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Graduate Campaigns

Graduate and Professional Students Advocacy Agenda 2017-18

Student Labor Protections

Problem: Graduate and professional students, especially PhD students, are often in the dual role of both student and employee, and additionally switch between multiple employment roles (e.g. TA, GSR, instructor, non-employed fellow) throughout their graduate and professional career. They have inconsistent and inadequate labor protection throughout their graduate and professional career, and are at times subject to policies that don’t meet their needs as students and workers.

  1. Ensure graduate and professional students in non-TA roles have access to healthcare, sick days, and worker’s compensation
  2. Continue working on training and standards for supervisors of graduate and professional students
  3. Win bargaining power for GSRs
  4. Form a systemwide body to address work-related misconduct
  5. Address the concerns with mandatory reporting procedure and Title IX policy, by: 1) Clarifying boundaries of reporting responsibility for student workers with ambiguous roles that cross student/employee line; 2) Educating undergraduate and graduate students on the procedures and confidential options, and delay implementation until awareness is ensured; 3) Addressing unique graduate and professional student concerns in policy regarding student-faculty harassment, including funding protections for those who make accusations

Accountability of Student Outcomes

Problem: Graduate students, especially master’s and professional students, are often given promises about what kind of support they will receive and careers they can expect, and then end up in programs that do not fulfil their needs or promises. Entering students need to be aware of what benefits and support their program can justifiably offer them, especially given the high tuition they pay. Over one-third of graduate and professional students at the UC report symptoms of mild to moderate depression, significant predictors of which include academic preparation, career prospects, and social support.

  1. Implement multi-year contracted funding guarantees for normative time to degree
  2. Create decision-making panel of students and faculty to address program promises and benefits
  3. Develop standards of advising and mentorship training and means of accountability
  4. Collect and publish report on students who are promised certain options, e.g. completing a research thesis for master’s students, but then blocked by their department
  5. Require departments to collect (from current and former students) and publicly post data on student outcomes so that incoming students can make informed decisions, including: Retention rate and reasons for leaving; Average time to completion; Percent completing research thesis (or other relevant field-specific options); Debt accrued during time in program; Career outcome 2 years after completion (e.g. percent in PhD program, industry, still seeking jobs, in a different field, etc.)
  6. Require full transparency and student review on PDST and other fee increases, both in what they plan to be used for and how they were used
  7. Require any change in program status from Master’s to Professional degree to go through student government approval.
  8. Continue to assess graduate well-being and ensure adequate, confidential mental health services to graduate and professional students, including: Mental health offices separate from undergraduate students to improve confidentiality for teaching assistants; Support groups for graduate and professional students; Workshops for balanced and healthy lifestyles including best practices for productivity, financial management, and conflict resolution
  9. Prioritize mentorship best practices and training for faculty advisors by: Developing graduate and professional student evaluations for faculty advisors to identify successes and opportunities for growth; Encouraging in-person training for faculty advisors to recognize and respond to signs of distress in students; and, Creating opportunities for informal faculty-student interactions and forming mentorship relationships between students within programs

Housing and Food Security

Problem: Graduate and professional students consistently face difficulty affording adequate food and housing, both on and off campus. Students are choosing to live farther away from campus to afford living expensive, making the availability of affordable and/or public transportation to these areas necessary as well. In the Spring 2015 GPSES (Graduate and Professional Student Experience Study), it was discovered that 25% of UC graduate and professional students lack reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable, nutritious food. Food insecurity disproportionately affects students of color and first generation higher education students.

