A GESO Analysis
In early February, 1997, the Graduate School's Teaching Fellowship Program Review Committee, chaired by English Prof. Vera Kutzinski, issued its Final Report. Since that time, the Report has been the subject of much controversy among graduate students, undergraduates and faculty alike. The purpose of this analysis is to provide a context for further discussion and evaluation of the report's recommendations.
The report's recommendations fall into two categories. First, there are recommendations which respond directly to graduate student concerns, and which offer positive improvements in the TA system. And then... there is a series of proposals which have never been advocated by graduate students, and for good reason, because they are almost certain to create many more problems than they solve. What follows is a summary of the report's recommendations and likely effects, followed by a more detailed discussion of the potential problems raised by the report. Finally, we look at where the report came from, what its proposals are based on, and the procedural question of who gets to decide what to do with these proposals -- which of them the administration views as mandatory and which are open for discussion and revision.
This analysis is mainly focused on the nuts and bolts of the nitty gritty Kutzinski Report proposals. Behind the report are some much more vague, and much more controversial, guiding principles. These are very difficult to articulate, but GESO gave it a try in an article in the GESO Voice called "On the Philosophical Side." Check it out.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
SUMMARY
WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT THE REPORT / RESPONDING TO GRADUATE STUDENT CONCERNS
WHAT'S BAD ABOUT THE REPORT?
NO JOB DESCRIPTIONS: MASSIVE INEQUITIES WITH NO GRIEVANCE PROCEDURE
EFFECTS ON FACULTY & UNDERGRADUATES
IS YALE'S EDUCATIONAL POLICY BEING MADE BY LAWYERS?
Summary
I. Solutions to Current Problems
The report:
- endorses graduate students' call for equalization of TF3.5 job descriptions -- everyone will get the same salary for teaching a single section.
- supports expanded teacher training.
- provides a hopeful, if vaguely worded, proposal to increase the average funding available for graduate students in general
- calls for higher English speaking standards for TAs whose first language is not English; we hope that behind this proposal is a commitment to providing free ESL to all graduate students who want or need it.
II. Creating More Problems
The report's proposals include:
- abolition of all TA and PTAI job descriptions
- a 2-4 semester minimum teaching requirement for all graduate students in all departments
- a 2-semester limit on teaching beyond the requirement
- a near-total ban on graduate students teaching independent seminars
- a complex formula dictating specific semesters in which graduate students are allowed to grade or teach
- each department's faculty must devise, implement and monitor a unique training program
Taken together, these proposals are likely to create a host of new problems:
For graduate students:
- a net loss for those who are now fully funded without a teaching requirement.
- massive new inequities in job requirements. E.g., a PTAI in a Language department will be paid the same as a TA grading 20 students in History.
- no opportunity to teach two sections for higher pay. People who teach now two sections in English for TA5.8, or two PTAI sections in the languages, will be limited to one section, with lower pay.
- No PTAI will be able to get free health insurance by teaching two sections.
- a near-total ban on teaching independent seminars.
- mandatory grading jobs for first-time TAs, often in fields unrelated to one's work.
- maximum 6 semesters' teaching, meaning that upper-year students may be stranded without jobs.
- inability to file grievances concerning TA hours or job descriptions, or to apply for contingency-fund upgrade for TAs working above the hours required.
For faculty:
- more section teaching
- more grading
- more teaching of introductory and intermediate language classes
- graduate students cannot be used to replace faculty on leave
- graduate students cannot be used to teach required seminars for departmental majors, or to supervise senior essays.
- increased difficulty choosing which TA is best for a given course.
- increased difficulty recruiting the best graduate students to Yale.
