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Graduate Policy Journal

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.

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.

Read the 2015 Graduate Policy Journal!

Click the cover below to access the 2015 Graduate Policy Journal via Dropbox.

Grad-Policy-CoverMessage 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. [Read more…] about Read the 2015 Graduate Policy Journal!