  1. Build additional on-campus housing units for graduate and professional students, provided that they are affordable on a graduate stipend and meet graduate living standards (e.g. individual rooms, family options, kitchens)
  2. Work with local and state legislature to increase availability of affordable housing in areas around campuses by: Creating task forces on city councils to address student housing needs; Repealing legislation limiting rent control measures; and, Passing legislation supporting development of affordable housing units
  3. Remove barriers to public transportation, through legislation and administrative assistance to reduce the cost of transportation for graduate and professional students
  4. Increase availability of transportation to important community locations such as grocery stores
  5. Expand CalFRESH eligibility and accessibility to ensure more graduate and professional student enrollment
  6. Ensure emergency aid transition housing spaces for graduate and professional students
  7. Require each UC to honestly report cost of living information before students arrive on campus
  8. Create easily accessible food pantry/basic needs space on each campus with graduate and professional student specific hours
  9. Increase student awareness of and access to basic needs resources, including: CalFresh orientations for all new graduate and professional students; and Simple websites for basic needs resources, similar to the ones at Berkeley, San Diego, Riverside, and Davis
  10. Work collaboratively with university and community groups to create partnerships for access to nutritious, affordable food
  11. Make a system-wide commitment to data collection and analysis to monitor progress of Food Security (i.e. UCOP Global Food Initiative Student Food Access and Security Study)

Read Volume III of the Graduate Policy Journal (2017)

Introduction by Jamin Shih, Lead Editor:

This is the third issue of the University of California Student Association’s (UCSA) Graduate Policy Journal, a journal which highlights the concerns graduate and professional students have with the institution of graduate education, its academic and administrative structures, and their impacts on the well-being and success of graduate and professional students. It has been an absolute honor and privilege to be involved with the process of editing this journal and continuing the conversations it invites.

The seven articles published this year demonstrate not only the intellectual rigor and creative problem-solving that graduate and professional students across the University of California system display; they contradict the misconception that graduate students are or ought to be apolitical by nature. Their keen insights on the institution of graduate education help to reveal how its structures are inextricably tied to systems of inequality, whether through race, class, gender, or the myriad intersections of these and other social axes. Far from being complacent with the way graduate education is, these articles push for a vision of what graduate education could be—radical, cutting-edge, inclusive, and equitable. In our current political time, it is even more necessary to lift up the voices of the marginalized and work towards creating the spaces we all deserve in the institutions we inhabit.

It is to this work that we now turn. Many of our articles focus on the need to prioritize the well-being and health, physical and mental, of graduate and professional students. Green and Ellison demonstrate the need for collective bargaining rights for Research Assistants (RAs) and the hazardous or unsafe working environments RAs find themselves in. Oyewole details the effects and prevalence of anti-black and racist discrimination in mentorship and advising that necessitate overhauls in the structure of graduate institutions. Barton provides a history of graduate student organizing that led to the establishment of the Graduate Cultural Resource Center that is faced by administrative backlash and environmental racism. Several of our articles also center on the lived experiences of underrepresented graduate and professional students, particularly women of color. Le lay and Paez offer first-hand experiences as womxn leaders in graduate advocacy and provide a much-needed forum to push these conversations forward. Cobian advocates for improved campus climate for women of color in the sciences and pushes us to recognize the oft-overlooked contributions of women of color scholars. Finally, our articles identify trends in academia that need evaluating. Oakley and Kirksey synthesize recommendations for student advocates and leaders on best practices in organizing for institutional changes. Gelgoot analyzes the growth of online charter education, its consequences, and offers recommendations for innovations to the online charter model.

Together, this issue seeks to push the boundaries of graduate education and participate in shaping its future. As such, I am thrilled to invite you to join the conversation. Thank you to UCSA, the Graduate Professional Committee, and Anaïs Lieu for making this journal possible. And thank you to all the authors and editors of this issue and the graduate and professional students across the UC system.

UC Graduate Professional Student Agenda 2016-2017

The Graduate Professional Student Agenda is adopted at the beginning of each academic year by UCSA’s Graduate Professional Student Committee.

Dignified graduate/professional standard of living

Problem: Many graduate and professional students are responsible for supporting families or have returned to pursue postgraduate education after spending time in the professional workforce. In addition to pursuing an education, many graduate students also perform necessary functions for the university including research and teaching. All students deserve a dignified standard of living. Graduate students needs for affordable housing, food, transportation, and healthcare manifest differently than the needs of undergraduates.

  • Establish a UC-recognized graduate standard of living for use in determining estimated costs of attendance.
  • Ensure that graduate stipend scales are such that housing costs such as rent and utilities allow for a dignified graduate standard of living, and account for less than or equal to 40% of total income.
  • Work collaboratively with local communities so that healthy and affordable food is available on and/or near campus spaces, with hours that accommodate graduate student needs.
  • Work collaboratively with local communities to ensure that moderate income housing is available both on- and off-campus for graduate students.
  • Ensure emergency aid transition housing spaces for graduate students.
  • Improve health care options for graduate students that enable rapid and private treatment on and off campus.
  • Ensure accessible food pantries on campus.
  • Establish programs on each campus to provide additional financial support for food insecurity.