For undergraduates:
- enrollment caps
- sections eliminated
- bigger sections
- work evaluated by anonymous graders from other fields
- fewer essays, term papers and other opportunities to learn how to write; more short, easy-to-grade assignments
- fewer seminars
The Story behind the Summary
What's Good About the Report / Responding to Graduate Student Concerns
TA3.5 Equalization. The report's single best proposal is its support for equalization of TF 3.5 job descriptions. Over the past year, more than 200 graduate students have signed grievances calling on the Graduate School to equalize TF 3.5 duties. Under the current system, TAs in the English, Comp. Lit and History of Art Departments get paid TF3.5 salaries for teaching one section, while those in all other departments have to teach two sections for the same salary. We are happy that the Kutzinski Committee has endorsed the principle of equal pay for equal work.
Improved Training. In addition, the Committee endorsed another long-held goal of GESO and other graduate student activists: more and better teacher training. In each of the past six years, teacher training has been a high priority on GESO's platform. Currently, the only centralized teacher training program is Working At Teaching (WAT), a grad student-run program set up after the 1992 TA strike. While WAT provides excellent training, we have had to struggle with the Graduate School's repeated attempts to cut the program's budget. Finally, the Kutzinski Committee found what all of us have known for a long time: Yale needs a major expansion of teacher-training opportunities, both within departments and through a central program.
Increased Funding? the Committee makes a hopeful, if vague recommendation which might lead to increased funding for graduate students, calling on the Graduate School to "strive toward a situation of equal tuition fellowship and basic stipend support for all registered graduate students." Assuming that equalization will not be done by reducing the current level of support enjoyed by well-funded students, this proposal might mean a significant increase in resources for graduate students who have low fellowship levels. However, it remains to be seen how the tentative language of this recommendation will be translated into reality.
English Training? The report calls for higher English speaking standards for TAs whose first language is not English. Improved English skills would not only benefit these TAs students; they would also improve graduate students' ability to pursue an academic career in English-speaking universities. However, this proposal will be realistic if Yale provides free and accessible English as a Second Language (ESL) training. To establish higher standards without providing the training necessary to meet them is a recipe for failure. Though the report is silent on the question of ESL funding, we are hopeful that behind the call for standards is a support for free ESL for all graduate students who want or need it.
If the Kutzinski Committee had stopped with its recommendations for more training, higher stipends, and equalized job descriptions, it would have served a valuable role in calling for solutions of long-standing problems. However, the Report heaps on top of these recommendations a long list of bizarre and counterproductive proposals for broader-ranging changes in the Graduate School. These additional changes do not come from graduate students ourselves -- they have never been on the GESO platform, have never been recommended by the GPSS, and were not proposed by graduate students responding to the Committee's own survey. We believe that this additional set of proposals creates more problems than it solves:
Science students will be worse off under the new plan. Only 6 of the 21 science departments now have a teaching requirement. For the rest, the Report imposes a new work burden with no compensation, in departments whose faculty have evidently never thought a teaching requirement was important. In fact, these students-take home pay will decrease, since -- whatever Yale thinks -- the IRS treats teaching as work and will deduct taxes in the semesters when people are teaching. The new requirement may also handicap these departments' ability to recruit the best students. Even outside the sciences, students who come in with significant outside funding will be forced to teach for free and will not be allowed to use their funding to free themselves to concentrate on research.
Pay cuts for some humanities teachers. In English, Comp Lit and History of Art, TAs get paid the 3.5 salary for teaching one section, and TA 5.8 for two sections. In the future, no one will be allowed to teach two sections, thereby eliminating this means of earning extra money. Even during the transition year or 1997-98, the report says only that a second section warrants "additional compensation," but does not guarantee a continuation of the current pay schedule; thus, it's possible that salaries could be lowered by next fall. For PTAIs teaching two sections in the language departments, the new plan means seeing their pay cut in half and losing the opportunity to get free health insurance.
Dissertation Fellowships uncertain. Dean Appelquist has suggested the possibility that University Dissertation Fellowships might be cut or eliminated as part of the financial balancing necessary to make the Kutzinski plan work. In a recent meeting, the Dean refused to guarantee that Dissertation Fellowships will be continued in the future, stating instead that this program is "on the table" for debate.
