A dashboard from the Canvas learning management system is displayed to students in this college lecture hall. A University of Michigan study finds that students with last names at the end of the alphabet are penalized when instructors grade in alphabetical order, a default setting in Canvas and other widely used learning management systems (LMS). Credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images
If your last name starts with an A, that could mean that you’re also more likely to score an A on a test. But if you’re a Wilson or a Ziegler, you may be suffering from a new slight of the modern age: lower college grades.
Grading processes have profoundly changed at colleges and universities in the past decade. Instead of placing assignments on a table in the front of the classroom, students today upload their work to a website, called a Learning Management System or LMS, where course documents, assignments and communications are all housed. Students can even take their exams directly within the LMS.
Course instructors mark assignments, papers and exams within the LMS, whichalso functions as a computerized grade book. The default setting is to sort student submissions in alphabetical order by surname. The computer system automatically guides the instructor to grade Adams before Baker all the way down to Zimmerman.
A trio of researchers at the University of Michigan, including one whose surname begins with W, documented an unintended consequence of grading in alphabetical order. “There is such a tendency of graders to give lower grades as they grade more,” said Helen Wang, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at the University of Michigan’s business school.
Wang and her two co-authors analyzed over 30 million grades at a large university that uses the most popular LMS, which is called Canvas. They calculated that surnames starting with U to Z were docked a little more than half a point (0.6 points) on a 100-point scale compared with A-to-E surnames. That’s a rather small penalty. But cumulatively, these small dings can add up and eventually translate into the difference between an A-minus and a B-plus on a final grade.
The study is described in a 2024 draft paper posted on the website of SSRN, formerly known as the Social Science Research Network. It is currently undergoing revisions with the academic journal Management Science.
The researchers detected grading bias against the end of the alphabet in a wide range of subjects. However, the grading penalty was more pronounced in the social sciences and the humanities compared to engineering, science and medicine.
In addition to lower grades, the researchers also found that students at the bottom of the alphabet received more negative and impolite comments. For example, “why no answers to Q 2 and 3? You are setting yourself up for a failing grade,” and “NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.” Top-of-the-alphabet students were more likely to receive, “Much better work on this draft, [Student First Name]! Thank you!”
The researchers cannot prove precisely whyextra points are deducted for the Wilsons of the world, but they suspect it’s because instructors – mostly graduate students at the unnamed university in this study – have heavy grading loads and they get tired and cranky, especially after grading the 50th student in a row. Even before the era of electronic grading, it’s quite likely the instructors were not as fair to students at the bottom of the paper pile. But in the paper world, a student’s position in the stack was always changing, depending on when the papers were turned in and how the instructors picked them up. No student was likely to be in the bottom of the pile every time. In the LMS world, the U’s, V’s, W’s, X’s, Y’s and Z’s almost always are.
Another theory mentioned by the authors in the paper is that instructors may feel the need to be stricter if they’ve already given out a string of A’s, so as not to be too generous with high marks. Students at the bottom of the alphabet may be the victims of a well-intentioned effort to restrain grade inflation. It’s also possible that instructors are too generous with students at the top of the alphabet, but grade more accurately as they proceed. Either way, students at the bottom are being graded differently.
Some college instructors seem to be aware of their human frailty. In 2018, one posted on a message board at Canvas, asking the company to randomize the grade book. “For me, bias starts to creep in with fatigue,” the instructor wrote. “I grade a few, go away from it, grade a few more, take a break. Or that’s the goal when I’m not up against a deadline.”
If you’ve read this far, perhaps you are wondering how the researchers know that the grades for the U-to-Z students were unfair. Maybe they’re comparatively worse students? But the researchers matched the grades in Canvas with the student records in the registrar’s office and they were able to control for a host of student characteristics, from high school grades and college GPA to race, ethnicity, gender, family background and income. End-of-the alphabet surnames consistently received lower marks even among similar students who were graded by the same instructor.
The researchers also found that a tiny fraction of instructors tinkered with the default settings and graded in reverse alphabetical order, from Z to A. That led to the exact opposite results; students with end-of-the alphabet names earned higher grades, while the grades for A, B and C surnames were lower.
The bias against end-of-alphabet surnames is probably not unique to students who use the Canvas LMS. All four major LMS companies, which collectively control 90 percent of the U.S. and Canadian market with more than 48 million students, order submissions alphabetically for grading, according to the researchers. Even Coursera, a separate online learning platform, does it this way.
Wang’s solution is to shake things up and have the LMS present student work for grading in random order. Indeed, Canvas added a randomize option for instructors in May 2024, after the company saw a draft of this University of Michigan study. “It was something that we had on our radar and that we’d heard from some users, but had not completed it yet,” a company spokesman said. “The report from the University of Michigan definitely pushed that work to top priority.”
However, the default remains alphabetical order and instructors need to navigate to the settings to change it. (Changing this default setting, according to the study authors, has “low visibility” within system settings on the site.) I hope this story helps to get the word out.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
ATLANTA — Two construction cranes hover over a giant worksite just outside the Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
What they’re building is both a show of optimism in and a way to attract more students to something universities badly need but are beginning to worry about: graduate education.
The $200 million project will house Scheller’s graduate and executive business programs in one tower, connected to Georgia Tech’s School of Industrial and Systems Engineering in another. Linking graduate business programs with other disciplines has proven to increase demand; Scheller has already added a science, technology, engineering and math designation to its master’s program in business administration, with a resulting bump in applications, the school says.
At a university focused on technology, doing this “seemed like a natural fit, and we were seeing some of our competitors doing it,” said Peter Severa, Scheller’s assistant dean for MBA student engagement, in a conference room overlooking the construction site.
It’s also a kind of enticement that’s become essential in response to signs that, after years of increase, the graduate enrollment on which universities heavily rely for revenue may be softening as prospective students question the cost of grad school and as shorter, cheaper and more flexible alternatives pop up.
“What we’re seeing now is a combination of a leveling off and a big question mark as to where this long-term trend will go,” said Brian McKenzie, director of research at the Council of Graduate Schools.
