Student-Worker Strike Repercussions - Part 7 (graduate education)

From an email circulated today by the Academic Senate:

To: Members of the Academic Senate

Dear Colleagues:

Amidst the email deluge, please pause to read Academic Senate news below of concerning trends in faculty hiring and student-faculty ratio at UCLA and across the University of California, a new task force to implement faculty rebuilding and renewal, sobering results from a Systemwide Senate faculty survey about the pandemic and how faculty experience our jobs, and a round-up of Systemwide Senate issues.

But first, a few words about moving forward in the aftermath of the recent strike. During the strike many faculty struggled to balance obligations and values that sometimes competed. Many yet again took on more labor. Now, the university faces the question of how to fund labor at the new contractual levels. 

The full financial and educational impact is yet to be understood, but one thing seems clear: it will be transformative. Our previous graduate funding model, which was strained, has been broken open. What will — and what should — change in graduate education? How will research change? I urge you to speak up about how UCLA and the UC should answer these questions.

A simple fact should guide us: research and graduate education are core to UCLA’s academic mission.

The University of California has underfunded graduate education for too long, as many Senate and joint Senate-Administration reports showed.* It follows that funding responsibility for reinvestment in graduate education and research should be shared across our whole campus, including by administrative units, and should not borne disproportionately by academic units and faculty PIs. Responsibility further should be shared among the University of California, the state legislature, and federal funders. We faculty must demand that academic units and faculty PIs do not, whether by intention or default, bear the full responsibility for this reinvestment in our core mission. This is an opportunity to make a historic reinvestment in graduate education rather than to reinforce or redistribute its underfunding. I urge each of you to make your voice heard by writing individually to the Senate and Administration, writing collective letters after discussion at faculty meetings and FEC meetings, and participating in our February Legislative Assembly meeting, about which you have received email notice...

Thank you,

Jessica Cattelino

Chair, UCLA Academic Senate

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*https://dms.senate.ucla.edu/issues/issue/?6728.UC.Graduate.Education.Funding.

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The email above suggests that the state should contribute more toward graduate education. We know that the legislature has primarily focused on undergraduate enrollment, as parents (voters) complain that little Tom or Sally didn't get into the UC of their choice. The fact is, however, that there are lots of issues and causes in California, all competing for resources. 

So here is a shameless plug for taking a look at California Policy Options 2023, edited by yours truly, and which is now available online for reading and/or downloading at:

https://archive.org/details/california-policy-options-2023

At that same link, you will find links to the annual online editions going back to 1997. (If you really need a copy of the print edition, let me know.)

We tend to think of UC as the center of the universe around which everything else revolves. But that is not the way the universe looks to others, particularly elected officials (legislators, governor, local office holders who depend on the state). It would be good to keep that in mind as responses to cost increases entailed in graduate support are considered.