Six Strategies of Casualization
Yale currently employs six strategies to get its teaching staff as cheaply as possible. All six provide Yale with a strong financial incentive to rely heavily upon TAs, and hence remove an important incentive for hiring faculty. All six contribute to the casualization of labor at Yale. All six should be eradicated.
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Strategy #1: Unpaid Teaching Requirements
This is Yale's newest and most lucrative strategy. When a department implements an unpaid teaching requirement, then any teaching that is performed as part of a degree requirement is no longer paid. Instead, students receive only their stipend.
The important question is not "Should teaching be required?" (a question on which intelligent people can disagree), but rather "Should TAs be paid for required teaching?"
We suggest that everyone receive a teaching salary, even if teaching is a requirement.
Examples: There are currently formal unpaid teaching requirements in the entire BBS, Spanish and Psychology. It has been suggested that such unpaid requirements be implemented in Religious Studies, Engineering.
Strategy #2: Replace Stipend with Salary
Often when we teach, our stipends are reduced the amount of our salary, which amounts to us not being paid for our teaching (unless we manage to earn more than our total stipend).
This confuses the point of a stipend with the point of a salary. Our stipend supports us as students and researchers, and is used by Yale to attract the most qualified pool of graduate students; often these stipends come from an outside source, and not from Yale. On the other hand, a teaching salary pays us for work we do teaching Yale undergraduates (who do pay Yale over $100 million/year in tuition)
We suggest that salaries always supplement and never replace stipends. This allows people in underfunded, heavy-teaching departments (e.g. the languages, history, religious studies, and political science) to earn their own summer funding.
Strategy #3: Salary Cap
Only a few years ago, Yale created a salary cap at the 9-month cost of living (approximately $12,500). It is applied most stringently on 1st and 2nd year students, who are asked to teach because TAs are needed, and who cannot earn more than $1500-2000 for that teaching. Given that a TF4.0 salary is $6400/semester, this is a significant and unreasonable pay cut.
The salary cap is particularly onerous when the student then has to study a language or do exams over the summer, and yet has no funding and no savings.
We suggest that the salary cap be eliminated. At the very least, the cap should be raised to match the 12-month cost of living (approximately $17,000 after taxes).
Strategy #4: Overcrowded Sections
The official section size is 18-20, even though faculty, undergraduates, and graduate teachers have insisted that sections of about 15 students are pedagogically superior.
Which is better: 3 sections of 20 students or 4 sections of 15? The latter would improve education, but would cost slightly more. Yale always chooses the former.
The official section size limit is frequently exceeded in order to avoid creating a new section or hiring another TA or increasing the current TAs salary. This has occured in the departments of history, religious studies, political science, philosophy, music, etc.
We suggest that sections be limited to 13-15 students, and that this limit be strictly enforced.
Strategy #5: Get Masters Students to pay back their salary as "tuition"
Masters students are often employed as teachers when a given department cannot fulfill its staffing needs with its own graduate students. Because master's students usually pay tuition, their TA salary only serves to reduce their tuition bill. When master's students teach, Yale is actually making money off the same people who are teaching its other students!
We suggestion that master's students who teach should not pay tuition while employed by the university.
Strategy #6: Workload Inequities
Because of insufficient or unfair job descriptions, students in one department can shoulder a significantly higher teaching workload without commensurate higher pay.
The TF3.5 debate is an example of this: students in English, Art History, and half of American Studies receive a TF3.5 salary for teaching one section. For many years, most students in the rest of the Humanities received a TF3.5 salary for teaching two sections. Now the 2-section salary has been raised to a TF4.0 salary. Nevertheless, those teaching one section outside of English and Art History currently receive only a TF2.0.
Similar situations exist across the sciences. In physics, 6 graders did the same work as 10 graders the previous fall, without additional pay; a TA position that paid $3000 last year paid only $1500 this year. In chemistry, leaders of organic labs must work significantly more, with no additional pay, than leaders of inorganic labs.
We suggest that Yale pay graduate teachers fairly and equitably.
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You may contact us by email |
This page was last updated on: November 30, 1999 |
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Graduate Employees and Students Organization |
http://www.geso.org |
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