Letter to the UofC Community (Pennyless Student Stories)

To the University of Chicago Community,

Let me begin with an expression of my love and adoration for the University of Chicago, its rigorous academic environment, and the people, the students, and the faculty who reproduce that environment every day through selfless hard work. It is they who make this institution, in my estimation, the finest place to study, teach, and learn in the world.

I know many graduate student educators, teaching assistants, research assistants, student employees, and lecturers who share these very same feelings for the university. I hear them say it all the time, and they comport themselves in a way that makes these feelings evident everyday.

Regrettably, the University of Chicago also leaves many graduate students feeling seemingly contradictory, bitter sentiments, such as naiveté and guilt.

We feel gullible and naïve because, for all of our hard work and for all the enthusiasm and love with which we make the University of Chicago what it is on a daily basis, we are paid like some cheap outsourced academic commodity. After all, what is our peculiarly low pay but another way of telling us that we are expendable, that we are not valued? For imparting our knowledge and giving our own vitality to the students we so adore, we are recompensed as if we were the butt of a perpetual joke at a roundtable of the university's economists and financial advisors – "if we pay them as little as possible, we can minimize our expenditures and can dramatically increase our net profit ratio. They will come back for more. They need us more than we need any one of them." [Table bursts into laughter].

But they need us.

We are left feeling guilt because we know that the pleasure we receive in working to provide the nation's "finest undergraduate education" comes at the expense of our health, our future finances, and similarly, the well-being of those close to us. It affects everything we do, even though we dust it off or put it away somewhere with the hope that we can just work hard and do the best for ourselves, for our students, for the university. "That will be enough," we hope. "That will make everything okay."

Just how poor is our poor compensation? Teaching assistants and interns receive $1,500 for a quarter of work, which – when considered in terms relative to our "competitor academic institutions," is nothing short of a travesty, an egregious injustice. At best, this is a mere third of the money graduate students are currently receiving to do similar work at comparable private universities. Lecturers meanwhile receive $3,500 per quarter for a "stand alone" course. As you may have realized, this is less than the amount that comparable schools pay their teaching assistants. How can such gross underpayment be justified in any way that might be interpreted as reasonable by graduate students?

Perhaps worst of all, the compensation received is insufficient to pay the health care and compulsory admission fees for graduate students who are beyond their fifth year. Who in their right mind should ever have to teach for a loss of income? What kind of academic institution would ask their graduate students to do such a thing?

This injustice has been a dirty little secret for the university and its graduate students. Yet, it is becoming less of a secret everyday. People all over are learning about and discussing our situation. Faculty are talking about it. Undergraduate students are talking about it. But what can be done to remedy this situation – this injustice – so that feelings of naiveté and guilt are replaced by a sense of pride, by a sense that we are valued and respected employees and educators?

It can be remedied in three ways.

1) Compensate University of Chicago graduate student employees (teachers, instructors, teaching assistants, interns) at the socially normative rate for the work being performed. A fair wage should be provided to all university lecturers, interns, and T/As. A fair wage should be determined through an analysis of the socially normative rate of recompense for the work being completed, taking into account regional differences in the cost of living, and the level of academic education and support being provided. That rate MUST be reviewed and adjusted annually for inflation, just as my university apartment rent is adjusted for inflation.

2) Waive the Health Care fee for all graduate students employees, regardless of their year in the program: At present, beyond a student's fifth year at the University of Chicago, health care and activity and wellness fees amount to $2,400 annually. This is true even if a graduate student lectures University of Chicago undergraduates for three quarters. Given the rising health care costs (relative to our static wages), it is becomingly increasingly clear that waiving the basic health care fee is essential for the survival of students employed by the University. Again, no one should have to work for a loss of income.

3) Waive the tuition fees for the said student employees, just as other private universities do for their student employees. By waving these fees, the University administration would make graduate student life in the critical dissertation writing years more palatable, allowing us to perform our jobs better and to finish our degrees faster without the added pressure of having to replace income lost to these fees by teaching at other universities or going further into debt.

The fact that the University of Chicago's graduate students, who provide a good percentage of the nation's "finest undergraduate education," are greatly under compensated for their work should be nothing less than an embarrassment for this university.

It is time for this university, which so dearly values education and growth of the mind, to demonstrate that it similarly values its educators. What graduate students are asking for is just, it is right, it is fair. We do not expect any lesser treatment from an institution that we give so much of our life force to with so much vigor on a daily basis.

Sincerely,

Gregory Malandrucco
Ph.D. Student, Department of History
The University of Chicago