Unlike undergraduate enrollment, which has been on a steady decline, graduate enrollment has gone up over the last decade. Undergraduate numbers fell by 15 percent between 2010 and 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, while graduate enrollment grew by 9 percent. That was fueled in part by a change in 2007 that let graduate students borrow up to the full cost of their educations, unlike undergraduates, who can borrow only a limited amount.
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This growth made graduate programs a lucrative source of revenue for universities. To cash in, private, nonprofit, bachelor’s degree-granting universities and colleges in particular vastly expanded their graduate offerings, listing more than three times as many by 2021 as they had in 2005, according to research conducted at the University of Tennessee.
It seemed a good bet. Not even the pandemic slowed the increase in graduate enrollment. It reached its highest level ever in 2021, as workers who had been laid off or furloughed opted to get graduate degrees. Then, in 2022, it fell.
A new building for Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business under construction beside the existing school. The complex will also house the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Linking graduate business schools to other programs has proven to increase demand. Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger Report
There was a slight rebound in the fall of 2023. But that was largely driven by an increase in master’s degree enrollment at public as opposed to private, nonprofit universities and in the number of international students, who have quietly come to constitute much of the growth at graduate schools. Among domestic students, graduate enrollment was starting to decline.
Sheer population trends helped drive graduate enrollment during the last decade, with an increase in the number of Americans who are candidates for it — ages 25 to 44, with bachelor’s degrees.
But even as there are more of those 25- to 44-year-old candidates for graduate education, the proportion of them who actually go has started to erode. It’s down from 8.4 percent to 6.5 percent over the last 10 years, the higher education research and advisory firm Eduventures found.
“If that continues, and you see a slowing in the underlying population growth, then we’re starting to talk about some challenges,” said Clint Raine, senior analyst at Eduventures.
That’s because of a looming decline in the number of 18-year-olds beginning next year, which is projected to take another big toll on undergraduate enrollment. Basic math suggests that it will eventually hit graduate programs, too.
“The next five years we may be safe,” said Lily Bi, president and CEO of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, or AACSB. “But five years down the road, I think we really need to watch.”
Peter Severa, assistant dean for MBA student engagement at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business. Adding a designation in science, technology, engineering and math “seemed like a natural fit, and we were seeing some of our competitors doing it,” Severa says. Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger Report
There are other challenges. All those graduate programs that universities rushed to add meant that, even when graduate enrollment was going up, the number of students per program — and, therefore, the revenue that institutions made from them — was going down.
“The issue is that graduate student growth has not kept pace,” Raine said. “So we’ve seen a flood of programs in the market, but student demand has not kept up.”
Another challenge for graduate programs: A strong labor market has many people staying in their jobs instead of furthering their educations.
“The choice became, ‘Do I go to graduate school or do I look at some of these very good opportunities?’ Many of them chose to go with the money,” said Julia Kent, vice president for best practices and strategic initiatives at the Council of Graduate Schools.
Meanwhile, there has been a proliferation of alternatives to traditional graduate degrees.
“A prospective student today has never had more options,” Raine said.
Interest in traditional master’s degrees is down since 2019, Eduventures found, while interest in lower-price, shorter-term certificates and other nondegree offerings is up.
Aubrey Charron, an undergraduate at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, says she wants to work for a while before deciding whether to go on to graduate business school, “just to make sure I’ve really found what I want to do.” Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger Report
“We live in a fast-food society,” Bi said. “People want something easy, something fast.”
And flexible. Twenty-seven percent of master’s programs and 66 percent of MBAs are now offered online, giving students more choice of when and where to take them. That’s up from 12 percent and 36 percent, respectively, in 2012.
Students’ preference for part-time and online MBA programs translated into an increase in applications for those programs in the academic year that started in the fall, the Graduate Management Admission Council says. But applications overall were down by 3 percent, as enthusiasm waned for more conventional and expensive in-person versions, whose enrollments fell.
There has also been growing coverage of and skepticism about the high amount of debt students assumed for graduate programs that don’t necessarily result in earnings high enough to allow them to repay their loans. Those programs are disproportionately at private, nonprofit universities, which charge twice as much as public universities for master’s degrees in fields such as social work, according to a study by the Urban Institute.
The increase in borrowing for graduate study has sparked a warning from the U.S. Department of Education, which notes that growing numbers of borrowers are finishing their graduate educations with very high levels of debt. And while people with graduate degrees generally earn more than people without them, that premium has flattened out, “suggesting a potential decline in the net return,” the department’s chief economist observed.
At 15 percent of master’s, doctoral and professional programs, the median graduate makes less than the median undergraduate degree holder, according to a separate study by three think tanks across the political spectrum: the American Enterprise Institute, EducationCounsel and The Century Foundation.
The average graduate federal student loan holder owes $70,000, that study found, and one in five has borrowed more than $100,000.
While 90 percent of students who are studying toward or just got bachelor’s degrees say they are interested in graduate school, more than half consider the return on investment an important part of their decision, a survey by the higher education marketing firm Spark451 found. That’s the same questioning of value that has been eating away at undergraduate enrollment.
The Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which, like other business schools, is trying to reverse a decline in the number of full-time MBA students. Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger Report
“We have to think about who’s on the doorstep now to graduate programs. It’s Gen Z. They’re that prime graduate-going cohort, and we know from some of our research that this generation is more price- and cost-sensitive compared to the last,” Raine said.
Mindful of this, the Council of Graduate Schools has created a task force to study the cost of graduate education and has recommended expanding eligibility for Pell Grants to graduate students and lowering the graduate student loan interest rate from the current 8.05 percent, Kent said.
American students who have enrolled in graduate schools are less than enthusiastic about the value of it. Just over half say it was “definitely worth it,” a survey by the think tank Third Way found.
That has left universities to increasingly rely on one market that continues to grow: international graduate students. A closer look at the data shows that they now account for almost all of the rise in graduate enrollment.
The number of international students in U.S. graduate programs rose 21 percent in 2022 — compared to a 4.3 percent increase among international undergraduates — and 22 percent in 2023, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
In almost every graduate field that reported an increase in enrollment, it was due to a big jump in the number of international students, even as the numbers of U.S. citizen and permanent resident students fell.