No TA3.5 Equalization in the Sciences. Why is there no TF3.5 equalization for the Science departments in 1997-98? In Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science and other departments which now require teaching, there is no reason TAs should continue to be responsible for two sections while everyone else only has to teach one. Are these departments being left behind simply because there is no GESO presence there, or because they haven't signed grievances? If so, this is a bad omen for things to come. Contemplating a system where the administration asks us to trust their good will in the absence of written job descriptions, it is troubling to see the same administration imposing a double work load on one set of TAs simply because they have not been politically mobilized.
One of the standard arguments Yale administrators have used against TA unionization is that GESO would impose too many "work rules" regulating the conditions under which TAs can be employed. Ironically, the Kutzinski system would create a series of work rules much more complex and labyrinth than any union contract in the country:
Requirement for what? Outside the sciences, most people are already teaching at least 2 semesters. Since the proposed stipend will probably be only slightly more (if at all) than the current TF3.5 salary, the new system will not change either the work or pay of TAs. What is gained by making this an academic requirement? For most people, everything will be the same except that all our work will be called "training" and our salaries "financial aid." However, creating a new system in which everything looks like it's just about training ends up twisting the current system into a distorted and unworkable mess.
No teaching outside your field. The Kutzinski report assumes that teacher-training is different for each discipline; thus both the number of semesters' teaching required and the exact sequence of teaching duties is supposed to be determined by separate committees within each department. By logical extension, no one should be teaching outside their department; if I'm in a program to be trained to teach sociology, for example, I shouldn't be teaching political science or history. Under the current system, cross-department teaching is an important way for departments to meet staffing needs and TAs to find jobs; both these needs would go unmet under the new system.
Extreme shortages and surpluses. Each department is supposed to negotiate with the Graduate School the exact amount of work, and the type of work, it requires. The report is adamant that "departmental staffing needs must not factor into determining how much graduate students should teach during their time at Yale." But the simple fact is that departments' staffing needs are very real. If the report is serious, there will be massive shortages of TAs in departments with large undergraduate majors, while smaller departments will have sections of 2 or 3 students in order to provide everyone an appropriate "TA experience." Indeed, if teaching requirements are really only based on pedagogy, then we should see requirements lowered in Biology and Psychology, where they are clearly pegged to staffing needs. If the report not serious, however, Yale will become the capital of pedagogical farce, with a host of reports explaining why the unique "disciplinary philosophies" of teaching Spanish and History require four semesters' "apprenticeship," while teaching Linguistics or Medieval Studies can be mastered in two. In this case, the proposals will leave teaching levels largely untouched, but envelop all of us in a new layer of cynicism.
Mandatory Grading. The report mandates that each department not only set a required number of semesters for teaching, but that it prescribe a sequence of teaching work which students are to follow over the course of this requirement. The simple fact at Yale is that there's a lot of grading work that needs to be done, which might not seem an obvious component of "training." The Committee, however, goes out of its way to define grading as part of one's training. "Any ongoing, complex interaction between teachers and students may be considered Îteaching'," the report reads, "and as such is approrpate to the apprenticeship model." In order to defend the concept of grading as training, each department is supposed to create a "trajectory ... [from] simple interactions with undergraduates to more complex engagements." This seems to mean that grading can only be done by first-time teachers -- otherwise you're off the training "trajectory." But there are two problems with this. First, there are simply not enough first-time teachers to do all the grading in large departments, especially if sections are eliminated in large lectures. Second, it inevitably means that every first-year teacher in big departments will have to grade, and may often be forced to do grading for a course unrelated to their work, just to help the department meet its needs. Instead of enhancing teaching opportunities, this seems like a mindless downgrading of TA work.
