; and where underemployment is rampant among PhD students. It is a world in which economic relations have nothing to do with power. For him, fair is the price the market demands. I’m jealous of him. It seems like a much nicer world to live in. It’s a world in which I – a future graduate of a prestigious law school with a well-paying summer job in prospect – am held in pretty high esteem. It’s a world that many of my colleagues at the Stanford Graduate Workers Union don’t find themselves in.

Professor Berk should strongly consider rewriting his piece and applying the investigative and argumentative methods he likely teaches his students. If he needs help making those arguments, I would encourage him to enroll in one of the many wonderful seminars taught by his colleagues in the humanities, the social sciences, or here at the law school. At Stanford Law School, we are often reminded that respectful disagreement is possible, even on controversial issues. But respectful disagreement requires that you actually respect those with whom you disagree. I hope that in a new draft, Professor Berk will consider treating his interlocutors with respect – after all, they are his employees and colleagues. I look forward to reading a better written essay from him on this topic in the future.

Bryce Tuttle BA ’20, JD ’26

—

Dear editor,

Like Professor BerkI quit a well-paying job (I was an engineer) to pursue a Ph.D. My colleagues also looked at me in disbelief. In my case, it was because I wanted to study education, a field in which I would essentially abandon any hope of well-paid future work.

It is only thanks to my career as an engineer that, now that I am in my third year of my PhD, I am somewhat protected from the stress of food insecurity. I work about 60 hours a week on science or research. After paying my rent at Stanford, I typically receive between $0 and $377 in salary from the university every two weeks before tax. I pay about 44% of that as my federal and state taxes. That leaves at best $105 per week, or $15 per day, for all expenses.

I’m trying to avoid debt or living in unsafe housing by dipping into my savings. Other peers, who come from wealthy families or are married to STEM professionals, have similarly managed to avoid these tensions. But are those the only graduate employees Do we want Stanford to teach? Independently wealthy people or those in high-paying fields such as finance?

What is Stanford’s purpose? Be a medium for the reproduction of social inequality? Or to train scientists who can help solve society’s biggest challenges? If we only serve the wealthy or those studying in high-paying fields, then we are such a medium. I propose that we hold Stanford to a higher standard.

Haley Lepp is a Ph.D. candidate at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

—

TomorrowStanford graduate students will strike for the first time as an affiliated union. This work stoppage is not something anyone sought. Rather, it is the government’s intransigence that has led us to this point. If the University’s unwillingness to respond to the reasonable economic demands of the Stanford Graduate Workers’ Union (SGWU) is based on the faulty reasoning and lack of understanding illustrated in Professor Jonathan Berk’s statement recent op-edit is no wonder that graduate students have taken the drastic measure of withholding labor to demonstrate how important they are in maintaining university operations.

It is worth summarizing some of these economic demands before deconstructing the bad arguments against them. Although Stanford is a five-year financing guarantee with much fanfare a few years ago, the govt refuses to anchor convert this promise into a legally enforceable contract. After years of historical inflationof no commensurate pay increase for graduate workers, SGWU calls for a wage increase to bring graduate workers back to a wage level equivalent to that of a few years ago. Graduate workers also want assurance that their pay increases will not happen immediately eaten up by rent increases on Stanford-controlled properties – funneling money from employees’ pockets into the university’s coffers. SGWU too seeks protection against abuse of power, as well as an enforceable complaints procedure available to the university refused to accept.

All these demands amount to a request for a living wage. Despite Professor Berks scoffs at the idea of ​​a living wageis the demand to “earn enough money to buy the things necessary to live, such as food and clothing” is a requirement that must be met so that graduate employees can continue to provide value to Stanford. Only someone who is truly out of touch with the lived reality of working for a living would scoff at the request for a salary that can cover basic needs. It betrays the attitude with which university education is intended only for the rich: those who can afford to take jobs that don’t pay enough to live on.

The university maintains that current graduate student pay rates are competitive with comparable institutions. Looking at the raw numbers, you might believe this if you ignore the differences in the cost of living. A dollar in Silicon Valley doesn’t go as far as a dollar in New Haven, Princeton, or other similar institutions. In the same way that we normalize our experimental data for analysis, normalizing salary to the local cost of living is essential to making a valid comparison. Perhaps Stanford Law School and the Graduate School of Business are not teaching the need for proper data handling, as evidenced by the attitude of our provost and president. When half or more of your paycheck goes toward rent, the total dollar figure is cold comfort at best.

The worst argument Professor Berk makes is that he is trying to muddy the waters by claiming that tuition benefits are an actual part of the compensation that graduate employees receive. No, they can’t eat the tuition – and besides, this is a huge amount of money that graduate students never have any control over. That’s why the University fought hard against the proposed provision in the Trump tax bill that would have taxed graduate students on tuition as if it were compensation. If the tuition is really intended to compensate graduate students, bringing the total to more than six figures, then by contrast, the thousands of postdoctoral fellows employed by Stanford at least $70,000 are being severely exploited and underpaid. In what world does it make sense for someone to have a Ph.D. to suddenly, while doing post-doctoral research, receive a pay cut of more than $40,000 from the same employer? The university cannot have it both ways.

The truth about tuition is that it is a transfer of money from grants obtained by professors to central university funds. I would expect a professor of finance to understand how to keep track of money as it flows during university accountingbut apparently that is too great a demand on the intellect. Professor Berk would rather spend his mental efforts justifies the existence of charlatans in highly qualified professions. Graduate employees never see the tuition, and this is a major expense that professors face.

This is why SGWU has proposed covering the wage increases by abolishing graduate tuition fees only as Princeton University dida suggestion that Stanford rejected out of hand. That approach would increase wages for graduate workers and ease the burden on faculty grants, but administrators refuse to even consider that option. SGWU has provided several other options through which their proposed salary increases can be implemented without harming other stakeholders of the university. The ball is in the university’s court.

Tim MacKenzie received his Ph.D. in the chemistry department at Stanford. During that time, he co-organized with the Stanford Solidarity Network, the predecessor to the Stanford Graduate Worker Union. He also worked as a postdoc at the Genetics department.