Inside Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business at the end of the spring semester. Like other business schools, the college is trying to reverse a steady decline in its number of full-time MBA students. Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger Report
The number of graduate business students who are U.S. residents or permanent residents dropped 7 percent while the number from other countries went up 19 percent in the fall, AACSB figures show.
That growing dependence on international students could be risky, as became clear during the pandemic, when they all but disappeared. Geopolitical tensions also could have an impact; though more international students continue to come to the United States from China than from any other country, the number of Chinese students fell slightly last year, according to the Institute of International Education.
Still, McKenzie, of the Council of Graduate Schools, pointed out that the number of students from India increased 35 percent during the same period.
That’s because a STEM designation allows international students to stay in the United States and work in their fields of study, without an employer sponsor, for three years after earning a degree, compared to the usual limit of one year.
Emily Sharkey, executive director of MBA admissions and recruiting at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, which has added a science, technology, engineering and math designation to its MBA degrees. The designation is meant in large part to attract international students. Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger Report
“If a large portion of our applicants are international, it’s important to be attractive to them,” said Emily Sharkey, Scheller’s executive director of MBA admissions and recruiting. That third year of a visa “is a game-changer as we look at our applications,” added Dave Deiters, associate dean of MBA programs at Scheller, who heads up its career center.
Among other universities whose business schools have added STEM designations: Arizona State, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Indiana, Michigan, Northwestern and Rice.
Incorporating technology into business education also appeals to undergraduates who might eventually be candidates for graduate degrees.
Even as an undergraduate at Scheller, “I’ve learned coding and stuff I probably wouldn’t have learned at other business schools,” said Elizabeth Curvin, who just finished her sophomore year there. “Compared to my friends at other business schools, we get a lot more of that,” said Amelia Fox, a junior. “You’re set up very well.” And Daniel Manning, a junior, already has a concentration in strategy and innovation. “That gives you practical information about how to manage engineers,” he said.
Elizabeth Curvin just finished her sophomore year at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, which has intensified its focus on science, technology, engineering and math. “I’ve learned coding and stuff I probably wouldn’t have learned at other business schools,” she says. Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger ReportAmelia Fox, an undergraduate at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, likes its focus on data analytics and other technology-related subjects. “Compared to my friends at other business schools, we get a lot more of that,” Fox says. Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger Report
But none was ready to commit to investing in an MBA.
“I’d probably go out to the workforce and see if it was something that I wanted,” Curvin said. Junior Aubrey Charron said she also wants to try out her planned career in hospital administration first, “just to make sure I’ve really found what I want to do.”
Concerns about graduate enrollment go beyond what students might earn or owe, or how such changes might affect universities’ bottom lines. There are growing shortages of workers who require graduate degrees, the Council of Graduate Schools says.
“It is concerning that domestic enrollment is slightly down, because it will be critical to have more Americans participating in graduate education,” said Kent, at the Council of Graduate Schools.
Yet what’s happening at graduate schools has so far been eclipsed by a focus on falling undergraduate enrollment, Raine said.
“It’s a very much less discussed future trend that we certainly are trying to shed more light on.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
“What are you going to do with that?” is a question I heard often from my family as both an undergraduate and a graduate student.
Yes, I was an English major. My older siblings were going to nursing and medical school and all of my cousins were pursuing engineering, science and business degrees. So there was always an edge to that question every time it came up at family gatherings. A just-under-the-surface skepticism about the usefulness of a humanities degree as job preparation.
I know now that this question was meant kindly — and was informed by the older generation’s desire to see their children enjoy a return on investment (ROI) on a college education similar to what they themselves experienced as first- and second-generation college-goers.
College degrees changed the trajectories of their lives. They opened opportunities for economic and social mobility and moved my parents’ generation beyond the experiences of their grandparents and great-grandparents, many of whom, as first- and second-generation immigrants to this country in the nineteenth century, started their working lives as farmers or day laborers.
My aunts, uncles and parents were keenly aware that they themselves had benefited substantially from America’s grand expansion of the public higher education system post-World War II. Though their question burdened me at the time with self-doubt, among other things, they asked it out of a caring sense of concern for my future.
Decades later, I now have the privilege of serving as the dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University, an access-oriented public research university that servesand graduates high numbers of students who are first-generation college goers, military veterans, economically under-resourced or transfer students, or from historically underrepresented groups.
As the idea of higher education as a public good is increasingly questioned or under attack, and as public perceptions of the value of a college degree relative to its cost continue to shift, I often remind my faculty of our fundamental purpose: We are here to educate our students.
We are here to engage them in the kinds of high-impact discovery learning that public research universities can offer at scale; the kinds of experiences that can change the trajectory of their lives and the lives of their families.
“What can’t you do with a humanities degree?”
It is because of my institution’s access-oriented educational mission that I view the release of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ Humanities Indicators report, “Employment Outcomes for Humanities Majors: State Profiles,” as an important occasion.
Drawing on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the data collected and analyzed in this study should help change national narratives about both the “death” of the humanities and the low ROI on a four-year college degree.
The first national study of its kind, the report offers a state-by-state comparison of the salary ranges and unemployment rates of college graduates who majored in the humanities with those of, on the one hand, high-school and two-year college graduates and, on the other hand, college graduates in the arts, education, social sciences, business, natural sciences and engineering.
In doing so, the report tells a very different story than the one you typically see circulating in the media these days. Key takeaways:
Earnings: Humanities graduates’ earnings are substantially higher than those of people without a college degree and are often on par with or higher than those of graduates in non-engineering fields.
Earnings Disparities: Except in a few northwestern states, humanities majors earn at least 40 percent more than people with only a high school degree.
Unemployment: The unemployment rate of humanities majors is around 2-4 percent in every state, similar to that of engineering and business majors and substantially lower than that of people without a college degree.
Occupational Versatility: Humanities graduates make up big portions of the legal, museum and library workforces across all states; other significant areas of humanities graduate employment are education, management and sales.
Without question, the total cost of college attendance should continue to be a concern for all of us. And earnings and occupation are not the only measures of success in one’s career or life. But I am excited, as a dean, to have in hand the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ new Humanities Indicators report and its “State of the Humanities 2021: Workforce and Beyond”report as resources to use to help current undergraduate and graduate students see how humanities majors in all 50 states have put their degrees to work across a broad spectrum of occupations and industries.
