x-posted: howtheuniversityworks.com
Does your idea of public higher education include values like fairness and diversity? Yeah, me too. Ditto for the several hundred grad students drumming in the rain in Illinois today, after their union struck to defend tuition waivers. Get updates and join their 2,500 fans on the GEO Facebook page.
Charging tuition to working graduate students is essentially a pay-to-work scheme that would represent an educational death sentence for many grad students, as Robert Naiman at Huffpost puts it.
Noting that the administration’s refusal to bargain tuition security would fall most heavily on “out-of-state, minority, and foriegn graduate students,” AAUP president Cary Nelson walked the line with GEO this morning.
“The diversity that is the lifeblood of the campus is at stake,” he said.
California Students Demand: “Let us Study!”
In advance of Wednesday’s walkout and strike at several University of California campuses — and kicking off the “Education is not for Sale” Global Week of Action (hat tip to Eli Meyerhoff again) — about 250 students rallied and then occupied the science library this weekend at UC Santa Cruz (video; watch to the end to see students keep pouring in).
This could be an interesting week, folks.
Couple things of note: the walk-out poster’s imperative to “escalate,” drawn from the language of the more radical UC Santa Cruz occupiers.
Plus all that dancing and drumming.
3 Responses to Pay to Work? GEO Says No
crunchycon - November 17, 2009 at 10:09 am
You haven’t done all of the homework on this one, Mark. The university’s policy was clearly stated in an email from the provost:In the last 24 hours there have been many questions about the University’s intention regarding tuition waivers.Let me be as clear as possible in response to this issue. The excellence of our graduate programs depends on our capacity to provide fair and reasonable expectations for graduate assistants regarding their tuition waivers. Graduate students with assistantships will not have their tuition waivers reduced while they hold qualifying assistantships, are in good academic standing, and are making proper progress toward graduation in the program in which they began. This commitment is consistent with our long-standing and ongoing University practice.The GEO wants the waivers guaranteed, period, not dependent on their “[hold] qualifying assistantships, [are] in good academic standing, and [are] making proper progress toward graduation in the program in which they began”.
crunchycon - November 17, 2009 at 10:09 am
Pardon. Marc.
siguccs - November 19, 2009 at 9:57 am
Hmm. The chronicle just isn’t as good as it used to be, huh?