Understanding the Temple Graduate Student Strike

What's really going on here?

A strike led by the Temple University Graduate Students Association (TUGSA), which represents over 700 graduate student workers is roiling the campus and has recently broke into the national news. The crux of the matter is that after a year of negotiations TUGSA remains at odds with the administration over the scope of increased compensation for a new collective bargaining agreement. Temple graduate workers are currently paid $19,500 per year and receive health insurance for themselves but not dependents. Temple is proposing pay increases that will accumulate to a peak level of $22,600 in 2026, while TUGSA is pushing for an increase to $32,800 and the inclusion of dependents in health care coverage. Suffice to say, the two sides find themselves a great distance apart and on January 31 TUGSA made the difficult decision to strike.

Certainly, striking is a purposely temperature raising tactic meant to demonstrate the collective power of workers who as individuals have little to no institutional standing. However, this tense state of affairs was dramatically escalated by the administration on February 8 with the announcement that it will terminate the tuition and health care benefits of those participating in the strike. This is no less than a naked expression of the university's power and its ability to punish those with the temerity to stand up to them. However, as with most overt acts of aggression, it conceals an extensive underlying weakness and fear.      

I am an alum of Temple's Graduate School receiving a Ph.D. in political science and was a member of TUGSA, serving one year as its Director of Organization during my time as a teaching assistant from 2004 to 2008. This experience hopefully provides me with some ability to clear the dense fog that has already come to encompass this ordeal (though it is important to note that I in no way speak for, nor claim to represent, the views of TUGSA). It is little surprise, that as the tension mounts and the strike becomes visible to those outside the Philadelphia area, the graduate student workers and the administration’s actions are increasingly mischaracterized and fitted to readymade lenses.

This action is important, not only for my TUGSA colleagues seeking just compensation for their work, but also because it speaks so readily to the nature of graduate student work, the system of American higher education, and class politics in the the United States.

What do graduate student workers do?

Firstly, let's briefly review what exactly graduate student workers do. The short answer is, a whole lot. But to be more exhaustive, graduate work can involve: assisting professors with their research (this can run the gamut from more clerical work to co-authoring scientific papers), assisting with course instruction including running discussion sections, grading exams and essays, mentoring students, developing and delivering lectures, providing other forms of departmental service, and in many cases teaching classes as the instructor of record, which is academic-bureaucratic speak for running the whole show from top to bottom. This last one is a surprise to many, even those who have attended colleges and universities.

At Temple, I taught five courses in this capacity. On some level, this was a great opportunity and one that I found quite humbling as a green 27 year old with a severe case of imposter syndrome. But it was a daunting task the required an immense amount of work in terms of both preparation and day-to-day management. Teaching at a university was a dream-job, but dream jobs are jobs all the same, and despite some strange notions that have taken hold in the culture, people who do work they love still need to be adequately compensated. While I was at Temple I worked all four years as a waiter to just scrape by.

To be clear, I am not trying to present myself as some sort of victim or worthy of sympathy, rather merely hoping to convey that the vast majority of graduate student workers are not living high on the hog. Indeed, my position was relatively advantageous when compared to many others as I was single and had none of the concerns and additional financial obligations that come with having a family to support. Further, given that the cost of living has far outstripped pay increases, I am certain the current grad student workers at Temple face more difficult conditions than I did.

But, as I can imagine a great many are saying to themselves now, you received full tuition and compensation for you labor, and were able to earn a Ph.D. from a major university. Also, this was your choice so if you did not like it, you should have left. Taking the second argument first, such a claim could be made for anyone being under-compensated for their work. As such, by this logic, no one should ever ask for a pay raise but should simply quit if they feel that they should be paid a higher wage. I would guess that very few people would dispense such definitive advice to a friend or colleague who feels that they should be paid more. Additionally, though people can and do change graduate programs, there is a great deal more friction involved in the process than exists in many other lines of work.

‘Free’ tuition

But what about the 'free' tuition. Currently at Temple annual tuition remission works out to roughly $20,000 and the compensation is for a 'part-time' job of only 20 hours per week. Little back of the envelope math and it seems like the 'effective' pay $40,000 per year plus benefits and you are coming away with an advanced degree in hand. I can understand why to many folks that would not seem like such a bad deal and that TUGSA's push for an over $10,000 pay raise is borderline egregious.

Here is where we need to plum a bit deeper into the nature of the commercial enterprise that is higher education in the United States and look a little more closely at how the (pardon the pun) parchment is made. First, let's start with that $20,000 figure. I am a political economist by trade and this speaks to one of the enduring questions of our discipline, value. Certainly, to some extent, value is always an abstract proposition, however in this instance such a valuation is of a truly ephemeral nature.

To understand this, we need to take yet another step back to consider why people are getting Ph.D.'s. Firstly, I am focusing on those pursuing Ph.D.'s because, by and large, they will make up the bulk of those serving in the capacity of graduate assistants (there are certainly exceptions). A large portion, though by no means all, of those pursuing a Ph.D. do so as an avenue, or better said, the avenue, to a career in academia. This almost universally true of my colleagues in the humanities and social sciences.