The workforce data in this new American Academy of Arts & Sciences report is the perfect complement to individual storytelling in helping today’s humanities majors think through “What are you going to do with that?” — and see clearly the vast world of work that opens to them through education in these disciplines.
“What can’t you do with a humanities degree?” is a tagline we invite the George Mason undergraduate admissions officers to keep top of mind as they begin their recruitment road trips.
Even as technological change is accelerating and reshaping jobs in ways that will require all of us to reinvent our careers, this American Academy of Arts & Sciences report gives today’s college students a data-informed way to conceptualize both the job opportunities and the career earning trajectories of humanities majors in all 50 states and across many sectors of our nation’s knowledge-based economy.
Ann Ardis is dean of George Mason University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Last week, soon after news broke that graduate-student workers at Stanford University had initiated a unionization campaign, a professor there weighed in with a public statement of solidarity.
“I support the rights of Stanford Graduate Workers to unionize,” William Giardino tweeted on April 3. That tweet, he later worried, may have violated guidelines put forward by the administration that sought to limit faculty members’ social-media use about the issue. Giardino, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, felt conflicted, and wondered if he should delete the tweet.
After an outcry, those guidelines were removed. But the administration’s since-deleted statement raises questions about the role of faculty members during graduate-worker unionization efforts, particularly at private institutions, and poses implications for academic freedom.
In response to Stanford graduate workers’ push to unionize, the university’s administration initially posted guidelines for students and faculty about the unionization effort. In an original version of the message shared with The Chronicle, Stanford included a guideline saying faculty members “should not post your opinions about union organizing on your office door, in your faculty office or on social media. You should not send letters or emails to communicate your views to graduate students regarding the pros and cons of union representation.”
The guidelines also expressly said that faculty members can discuss and share their opinions on union organizing with graduate students, as long as they don’t threaten, interrogate, promise, or coerce graduate students on the subject.
Since then, the guidelines have been updated to omit the part barring faculty from sharing their thoughts on social media, but they continue to state that faculty “should not” post opinions about union organizing on office doors or in faculty offices.
But the initial version of the guidelines struck some observers as an example of administrative overreach and a restriction of faculty freedom.
Timothy Reese Cain, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Georgia whose expertise is in labor and academic freedom, said Stanford’s initial move to restrict all faculty members’ social-media use on the topic of unionization on campus was an “explicit infringement of academic freedom.”
In an emailed statement, Stett Holbrook, a Stanford spokesperson, said academic freedom is a “core value” at Stanford and that the administration’s initial statement about social media was meant to protect graduate students from undue influence.
“The reference in the university’s FAQs to faculty posting on social media was included out of an interest to ensure that our faculty did not inadvertently infringe on graduate students’ rights during their publicly announced unionization drive,” Holbrook wrote. “It has been pointed out that this guidance could be misinterpreted as an infringement on academic freedom and we have removed it.”
Employees or Managers?
In part, the potential concerns about tenured and tenure-track faculty members exerting undue influence stem from the particular status they occupy at private institutions, according to the U.S. Supreme Court. It ruled in 1980 in National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University that tenure-line faculty at such institutions have responsibilities, like participating in hiring and promotion decisions, that made them managers, not employees.
Cain said that, while barring expression about the topic of the unionization effort was a clear violation of academic freedom, Stanford could still have a “legitimate concern” if faculty members were perceived to be coercing graduate students to either join or refrain from joining the union, because, as managers, it would be a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
“The issue here would be if a faculty member is viewed as a representative of the university, and they promise a graduate student some sort of outcome for voting one way or another, either a good outcome or a bad outcome, then they’re coercing them and they’re violating law,” Cain said.
A lot has changed in 40 years. Cain said that in the “modern era,” faculty members have become increasingly concerned that strong, centralized, administrative power has limited their voice in shared governance and has distanced them from identifying with management. Additionally, Cain said, working conditions and pay issues for faculty members have, in some cases, “pushed tenure-line faculty to either support unionization or themselves organize and unionize.”
While Stanford walked back its guidelines about posting on social media, Cain said the continued prohibition on faculty members posting opinions about the unionization efforts on their doors and in their offices raises “serious concerns” for academic freedom. It would be fine, he said, if Stanford had a blanket ban on all signage and stickers on doors and office walls in order to preserve the property; targeted bans on certain topics threaten academic freedom.
Cain added that Stanford seems to be arguing that the presence of signage or stickers expressing a view on the union organizing is inherently coercive. “That would imply that the faculty-office space creates such a power differential that just having a faculty member express their opinions in that space, in written form or in signage or on a graphic, would tend to, maybe inherently, coerce students,” he said. “I’m not a labor lawyer, but that sort of argument about a power differential there, as being inherently coercive, seems like a leap.”
The topic of graduate-student unionization is one that higher education is still navigating after a 2016 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that recognized the right of graduate students at private universities to form unions. Grad students are conducting unionization drives in increasing numbers, as part of a larger groundswell of labor activity.
For his part, Giardino, the professor who posted his support on Twitter, said that over the years, there had been many topics that Stanford probably wished faculty members didn’t discuss on social media. But he couldn’t recall administrators ever putting out a statement prohibiting speech about specific topics until the other day.
“I don’t remember any other instance within the past almost 10 years in which faculty were specifically forbidden from expressing their opinions on social media about anything,” Giardino said, “so it definitely stands out in that regard.”
One of the hottest fields for recent college graduates has recently cooled off, as layoffs have hit the technology sector.
On Tuesday, Zoom announced it will be eliminating 15 percent of its staff. Spotify, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have all made cuts in their work forces in the past month. In November, the Facebook parent company Meta announced it would be cutting 13 percent of its workers. Amazon and Google are also expected to hire fewer interns in 2023 than in past years.
It is being called the largest wave of tech layoffs since the dot-com crash in the early 2000s, and it’s creating headaches for colleges’ career-counseling offices and soon-to-be-graduates who flocked to majors that once promised plentiful jobs.
For the past two decades, colleges, think tanks, and policy makers have touted the wage-earning potential of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics degree programs. Enrollments in many of those fields have grown accordingly, particularly in computer science.