Less independent teaching, seminars or literature classes. For years, graduate students have been calling for more opportunities to teach our own courses. In the language departments, there is a widespread need to teach literature rather than solely language classes. Indeed, the Kutzinski Committee's own survey showed wide interest in increased opportunities for advanced teaching. Instead, the report calls for radical new caps on opportunities for graduate students to teach their own seminars. "Only in rare instances," it states, "should graduate students be permitted to teach advanced courses for an undergraduate major.".
Advanced students may be stranded without teaching opportunities or funding. After the first four years, we will be allowed a maximum of only two additional semesters' teaching -- and then only if one qualifies for "honors teaching" awards. Given that the average student now takes between 7-8 years to finish a PhD, this poses the prospect of advanced students being denied teaching jobs -- even while departments may be desperate for more teachers.
NO JOB DESCRIPTIONS: MASSIVE INEQUITIES WITH NO GRIEVANCE PROCEDURE
Massive new inequities. While the Kutzinski report correctly focuses on the solving the problem of unequal duties for TA3.5's, its plan for the future would create much greater inequities at all levels of the TA system. All job descriptions will be erased under the Kutzinski plan, with teaching requirements stated simply in terms of semesters. In this way, the report undoes the system built up over the past 25 years. The current system of TA ranks was invented in the early 1970s. Prior to 1971, all TAs were paid a flat "honorarium" of $300 per semester, no matter what job you had. In January 1972, TAs in the Philosophy Department figured out that they were teaching twice as many hours as the norm, and threatened to withhold fall semester grades unless they got a pay increase. By the end of that semester, Philolsophy TAs had their pay doubled, and the Graduate School instituted the current system of TA ranks and job descriptions. The Kutzinski essentially aims to go back to the pre-1971 system -- despite the fact that it was that systemt's tremendous inequities that led to its rejection. Under the report's proposals, a PTAI teaching five mornings a week of Spanish and a TA grading papers for a section of 10 students will get paid the same.
No more grievances or Contingency Fund upgrades. If the report gets implemented as written, the TA3.5 grievance may be the last grievance any Yale TA ever files. TAs in the past have faced situations of excessive sections sizes, being asked to prepare the curriculum, grade senior essays, and other demands they felt were unfair. In many cases, students were able to resolve these complaints -- either informally with faculty or administrators or formally through the Grievance Procedure -- by referring to established job descriptions. With no written description of job duties, however, there will be no basis for ever contesting whether the demands of a given job are fair or unfair, equitable or inequitable, appropriate or inappropriate. For instance, if the pressures of the new system lead administrators 2 or 3 years from now to increase section sizes, or to return to a norm of two-sections per TA, or to require TAs to do massive xeroxing work, or to decide that graders can have 50 students, and no limit on number of assignments to grade per semester -- no one will be able to contest these changes. With a teaching requirement stated solely in terms of semesters, there will be no standard of hours which can be appealed to in contesting unfair work demands or unilateral changes in conditions. Similarly, in the past, TAs who have worked significantly more hours than their TA rank calls for have been eligible for a salary upgrade from the Graduate School's Contingency Fund. In the Kutzinski version of the future, however, this will be impossible, since there will be no hours attached to any job description.
Collegiality and Competition in a System Without Job Standards. If the teaching "requirement" can mean anything from light grading to five-days-a-week language instruction to teaching a seminar, this will encourage graduate students and faculty to seek out myriad informal deals, with faculty seeking prize students as teachers, or light assignments for their advisees, and students seeking to meet their interests by cultivating good relationships with those on departmental hiring committees. Thus, the system will encourage an underground network of currying favor, setting TA against TA in a hidden competition for informal preferences where all formal definitions of job duties have been erased. If the establishment of standard stipends is designed, in part, to foster solidarity and collegiality among graduate students, the abolition of job descriptions will do just the opposite.