What's more, given the changing nature of employment in higher ed over the last several decades, full time, tenure (or tenure track) positions have been falling precipitously. For those outside of the game, this is essential information. Basically, commencing Ph.D. studies in a subject like history or sociology, is akin to entering a massive lottery where only a very small percentage of your cohort will attain the ultimate desired end, a tenured university professorship. Now it needs to be said that it is indeed a good place to land. In the interest of full disclosure I am currently a tenured faculty member of a fine university in Japan and feel quite fortunate to have, through some mix of effort, luck, and almost certainly the mere fact of my white male-ness, landed on such serene shores. Suffice to say, merit and the quality of one's work does matter, but so do a host of other factors that are well out of the control of any Ph.D. holder out on the academic job market.

The fact is, for a great many Ph.D.'s, post graduation will be a struggle of doing a host of low-paying adjunct positions at many different schools, or a series of post-doc appointments that tend to last only a few years, and ultimately having to make the difficult decision to leave the profession all together. Again, this is not to tug at the heart strings, but rather to give a clear explication of the terrain we are covering.

And this brings us to perhaps a fuller understanding of what is going on at Temple (and numerous  other grad schools around the country) and a better means to process the numbers being bandied about by the Temple administration. This goes back to the issue of value and that $20,000 figure. Here we can looked to the discipline of economics for some assistance. For the reason stated above, for your run of the mill liberal arts Ph.D. programs the demand for a nearly $100,000 degree (often, quite a bit more) in say my field, political science, is pretty close to nil. Indeed, some students with niche needs, or a sizable bank account, may be willing to fork over that kind of cash to be a doctor of philosophy. But it would simply not be a viable financial decision for the vast majority of people.

To put it differently, if universities such as Temple were to not offer tuition coverage for a Ph.D. in political science (to keep the example consistent) there would just not be many takers, nor the trenchant competition that now exists for graduate assistant positions among the highest quality students. Yes, you can borrow sizable sums to attend grad school in the U.S. and that would cover tuition at most programs. But again, the number of people willing to take on such debt for a Ph.D., especially in the social sciences and humanities, would be significantly reduced. Of course, many people do take on such debts to attain an undergraduate degree but when compared to a Ph.D. in political science, for example, the expected ,on average, returns are significantly lower.

Which brings to another famed economics concept, opportunity cost. It stands to reason that quite a few Ph.D. students are taking substantial cuts in potential wages, and accrual of wage-levels over the 6+ years it tends to take to complete a Ph.D. Remembering that this is only to have the small (and ever-winnowing) chance to etch out some sort of regular existence in academia. Of course, there is some variation, but in my case, and for a host of other Ph.D. students, my years spent training to be a 'doctor' of political science really formed me into a very specific instrument to do a very particular job. In short, Ph.D. students are taking on a sizable amount of risk in pursuing the course they do, even if their tuition is being waived as part of a graduate assistantship. Which again speaks to why borrowing over $100,000 for a Ph.D. in political science would make little financial sense, even for the most passionate.

All as a way to say, Temple can value this tuition as $20,000 per year and treat it dollar-to-dollar as compensation all they want, but it grossly misrepresents the economics of what is going on. It also misrepresents the politics of what is going on. As discussed, Ph.D. granting institutions hold significant levers of power in that they retain pretty much all of the keys needed to open the doors for even a chance to work in academia. For them, the fact that the vast majority of their students are either unable or unwilling to pay over $100,000 for a Ph.D. is, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, a major asset to many research institutions. Especially, less well-healed public institutions like Temple.

This takes us much closer to what is really going on and why the administration is willing to play such an aggressive hand against those striking for higher pay and better benefits. As highlighted above, Temple relies significantly on graduate students to teach a sizable share of its courses. For Temple, and many other universities, this represents a windfall as graduate students can be paid at a fraction of what full-time, or even in some cases, adjunct faculty would be paid.

Similarly, a big part of the higher ed game at research-centered institutions like Temple is bumping up research output numbers, which in theory boosts reputation, applications, and ultimately enrollment. Graduate assistants are an essential part of assisting with, and in many cases collaborating on, the publications by senior faculty that boosts these numbers. This is in addition, to the role of TAs in allowing one senior faculty member to offer a class with 200+ students as they will manage all of the grading and a large share of student interactions.

In this way, Temple and other Ph.D. granting institutions are able to parlay their role as academic minters into taking reduced wages in exchange for ‘free’ access to its degree programs. But again, to make any sort of sense of the notion that free tuition is ‘giving’ students $20,000 a year one needs to imagine the alternative is that every student on a fellowship would be replaced by someone paying full fare. A dubious assumption for the reasons discussed above. Further, even if this were the case, it would most likely be a losing financial proposition for the university in terms of loss of educational services provided by graduate students.