The number of students pursuing bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences and support services has increased by 34 percent since 2017, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Interest in data science has risen as well. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that demand for data scientists will rise by 36 percent, much faster than the average for all occupations, from 2021 to 2031.
If history is any guide, it will most likely take some time for students and undergraduate academic programs to adjust to the changing job market.
The number of undergraduate computer-science degrees conferred in the United States began rising in 1995-96 and continued to do so until just after the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s. That started affecting freshmen’s choices. By 2005-6, the number of computer-science degrees as a share of all degrees awarded dropped to 3.2 percent from 3.5 percent in 2000-1. The Great Recession dealt a further blow to the field, as computer-science degrees made up only 2.5 percent of all degrees earned in 2010-11.
Since then, the share of such degrees conferred has grown each year, reaching almost 5 percent in 2019-20.
It’s just a matter of researching the employers that are engaging with the campus, as opposed to pining away for the ones that maybe aren’t at the moment
The drop in enrollment after the dot-com bubble burst was felt on campuses in many ways, said Amruth Kumar, professor of computer science at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Classes that were held once a semester were only held once a year, and some courses were combined in an attempt to fill them up.
Kumar said that he isn’t yet sure what to make of recent tech layoffs. Graduates who are just entering the job market could be disadvantaged by the layoffs and rapid rehiring of tech employees, he said, but the long-term effects on computer science as an academic field remain uncertain.
Besides, computer-science departments may face more immediate threats to their enrollment, and they come from within the campus. Soaring interest in data-science programs could divert institutional resources and draw students. Kumar said that while the increased interest in data science could cause a slight decline in computer-science enrollment, the two areas focus on different ways of problem-solving with technology.
“It seems to me that data science caters to a different skill set than computer science,” said Kumar, who is co-chair of CS 2023, a multi-association effort to create curricular guidelines for computer-science programs across the world.
Kumar believes computer science has become so popular because of the myriad fields computers are now used in.
“It used to be the case that only people use them in STEM disciplines, but now you have computer science being used for communication, social interaction like Facebook and Twitter,” he said. “All these are nothing but computer-science products appealing to other areas, other walks of life.”
Undergrad Programs Forge Ahead
For now, undergraduate programs across the country remain optimistic about interest in their disciplines and students’ job prospects.
The College of William & Mary plans to expand its data-science program; data is one of the four tenets of its “Vision 2026” plan. That’s because data fluency is a skill that students can apply in a variety of industries, said Kathleen Powell, chief career officer at William & Mary.
“Our students are understanding that if they’re combining that data fluency with strong communication skills, strong critical-thinking skills, that is actually opening up pathways for different types of internships and full-time opportunities,” Powell said.
She’s confident most 2023 graduates will find jobs. Companies plan to hire 14.7 percent more graduates from the Class of 2023 than were hired from the Class of 2022, according to a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
For their part, students seem to be optimistic, too. Full career fairs and continued demand from companies that are not tech giants may be giving them a false sense of security amid a possible economic downturn.
“It takes about six months for students to realize that, you know, maybe the job market isn’t as great,” said Gail Cornelius, director of the career center at the University of Washington’s College of Engineering. “It’s also somewhat deceiving in the fact that when we have our career-fair employer activities on campus, we are still full.”
The fairs still attract between 70 and 100 employers, she said, and she hasn’t noticed companies rescinding offers made to students, though some employers have delayed students’ start dates.
Students at Washington have flocked to computer science in recent years. In 2017, the university created a school of computer science, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. Since then, the number of undergraduate students enrolled in the university’s computer-science program at its Seattle campus has more than doubled. At the start of the winter quarter in January, the university’s Seattle campus had over 1,500 undergraduate computer-science majors. As of the autumn-2022 quarter, computer science was the most popular major at all three University of Washington campuses.
Many graduates have gone on to jobs at tech companies. About 55 percent of engineering graduates from the university got jobs with large technology companies, said Cornelius, citing data collected by the career center. And 44 percent of graduates found jobs with roughly 500 other companies, including those in nontechnology industries.
“Our students are savvy enough to know that even though I didn’t get the Amazon job, the first job I get out of school isn’t going to be the dream job, and isn’t going to be the place that I die in,” Cornelius said.
Closer to Silicon Valley, career counselors are advising students to be flexible in their career choices.
“There’s always companies and industries that are going to be thriving depending on what the market is,” said Kelly Masegian, a technology and engineering career counselor at San Jose State University. “It’s just a matter of finding those, and figuring out how you can pitch your skills in those environments.”
For example, Masegian and her colleagues are trying to introduce students to technology fields seeing major investments, like the semiconductor industry.
Like Cornelius in Washington, Masegian hasn’t seen job offers to new grads being rescinded, but she has seen some delays. Masegian said about 85 students who received job offers from Amazon had their start date postponed by six months. Many of them are international students, she said, whose ability to remain in the United States hinges on being employed within 90 days of graduating.
Despite the delayed starts for some students, Masegian said, she hasn’t seen companies reducing their hiring. Over 125 employers have signed up for the university’s upcoming STEM career fair, which can accommodate only 80 companies.
“It’s just a matter of researching the employers that are engaging with the campus, as opposed to pining away for the ones that maybe aren’t at the moment,” Masegian said.
She said that some students have been nervous about their ability to get internships, but she tries to remind them of the nature of the internship market. Students vying for internships are not competing with recently laid-off professionals, most of whom have years of experience.
Even recent graduates seeking entry-level positions might not be competing with recently laid-off workers, she said, because of differences in their experience levels.
A Market for M.B.A. Programs
If the changing nature of the tech job market poses a challenge for undergraduate programs, it’s looking like an opportunity for graduate business programs. Some M.B.A. programs are seeking to capitalize on the layoffs, redirecting their recruiting efforts toward unemployed technology workers.
In November, some business schools started waiving fees and testing requirements for applicants to M.B.A. programs who can provide proof of being recently laid off.
For example, the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University has waived GMAT or GRE requirements and application fees for laid-off tech workers. The University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business waived its application fee and extended the deadline to apply for its full-time M.B.A. program. Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business is waiving application fees and test requirements, as well as promising some prospective students a minimum $3,000 scholarship.