EFFECTS ON FACULTY & UNDERGRADUATES
Effects on faculty. One of the Report's explicit goals is to force faculty to teach more. Fewer TAs will mean more faculty teaching sections and grading; the near-total ban on graduate students teaching advanced seminars will mean faculty picking up more slack in seminars as well as large lectures. There is little chance of success in this regard. Firstly, the university's own criteria for tenure and promotion focus heavily on publications -- thus, faculty cannot devote more time to teaching without putting their careers in peril. Second, one of Yale's attractions to faculty considering taking jobs here is the fact that they will be granted significant time to pursue independent research. For these reasons, the call for faculty to teach more -- which has been repeated for five years -- has never produced significant results. If the University were serious about having more faculty teaching, it would hire more faculty members, which it can certainly afford to do. But the administration is moving in the opposite direction, having recently announced a total cap on all new faculty hiring. With no new faculty coming into departments, it will be impossible to meet undergraduate teaching needs without current faculty taking on significantly more teaching and grading responsibilities.
Faculty as teacher-trainers. The Report mandates that "departments and programs must assume more responsibility for making their faculty, especially junior faculty and new faculty, aware of what makes for an effective teaching experience." But why is it necessary for all faculty members to take on teacher-training responsibilities? Much of teacher training can be carried out through a central organization, as is currently done very effectively by the Working at Teaching program. WAT offers trainings tailored to particular disciplines, and previous studies have suggested giving particular faculty time off to participate in centrally-run training programs which would cater to students in their fields. To instead require each department to create a new administrative position, a faculty member responsible for teacher training, is overly burdensome. Moreover, faculty are not hired on the basis of being excellent teachers, nor are they themselves trained in how to teach others how to teach. Relying more on a smaller number of true experts through a centralized program -- as WAT does now -- and less on making each faculty member develop a whole new dimension to their careers -- would make better use of faculty's time and talents.
Effects on undergraduates. With a cap on new faculty hiring and a cap on TAs, there may be severe shortages of TAs. This will create pressure for course enrollment to be capped, for the elimination of sections, and for a redesign of courses away from grading-heavy assignments such as essays and term papers. Although the Report calls for sections to be limited to 20 students, there will be significant pressure to ignore this limit (History Chair Robin Winks has already suggested increased section sizes as a natural response to the new rules). In the past, TA shortages have sometimes been met by cutting sections and relying on multiple TAs as graders. However, the new system puts severe limitations on the use of graders. Since the Committee is determined to portray grading as part of a "training" sequence, only first-time teachers will be allowed to serve as graders. With a shortage of graders, there will also be pressure to redesign courses toward easier-to-grade assignments and away from mid-length or longer writing assignments. One of the hallmarks of a Yale education is learning to write through experience with essays and term papers. It's hard to imagine the rationale for cutting into this part of undergraduate training. In addition, it's likely that, in order to meet their grading needs, departments will be forced to press every first-time teacher into a grading job, regardless of specialization. If this happens, more undergraduates will be graded by people who don't know their field, don't have any relationship to the lecturer, and have little interest in the course readings. Similarly, the ban on graduate students teaching their own seminars will significantly reduce the range of course offerings available to advanced undergraduates. And if faculty are to take on more responsibility for teaching and grading sections of lecture classes, they can't also teach more seminars. The result will be a dramatic narrowing of course offerings both within departments and in the College Seminar series.