Diverse campus climate, genuine recruitment, and active retention

Problem: Many departments struggle to foster a sense of inclusion and community among students of color, LGBTQIA students, international students, and nontraditional students. Implicit biases affect how these students are treated within institutions. In the absence of supporting actions that genuinely include their perspectives and experiences, many feel that they fulfill arbitrary “diversity quotas”. The associated stress disproportionately affects the mental and physiological health of these students, placing additional burdens on the performance and wellbeing of those from marginalized backgrounds.

  • Increase campus-wide programming to build community among graduate students of color, LGBTQIA students, international students, and nontraditional students.
  • Require implicit bias and cultural sensitivity training for faculty and students in all departments so that they feel more comfortable admitting, communicating with, and respecting graduate students of underrepresented backgrounds (e.g., in-person training, required readings, etc).
  • Increase intercampus programming to connect graduate students of underrepresented backgrounds and identities from different campuses.
  • Screen required curricula by external reviewers to incorporate diverse voices and perspectives whenever appropriate.
  • Review graduate student and advisor relationships with an emphasis on following principles of community and non-discrimination clauses.
  • Recruit and admit more students from underrepresented backgrounds (e.g. not just one or two per cohort).
  • Hire more faculty from minority and underrepresented backgrounds to foster a culture that is more diverse and inclusive.
  • Initiate recruitment events after admittance for students of underrepresented or minority backgrounds (e.g. Graduate Student of Color or LGBTQIA student retreats).
  • Increase scholarships for underrepresented students, and ensure that the scholarships go to students from these backgrounds.
  • Ensure that the burden is not placed on marginalized students themselves to educate departments, campuses, or communities regarding the unique stresses associated being with a minority or underrepresented student.

Best practices for graduate student–advisor relationships

Problem: Graduate students works closely with a faculty advisor who offers academic guidance, and who decides when the student may advance in certain stages of degree completion. Best practices have yet to be implemented to ensure fair, respectful, and equitable working relationships, leading to students being mistreated by advisors in ways that affect mental health and successful degree completion.

  • Determine standardized best practices in successful advising, including transparency and accountability.
  • Formalize best practices into advising contracts.
  • Create a Standardized Reciprocal Evaluation Process (SREP) for advisor-advisee relationships, wherein students evaluate their faculty advisors annually to enable early detection of problematic mentoring relationships. Read UCSA’s SREP Resolution.
  • Incorporate SREPs into tenure promotion packages and ensure penalties for multiple offenders.
  • Establish structure and designated personnel (e.g. staff within the Graduate Division) for communicating advisor issues.
  • Guarantee funding for changing advisors through Graduate Divisions.
  • Conduct external reviews of graduate student and advisor relationships with emphasis on preventing discrimination against graduate students based on gender, race, place of origin, or sexual orientation.

Transparency and diversity of funding opportunities

Problem: Allocation of graduate student funding is biased, non-transparent, and insufficient to meet the needs of graduate and professional students.

  • Actively include students during decisions at all stages of funding allocation, including review, selection, discussion, and final reporting of the steps of the entire application process.
  • Increase funding for graduate research to minimize the need for alternate sources of income (e.g. teaching assistantships).
  • Increase campus fellowships to recruit and retain students of underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds, and ensure that such funds actually go to these students.
  • Assure year-round funding packages.
  • Reinstate graduate student eligibility for subsidized loans at the federal level, and create subsidized loans at the state level, in order to provide the option for better terms and rates of repayment.
  • Increase funding opportunities for graduate students in non-STEM fields.
  • Increase funding opportunities and eligibility for international students.
  • Improve and standardize a UC-wide paid family leave policy (similar to policies put into place by UCSF and UCD policies).
  • Freeze tuition during the all-but-dissertation (ABD) stage of graduate education that follows advancement to candidacy.
  • Increase funding for professional development such as conferences and career fairs.