Workers with STEM backgrounds are attractive prospective M.B.A. students because of the skills they’ve picked up in the workplace, said Greg Hanifee, associate dean of degree operations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which announced it was waiving testing requirements in November.
Our students are savvy enough to know that even though I didn’t get the Amazon job, the first job I get out of school isn’t going to be the dream job, and isn’t going to be the place that I die in
Hanifee said Kellogg decided to waive GMAT scores and market to those experiencing tech layoffs out of a sense of empathy for tech workers whose sudden layoffs meant they may not have had much time to study for exams. Kellogg will continue evaluating the economy to determine whether it will waive the exam for next year’s class.
He also said that the high hiring standards of major tech companies, like Meta and Google, mean laid-off workers are strong candidates, even without graduate exam scores supporting their applications.
“I think we’re at the point now where, fingers crossed, the economy rebounds from some of this, and there aren’t additional sectors that go through a similar sort of mass layoff experience,” Hanifee said.
And, while some displaced tech workers may find refuge in an M.B.A. program, many may well be headed right back into the field after earning their graduate degrees. Twenty-four percent of Kellogg’s full-time graduates in 2022 found employment in the technology industry.
The ranks of the newly unemployed may fill a need for M.B.A. programs, said Martin Van Der Werf, director of editorial and education policy at Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce, and a former Chronicle editor.
Many M.B.A. programs are facing enrollment declines similar to those plaguing institutions across the country. The U.S. is home to over 500 colleges with masters programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
Applications for admission to graduate business schools increased only by 0.4 percent from 2020 to 2021, a far cry from the average annual increase of 3.6 percent from 2016 to 2020, according to a report by the Council of Graduate Schools.
The report also says that overall enrollment in graduate business programs declined by 3.4 percent from 2020 to 2021. During that period, part-time enrollment for first-time graduate students fell by 15.6 percent, while full-time enrollment for first-time students rose by 4.1 percent.
“They’re looking to fill as many seats as they can,” said Van Der Werf.
More than 300 academic scientists from around the world are fighting a decision by the University of California at Los Angeles to suspend an award-winning faculty member without pay, ban her from campus, prohibit her from speaking to her students, and cut her off from a National Science Foundation grant she brought in.
The university isn’t saying why penalties were imposed on Priyanga Amarasekare, a tenured professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who’d recently been awarded two of the highest honors in her field.
Amarasekare has been prohibited by the university from talking about the campus proceedings that resulted in the sanctions. Contacted this week by The Chronicle, she declined comment.
But conversations with current and former students and faculty members both within and outside UCLA reveal a messy dispute over allegations of racial discrimination in the ecology department and retaliation against those who complain. According to information obtained by The Chronicle, some of Amarasekare’s critics had suggested that she was using a time of national racial unrest to further her own grievances and turn students against the department.
In an email list set up in 2020 for the department of ecology and evolutionary biology, she complained of being repeatedly passed over for promotions and leadership opportunities after drawing attention to discrimination that she says she and others had experienced in her department.
“All decision-making authority has been granted to a few white male professors,” Amarasekare, a native of Sri Lanka and one of two women of color with tenure in the department, wrote. The department is trying to combat racism, she concluded, “by rendering invisible the very individuals it purportedly wishes to protect.”
After learning of her suspension, some of the prominent ecologists who have recommended her for promotions at UCLA circulated a petition that was sent on Monday to Michael V. Drake, president of the University of California, Gene D. Block, chancellor of UCLA, and the University of California regents. The petition, signed by a worldwide assortment of ecologists and other scientists, most from the United States and Europe, said they were “deeply troubled” by what they considered the secretive nature of the actions taken against “a highly distinguished ecologist.”
A UCLA spokesman said, in an email on Tuesday, that the university could not comment on the specifics of Amarasekare’s case because of personnel processes and privacy laws. However, in a statement attributed to the university, he said that UCLA supports freedom of expression and doesn’t condone retaliation, and that it’s “committed to maintaining a diverse, inclusive, and respectful learning, teaching, and working environment for all members of our community.” When someone is accused of failing to uphold those values, the statement said, UCLA investigates the claim and takes appropriate action, if warranted.
What’s unclear is what kind of behavior would warrant her punishment: a one-year suspension without salary or benefits, a 20-percent salary cut for two years after that, and a ban from university facilities including her office, lab, and email. The university also removed her from an NSF grant that she has been using for lab experiments, some of which examine the effects of rising temperatures on the survival of insect species.
“This is the kind of punishment normally applied only to the most egregious wrongdoings such as scientific misconduct and Title IX violations,” the petition states.
“We do not know the details of the proceedings at UCLA, but some things are clear to us from the outside,” it says. “Dr. Amarasekare has long been denied significant advancement within her department, out of keeping with her contributions to the field. The high quality of her research is unquestioned, as recently formally affirmed through a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Robert H. MacArthur Award from the Ecological Society of America, the highest honor a scientist in her field can receive.”
In April, the university announced her MacArthur honor, which is given every other year to a midcareer ecologist for outstanding contributions to the field. A few months later, she’d been suspended.
The “exceptionally severe” sanctions have not only caused her financial stress, the petition said, but have halted valuable federally-funded research and destroyed time-sensitive experiments that could have yielded important information about the effects of climate change.
The main author of the petition was Peter Chesson, a professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona who has recommended Amarasekare for several promotions at UCLA that she didn’t end up getting.
“I’ve been writing recommendations for her for years for good reason,” he said in an interview with The Chronicle. “Her work is outstanding. It’s pathbreaking.” He called her “one of UCLA’s star performers” and asked: “How can they destroy her life and career in this way and keep it all secret? It’s utterly appalling.”
Amarasekare’s suspension is particularly harmful for graduate students, Chesson said. “For students to suddenly lose their adviser and their ability to work is devastating,” he said. “ Suddenly, the person you’ve looked up to and admired is inexplicably removed.”
Two students who worked in her lab, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said they were shocked to receive word last July that their adviser had gone on leave. Their emails to her bounced and they were assigned to other advisers who didn’t have the same expertise that had drawn them to Amarasekare’s lab.
