In February 2007, the University of Chicago announced a new program that promised to transform the lives of its graduate students. Beginning the following fall, almost every entering grad in the humanities and social sciences divisions would receive an annual stipend of $19,000 for five years, along with free tuition, guaranteed teaching opportunities, and other benefits. The $50 million program looked downright princely, until it became evident that none of the university’s 800 or so current grad students in those disciplines would be included.
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University administrators admitted the error but said it wouldn’t substantially change their position. U. of C. grad students are organizing. According to protest leader Duff Morton, they’ll meet on May 2 to set up an Internet-based alliance designed to sidestep National Labor Relations Board rules that ban teaching assistants from unionizing.
In the 14 months they’ve been grappling with the university’s plan, Morton says, the students have come to realize that the most important issue isn’t stipends but pay for teaching, which the new funding package doesn’t address at all. “What we found is that across the board, pay for untenured teachers at the University of Chicago is low,” Morton says. .
Meanwhile, he says, some community colleges now operate without any full-time, tenure-track faculty at all: “The only full-time people are administrators supervising part-timers.” And this could be the wave of the future. “There’s a movement under way to get rid of tenure altogether,” Berry warns. “To put everybody on contracts.”
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