Building strong community partnerships

Problem: Insulation within the campus community disconnects graduate/professional students from external opportunities with the potential to address graduate student needs, improve social networks and support, and advance professional development.

  • Increase student representation on housing and market committees in local governments.
  • Increase off-campus programming with local organizations and schools.
  • Increase partnerships with alumni/ae (of UCSA, of campuses, or of relevant student organizations).
  • Hold local events to improve social and professional development for graduate students.
  • Hold UC-wide conference(s) for graduate student connections.

PDST: affordability, accessibility, and accountability

Problem: Professional Degree Supplemental Tuition (PDST) is levied without transparency which burdens graduate and professional students with debt, disproportionately affects students of lower socioeconomic status, and leaves many students unable to pay for housing and fulfill basic needs.

  • Insist that the UC Regents do not alter policies in ways that make it easier to increase PDST.
  • Ensure town hall discussions with graduate/professional students and their administration to discuss proposed increases, during which administrators transparently demonstrate the need for these increases to maintain educational quality.
  • Include student feedback in every fee increase proposal brought before the Regents.

Creating a sustainable university culture

Problem: Management of resources that sustain UC campuses has important economic, ecological, and social consequences. Improving environmental sustainability within the campus culture requires measured action that has the potential to dovetail with improvements in graduate student health, housing, food, and transportation.

  • Provide structural support for graduate students in campus and community sustainability research.
  • Investigate intersections between graduate student needs and achieving UCOP’s 2025 Carbon Neutrality Initiative goals.
  • Make graduate student events within departments and campuses as sustainable as possible.
  • Increase the proportion of sustainably-sourced food available on campus.
  • Appoint graduate representatives to attend Global Food Initiative meetings.
  • Increase programming to bring graduate students to natural spaces on and off-campus to improve psychosocial health.
  • Increase graduate involvement with recycling and composting campaigns.

Bridging graduate/professional and undergraduate students

Problem: Lack of communication between graduate/professional students and undergraduate students limits the potential of these student bodies to achieve more by working collectively at the intersections of mutual goals.

  • Encourage graduate student elected officers to meet with their undergraduate counterparts at the start of their tenure, and continually as necessary.
  • Encourage joint meetings with administrators and collaborators on reporting and advocacy.

Read the Volume II Graduate Policy Journal! (2016)

V2.3-Grad-Policy-CoverMessage from the Lead Editor, Michelle Oyewole

Welcome to the second volume of the UCSA Graduate Policy Journal, wherein students have offered a vision for improving graduate education in the UC. We present the research findings and opinions of graduate students to ignite changes in administrative and legislative policies affecting graduate education on our ten campuses.

Graduate students come from many cultural, social, and academic backgrounds to pursue advanced degrees. We play an important role in sustaining higher education: without us there would be no teaching assistants, fewer instructors, and few mentors for undergraduate students. We produce research with national and international impact in arts, humanities, engineering, social and physical sciences, and everything in between. Professional students pursuing degrees in disciplines such as medicine and law continue to be the workforce our society depends on. Together, we are one in every five UC students.

Embedded within the politics, economics, and history of the US, the UC suffers from many issues faced by society at large. On our campuses and in our departments, students of minority and underrepresented backgrounds contend with implicit biases that emulate systems built for our exclusion. University elitism is often the basis to justify unequal compensation and treatment. Student loan debt stifles many, and graduate student access to subsidized loans has been stopped entirely. Graduate students in sciences and engineering are funded at higher rates than students in the arts and humanities. As the institutions studying these phenomena, it is ironic that we seem, at present, unable to address them within our own walls. As a result, we replicate patterns in higher education that were established before African Americans could enter most universities and before women could vote.

Accordingly, we envision a UC where the needs of graduate students do not come as an afterthought, where no student is mistreated by their faculty advisor, where there is no ambiguity in our paths to degree completion, where our departments are inclusive, and where we are able to focus more on research than on problems affecting our mental and physical health. We believe the UC has the potential to serve as a leader in creating academic cultures that support the success of all graduate students, and we present this volume as an additional chronicle of the problems our administrations should address to achieve this.

Read Volume II.