Students, they said, have experienced stress as well as significant setbacks in their research. The disruption occurred shortly before fellowship, postdoc, and graduate-school applications were due, hurting the career prospects of students who were counting on her letters of recommendation and mentorship.
In June 2020, Barney A. Schlinger, who was serving as interim chair of the ecology and evolutionary biology department at the time, circulated an email to members of the department announcing the creation of an email list “to express our opinions and ideas for how EEB can move forward in positive ways.” It was announced in the aftermath of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer and shortly after UCLA ecology students had circulated a statement of support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
In an email to students, Schlinger said he hoped the site would be a place “where we can indeed listen, especially from those hurt, even if unintentionally, by any aspect of the EEB culture.”
Given the opportunity, Amarasekare didn’t hold back. In a copy of the lengthy August 2020 post that was shared with The Chronicle by a former member of the department, she said that for years she had complained about discrimination against minorities in recruitment, retention, and advancement at UCLA. “The department’s way of addressing the problem, which it has done with the knowledge and approval of the higher administration, is to take measures that essentially render me voiceless and invisible,” she wrote.
Schlinger did not respond to a request for comment. The Chronicle reached out to 18 of the 28 UCLA faculty members listed on the department’s website, including the current chair, Michael Alfaro. Of the few who responded, none were willing to be quoted.
Andy Dobson, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, helped draft the petition protesting Amarasekare’s punishment. He too had been writing letters on her behalf for promotions she didn’t receive. He said he ran into her at an ecological association meeting and was shocked to hear of her suspension.
Amarasekare told him she was struggling with health problems and the stress, as a single parent of two school-age children, of having lost her salary and health insurance.
The petition asks the university “in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary” to lift the sanctions, compensate Amarasekare for “unnecessary infliction of hardship,” and help her recover her research program.
The University of California system reached a tentative agreement with striking graduate students late Friday that, if ratified, could bring an end to a monthlong strike that has paralyzed the 10-campus system.
One of the two bargaining units representing the striking workers, UAW 2865, wrote on Twitter that the tentative agreement includes raises of up to 80 percent for the lowest-paid workers. The strike will continue, it said, until the union’s members ratify the deal.
The university’s statement said it would provide minimum salary scales for academic student workers, including TAs and graduate-student researchers, as well as multiyear pay raises, paid dependent access to university health care, and enhanced paid family leave. If approved, the contracts would be in effect through May 31, 2025.
By October 1, 2024, the minimum nine-month salary for TAs working about 20 hours a week would be $34,000, the university said of the agreement. Currently, the lowest-paid workers earn $23,000. The rates would be slightly higher at the Berkeley, San Francisco, and UCLA campuses, where housing prices are especially high.
The UC strike, which began November 14, started with four bargaining units representing 48,000 graduate students, postdocs, and researchers. It’s created a chaotic end of semester with many professors saying they would be either unable or unwilling to submit final grades, even with extended deadlines. Some said they would forego grading to support striking workers, while others said that without readers or TAs, they couldn’t handle the volume.
Postdocs and researchers were back at work this week after overwhelmingly approving new contracts that included higher wages, paid family leave, and transit benefits. The academic workers who remained on strike agreed to continue negotiating with the university through an outside mediator, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg.
In a statement, the university system’s president, Michael V. Drake, thanked negotiators “for coming together in a spirit of compromise to reach this tentative agreement. This is a positive step forward for the university and for our students, and I am grateful for the progress we have made together,” he said.
“These agreements will place our graduate student employees among the best supported in public higher education,” Drake said.
In a statement, UAW President Ray Curry said the tentative agreements include “major pay increases and expanded benefits which will improve the quality of life for all members of the bargaining unit.” He added that “Our members stood up to show the university that academic workers are vital to UC’s success. They deserve nothing less than a contract that reflects the important role they play and the reality of working in cities with extremely high costs of living.”
Professors nationwide are currently immersed in an end-of-term ritual: grading. At the University of California, however, fall grades have been thrown into disarray as a strike involving teaching assistants reached its one-month mark.
Many professors say they are forgoing the submission of final grades, either out of solidarity with striking workers, or because they simply can’t grade hundreds of assignments without the help of readers and TAs — even with grading deadlines extended through the holidays.
Several faculty members told The Chronicle that communication from administrators — on a campus- and system-wide level — has been vague and unrealistic, with messages repeatedly stressing the obligation to maintain “continuity of instruction.“
“It’s a mess,” said Paul V.A. Fine, a professor in the integrative biology department at UC-Berkeley. “I’m surprised that the administration hasn’t been taken more to task by this, because I feel like they’re letting us all down.”
Instruction he received from his department for administering finals and grades, Fine said, was essentially reduced to a general directive: “Follow your conscience.”
UC officials say they’re trying to mitigate the impacts of the strike. Berkeley lecturers are being offered additional pay for picking up extra grading work at the end of the term, according to a university spokesperson.
At Berkeley, grading has been extended to December 31; other UC campuses are taking a similar approach. But Fine is frustrated. “Even if you extend the grade deadline, [then] what? You’re supposed to just do that instead of enjoying a holiday break? Forget that. That’s ridiculous,” he said.
Despite the strike, Fine continued teaching his undergraduate course on the ecosystems of California. Typically a graduate student works alongside him as an instructor and is responsible for half of the course’s grading. The course’s enrollment is small enough — 22 students — that he could complete grading by the deadline. But he said he won’t turn in grades until the strike is over, in solidarity with the graduate students.
“Although I am doing my job because I care a lot about my undergraduates’ education, I’m not going to do extra work,” Fine said.
Adding to the turmoil are questions about next term, which starts in a couple of weeks. Some classes don’t have teaching assistants assigned to them yet. On Wednesday, the UC-Davis Academic Senate sent out guidance suggesting that professors could do some of their winter-term teaching asynchronously and continue with modified instruction for up to two weeks after the strike ends.
‘At a Breaking Point’
The strike, which began November 14, initially involved four bargaining units made up of 48,000 UC graduate students, postdocs, and researchers.
Last week, postdocs and researchers overwhelmingly approved new contracts with the university system that secured wage increases, transit benefits, and paid family leave. They ended their strike on Monday. University officials and the union representing the remaining academic workers have agreed to continue negotiations through a third-party mediator.
