Click the cover below to access the 2015 Graduate Policy Journal via Dropbox.
Message from the 2014-2015 Graduate and Professional Student Committee Chair, Iman Sylvain
Of 238,700 University of California students, 1 in 5 currently pursues a Graduate or Professional degree. We serve a critical role in the success of the ten-campus system which depends on our labor. We conduct primary research in our fields, are hired by the UC faculty to assist in data collection, analysis, and the writing of manuscripts, and generate significant scholarship with global impacts.
Probably our most critical role is as Graduate Student Instructors and Teaching Assistants: We teach, mentor, and advocate for Undergraduates (and sometimes even other Graduate students). If we are not the sole lecturer in a course, we provide the bulk of instruction in discussion section and lab classes, and are thus directly responsible for the academic success of hundreds of thousands of students.
Graduate students are often ignored in conversations about the quality, affordability, and accessibility of the UC, because these conversations generally focus on Undergraduate populations. Now is the time for Administrators and other stakeholders in public higher education to acknowledge the experience of Graduate students. See the face of grad students whose labor is regularly exploited, hear the voice of grad students whose financial aid and funding is precarious, feel the weight of grad students carrying an average of $58,000 in student loan debt, taste the bitterness of grad students who are survivors of campus sexual violence, and smell the stress of grad students whose well being suffers in pursuit of academic excellence.
The 2015 Graduate Policy Journal aims to affirm that Graduate students have a critical and discerning eye for the way the UC is run, and more importantly, many suggestions for ways to improve it. We want to engage in shared governance of the UC and provide meaningful consultation to decision makers. And until the day we are invited to sit and vote and be valued as equal contributors to the conversation, we will slip this journal through the crack under every door.
