News

Ph.D. student-professor benefits fall short of other schools

November 8, 2012


As the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) moves to unionize adjunct faculty on the Hilltop, one group of instructors is being left out—Ph.D. students who teach undergraduate courses.

About 700 Ph.D. students currently teach undergrad classes or are teaching assistants to professors, many of whom are concerned their pay and benefits do not stack up to those of other universities.

Paul Musgrave, president of the Graduate Student Organization, is a Ph.D. candidate in the Government Department. He claims “the big issue here is to what degree the graduate students perform their duties as employees.”

“I have had no complaints about my job,” Musgrave said. “This is not a question of us against the administration.”

However, referring to how the University treats and compensates its student instructors, “There is still progress to be made,” he said.

The majority of Ph.D. students who teach on the Hilltop are paid with a nine-month stipend worth $22,000, an increase from $18,500 only a few years ago. Musgrave attested that total is not enough to cover the high cost of living in the District, adding that health coverage is “not good” because it does not cover dental or vision care.

Although these Ph.D. candidates teach classes and collect a salary from the University, they are not considered full employees on the grounds they are still students. Thus they are not covered by the University Just Employment Policy, which mandates living wages for Georgetown workers.

Michael Paarlberg, another Ph.D. student in the Government Department, doesn’t buy that distinction.

“Personally speaking, it’s hard for me to see how graduate assistants, in their capacity working for Georgetown, do not meet the definition of employees,” he wrote in an email to the Voice. “We perform services under the control and direction of the University, and get paid by the University, our employer, to do them.”

“Grad students at many of the largest public universities—including the University of California system, University of Michigan, University of Washington, and the SUNY system—already have unions, have better compensation and benefits and more voice in the terms of their work than we do,” Paarlberg continued.

Emily Howard, Communications Co-Chair in the Graduate Employees’ Organization at the University of Michigan, confirmed Paarlberg’s claims, saying their union has won them wage and benefit increases.

“[Graduate Student Instructors] and [Graduate Student Staff Assistants] at the University of Michigan have won many benefits through the process of [collective] bargaining,” she wrote in an email. “As of now, we have zero-premium health and dental care (this covers other qualified adults, such as domestic partners), full tuition waivers, and of course, we receive wages for the work we do.

“We’ve also successfully bargained for things like paid maternity/paternity leave, a child-care subsidy, job training, English language training for international GSIs, and work-load caps, all in addition to salary increases,” Howard added. She also said that “legally, GSIs and GSSAs were declared to be employees by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission in 1981.”

When questioned about the discrepancies between compensation and benefit plans, Georgetown University Assistant Vice President for Communications Stacy Kerr wrote in an email that “graduate students are ‘students’ primarily. They are here primarily for their formation as Masters or Doctoral degree recipients. If their employment experiences conflicted with their studies and educational progress, we are not well serving the graduate students.”

In the future, Musgrave and other graduate students hope they can continue to build on progress already made with the administration to improve their lot.

“We have productive relationships with the Provost and [Vice President of Student Affairs] Todd Olson,” he said. “We have made a lot of ground over the years, yet there is still progress to be made.”



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Jacob Lupfer

I appreciate where Vice President Kerr is coming from, but the truth is that it’s hard to be ‘primarily’ a student when you have to pick up adjunct teaching gigs at Georgetown and elsewhere around town just to pay your bills.

No big gripes here, because I knew the stipend amount and the cost of living in DC when I chose Georgetown. Also, I understand that there’s now a race to the bottom in academia and I knew that going in. I take full responsibility for the path I’ve chosen. Still, I have been surprised at how much my time has skewed toward working to support myself and my family rather than my formation as a doctoral degree recipient.

I wonder how many other low-paying jobs I’ll have to take in order to fund my shockingly modest lifestyle so that I can pursue my “primary” function as a junior scholar. I’d say more, but I’m busy clipping grocery coupons at the moment.

-Jacob Lupfer
Ph.D. Student, Department of Government
Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Government
Georgetown Summer Instructor
Research Assistant, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs
Adjunct Instructor, Marymount University