"HONORS" TEACHING AND POSTDOCTORAL TEACHING FELLOWS
"Honors" Teaching. This is a category of work whose significance is purely legal. Currently, the Graduate School offers a small number of Prize Teaching Fellowships for TAs whose students recommend them for a year of funding, during which they may teach their own seminar. The Committee wants to replace this with up to 200 "Honor" teaching fellowships, who will specifically not be allowed to teach their own seminars. "Honors" teaching will be the exact same work as all other teaching. Indeed, "honors teaching" is defined not as a particular type of course, but simply as the catch-all category for the extra teaching that needs to get done: "Honors teaching is any teaching above the required departmental/program apprenticeship teaching." What's the point, then? Obviously, the required teaching is not going to be enough to meet the needs of undergraduate students -- but Yale's lawyers don't want to have anything left which might be seen as employment. So instead of just leaving the current system as is -- letting whoever wants to teach after their fourth year do so (unless they have a dissertation fellowship) -- the Report wants to repackage this work as another kind of educational activity for graduate students' own benefit. "Honors teaching" will be teaching for pay. Since it's the same kind of teaching as other people do, its main attraction will presumably be for people past their fourth year who need to earn money. However, the Report cannot admit this possibility; instead, it attempts to dictate the very attitude of people who apply for these jobs: "Honors teaching" is "for graduate students whose explicit purpose is to further their professional expertise as teachers." One wonders what the Committee is thinking. Is access to these jobs to be based on the inner motives of applicants? Will people have to sign a form to get these jobs, stating that their intention is purely to serve their own training needs? Similarly, though the obvious purpose of this category is to deal with all the teaching needs not met through departmental requirements, the Committee insists that "at no point should honors teaching be used to fulfill departmental staffing needs." So they just want to create 100-200 new Prize Teaching Fellows with no connection to the teaching left to be done? Finally, though the jobs will be sought for their pay, the Committee is vigilant to remind us that this can't be thought of as a salary: though it "would carry a financial award, it should not serve as a form of financial aid." Don't ask/Don't tell comes to the Graduate School?
26) Postdocs teaching sections. In order to deal with the overflow of undergraduates who will not be taught either by faculty, graduate students in required teaching, or "honors" teachers, the Committee proposes a new innovation in the downsizing of the academic profession. Instead of hiring more faculty, Yale wants to create "postdocs" who will do part of the teaching now done by graduate students, including both sections and seminars. Rather than increasing the ranks of real faculty, this policy will take advantage of the desperation of academic job-seekers to get more low-wage teaching staff. Presumably, the reference to these jobs as "postdocs" rather than simply underpaid, temporary lecturers will be justified by suggesting that these people, too, are benefitting from invaluable pedagogical training experience. Maybe this is the administration's vision of the future: heading toward an all-apprentice, no-employee teaching staff...?
What will happen to graduate students who have already come to Yale under different expectations? In 1992, Graduate School Dean Judith Rodin established a policy that "grandparenting' always be in force for any change in [Graduate School] policies or procedures unless a student deems newer regulations to be more favorable." Can we be guaranteed that current students will not be required to abide by the new program unless they deem it a beneficial change?
IS YALE'S EDUCATIONAL POLICY BEING MADE BY LAWYERS?
To present the administration's case to the National Labor Relations Board, Yale has retained the firm of Proskauer, Rose, Getz & Mendelson, one of the largest New York law firms, with a specialization in anti-union labor law. In its promotional materials, the Proskauer firm boasts that its work is not limited to the courtroom, but rather that its lawyers "assist employers in the development and implementation of policies .... the drafting of personnel policy manuals .... to devise policies ... [that] will allow employers maximum flexibility and minimize the risk of litigation." Indeed, this seems to be what happened at Yale. It is hard to make sense of the combination of policies which make up the Kutzinski Report, until one takes into consideration the legal agenda of the Proskauer firm.
Central to the upcoming Labor Board trial -- and to the question of whether graduate students at Yale will have the right to choose whether or not we want a union -- is the question of whether a PhD Program is a "work-study" program or a "pure-study" program. For years everyone has acknowledged that being a TA involves getting part-time work experience as on-the-job training for a future faculty position. Unfortunately (for the administration), this means that TA's have certain legal rights and protections that Yale has long sought to deny them, namely the rights guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act. Thus, under the guise of the Kutzinski Report the University is now moving to redefine the PhD program as a "pure-study" program, reducing our teaching to a mere "academic requirement" like an exam or lab report. Katherine Kearns, Director of the Teaching Fellows Program, has played a key role in the production of the Kutzinski Report at the same time that she has been helping write the legal briefs for the University's case.
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This page was last updated on: November 30, 1999 |
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