‘Part-time’ Work

But, one may retort, this is a part-time position to cover only 20 hours a week! Yes and no. Yes the contract grad assistants at Temple work under stipulates a maximum 20 hour work week. However, this again wholly mischaracterizes the nature of a graduate assistant’s relationship to the university and the nature of their commitments. Being a graduate assistant in terms of coursework and contract obligations is a more than full-time commitment to the university. To be clear, one’s ability to stay on as a grad assistant employee is predicated on maintaining a minimal level of academic achievement and degree progress, so the two roles are far from distinct. When I was at Temple, our employment positions needed to be approved for renewal each year.

I can imagine that many are thinking that such a relationship, where one is both a seeker of university credit and a dispenser of credit as an instructor has all the makings of a messy set of overlapping relationships. Yes, it is a mess and one that universities for many years have exploited for maximal advantage. TUGSA was at the forefront of the now burgeoning graduate student worker unionization movement that has started to push back on the way that this system has worked to capitalize on the university’s position of power as a gatekeeper.

This brings us back to the recent egregious power flex by Temple’s administration and explains why I described it as both an overt demonstration of its dominance as well as underlying vulnerabilities. For all of the reasons laid out, the exchange of labor for credentialing lies at the core of the business model for many Ph.D. granting institutions lacking the multi-billion dollar endowments of Ivy League schools or places like Stanford. In some ways it mimics the practice of businesses that seek to trade ‘exposure’ for work that so many artists have to confront and push back against.

Of course, as with artists, pursuing a Ph.D. tends to be reflective of some innate desire, something akin to what religions refer to as vocation, and the poor compensation for graduate labor is a mechanism for commodifying such passions to pursue a course of study and become a bonafide producer and practitioner of knowledge and, dare I say, wisdom. As logic tells us, any single random Ph.D. student has few devices to push back against the terms stipulated by these holders of the ultimate coin of the realm in academia, the Ph.D. However, as a collective, they threaten to throw a core source of revenue generation into chaos. This is a threat and this is why Temple played its ultimate trump card by demanding tuition payment by striking students by March 9 and cutting off their health care for good measure. To be clear, Temple was under no legal obligation to take such a step.

Such a maneuver has the doubly duplicitous (or advantageous from the view the administrators promulgating this aggressive act) of potentially running out, or forcing the capitulation of, the activists on strike and sending a message to all others that the hammer will come down on you if you step out of line. This is no small threat to someone 3-4 years into a Ph.D. program.

On that note, it is worth addressing Temple’s continual, seemingly gleeful pronouncements that ‘only’ twenty percent of the membership is actively on strike.¹ Well, another framing is that twenty percent of a population that is largely already struggling to make ends meet is willing to indefinitely forgo salary and now health care as well as put their academic careers in jeopardy to fight not only for themselves but even more for the students that will follow them in the years to come. As a former active organizer with TUGSA I can confidently say that a large share of the eighty percent still working fully subscribe to the union’s position. Further, I do not begrudge, nor chastise how they ultimately decided on such a difficult question, especially when many have mouths to feed and basic bills to cover.

This is the nature of solidarity, those who can sacrifice will, so that others, both present and future may enjoy a fairer deal. This brings me to the last point I wish to raise. And that is how this action is playing out in the commentariat and the way it speaks to the ongoing distortion of class politics in the U.S. Yes, despite all of the heady and ‘counter-intuitive’ takes from my brethren in the social sciences, class politics is well alive in today’s America. The brute aggression by the administration in this case brings that to light.

Class Politics in Today’s America

What we need to distinguish is between how class filters into voting and how class politics is exhibited and experienced in people’s everyday lives. There has been a long (and unfortunately quite successful) effort to change our perception of class politics. In this coding, the grad students at Temple who come from all walks of life and are themselves actively seeking to improve their lot, both economically and humanistically, are branded as whiny, entitled brats. On the other hand, those making salaries well into the six figures and who are acting like petulant brutes targeting and disciplining those standing up for themselves and their colleagues are the ‘good’ guys.

This is not the universal coding, but the fact that many American who are themselves struggling mightily would subscribe to this view speaks to the challenges we are facing. Americans of all status, for all of their virtues, tend to have distorted or naïve understandings of power. I have no doubt that if such an egregious act were carried out by a large corporation in say West Virginia, the community would stand by firmly with the workers, as they did during the teachers strike a few years back.

Graduate students are pursuing elite qualifications, often at elite institutions, but hopefully this essay has helped to lay out some the important ways in which they are vulnerable workers in precarious positions like many others. I am not suffering under any illusions that a lot of these struggling people in the U.S. will come to some magical epiphany and throw their support behind the movement of graduate student workers. But I do hope that a better understanding of the lay of the land in this highly fraught domain of employment helps get us some small steps in that direction. The Temple graduate students suffering at present to further the interests of those they will likely never meet or know are the small glimmering lights of hope I look to in these undoubtedly dark times. I hope others will, too.

1. It is impotent to note here that this is the Temple administration’s figure and is disputed by TUGSA. Regardless, I think even if it were twenty percent, it is quite significant for the reasons stated.