“We remain committed to securing a fair and reasonable contract with the union that honors the hard work of our valued graduate student employees,” Letitia Silas, executive director of systemwide labor relations, said in a statement. “With the help of a neutral mediator, we hope to secure that agreement quickly.”
In the meantime, UC campuses have been scrambling to find solutions to the chaos — including paying lecturers to grade assignments.
The union that represents lecturers across the UC system, UC-AFT, released a cease-and-desist letter alleging that Berkeley’s offer interferes with lecturers’ right to refuse to pick up struck work under California law. The letter states that the union is aware of similar plans on “several other campuses.”
When asked if UC-Irvine was extending similar offers to their faculty, a university spokesperson said that deans and department chairs “have been advised to consider a range of approaches to support continuity of instruction,” which may include tapping lecturers to help. The Chronicle did not receive responses from the other UC campuses on Wednesday.
They have to figure out a way to solve this strike in a way that doesn’t harm students and also doesn’t try to exploit other vulnerable workers.
Unlike tenured professors, lecturers have a no-strike clause in their contracts. While some faculty members opted out of teaching their courses in solidarity after the strike began, lecturers had to continue.
Joanna Reed, a continuing lecturer in the sociology department at Berkeley, kept teaching, though she said lecture attendance “absolutely plunged” after the strike started. But she has told her students to expect a delay in getting their grades. (Reed is married to Fine.)
Reed would usually have eight readers to do the vast majority of grading for her two undergraduate lecture classes, for which the combined enrollment is over 300. It would be physically impossible, she said, to grade hundreds of assignments before the end of the month.
Still, she’s pushing ahead with the work she’d usually do at the end of the semester: preparing rubrics and answer keys, dealing with plagiarism issues, and getting the gradebook cleaned up. She’ll submit final grades after the strike ends and the graduate students can resume their work.
As Reed sees it, refusing to grade final assignments, which is considered struck work, is a way she can show solidarity with graduate students while continuing to fulfill her contractual obligations as a lecturer.
A lecturer at UCLA, who asked to remain anonymous because he fears speaking out could put his job at risk, said he feels pressure — both from the university and from students — to submit final grades.
But the lecturer, who teaches two courses with 300 students total, said it’ll be impossible for him to release accurate grades at the end of the semester. The lecturer has hundreds of essays from the semester ungraded — work that is partly done by the lecturer’s team of TAs. That’s not including the finals the classes completed last week. It doesn’t help, he said, that guidance from the administration on finals and grading arrived in the last week of classes after he had already put together plans for his final.
Although the deadline to turn in grades has been extended to January 2, he doesn’t plan to release grades.
“Those of us who don’t have job security, like me, are just at a breaking point,” he said.
Uncertainty Abounds
Many faculty members say they are torn between wanting to respect the picket line and feeling an obligation to their undergraduate students.
Catherine Liu, a professor of film and media studies at UC-Irvine, said she won’t file final grades with the registrar until the strike is resolved. But she plans to evaluate her students’ work and share grades with them directly. At 39 students, her class is small, and she doesn’t depend on a TA to help with grading. At UC-Irvine, the deadline to submit grades was extended to January 19.
Debates about obligation are complicated by questions about how withholding grades may impact undergraduates — including student athletes, veterans, students on financial aid, and graduating students seeking jobs. Some campuses have stressed that these students will not be affected if grades are not submitted. On other campuses, the possible implications remain unclear to faculty, and some are making arrangements for students in vulnerable situations.
At Berkeley, Reed said, some graduate students in her department have said they will work with professors to make sure students with a documented need receive grades. But Reed said the burden shouldn’t fall on instructors to protect students.
“The university created this situation with their unfair labor practices. So in my mind, it’s their problem to solve,” Reed said. “They have to figure out a way to solve this strike in a way that doesn’t harm students and also doesn’t try to exploit other vulnerable workers.”
And if the graduate-student strike continues into 2023, professors will have to figure out what to do about the next term.
This is a question that we’re all asking ourselves this week: What do we do in January?
With uncertainty about whether TAs will be on the job in January, UC-Davis instructors will be allowed to switch lab hours and discussion sections, normally taught by TAs, to asynchronous instruction, according to the Academic Senate’s guidance. Instructors must maintain the same amount of instructional time with students in a course.
The university “will allow these course adjustments to remain in place for up to two weeks after the end of the strike, at which point courses must return to their normal instructional modes,” the guidance states.
“I have a feeling that this is going to make a lot of faculty pretty unhappy,” said Stacy Fahrenthold, an associate professor of history at UC-Davis. “The implicit language in this policy is that faculty will be responsible for taking on not only the grading but also the instructional duties of their TAs if they remain on strike.”
Fahrenthold, who is scheduled to teach two undergraduate courses with a combined enrollment of 150 in the winter term, said she won’t be opting into the asynchronous option. “I see it as an attempt to break the strike or remediate its impacts,” she said. As for what next quarter will look like for her courses, she said that’s an open question.
“There’s about 450 faculty who are actively on sympathy strike,” she said. “And I think this is a question that we’re all asking ourselves this week: What do we do in January?”
Inside a campus coffee shop at the University of California at Los Angeles, students were hunched over laptops on white plastic tables, armed with cups of coffee. The students didn’t react to the cries and chants happening outside, largely drowned out by chatter and music streaming through AirPods. Finals were coming up, and students were starting to cram.
Steps away from the cafe, a group of 50 UCLA workers and faculty members walked in circles and carried picket signs around the university’s iconic inverted stone fountain. Around 1 p.m., they resumed their chants — calls for higher wages and better benefits.
A three-week-long strike by graduate students, postdocs, and researchers has profoundly disrupted life at one of the nation’s most prominent university systems. Now finals are here, and with no teaching assistants on the job, there’s widespread confusion among students and professors on how to proceed.
Students and professors say the campus feels emptier than usual. Since Thanksgiving, some have left entirely and not returned, due to modified and canceled classes and exams. Those who have stayed stuck around for a reason: Their classes are forging ahead.
With the end of the term approaching, faculty members say they’re struggling to fulfill obligations to their undergraduate students. Undergraduate students are concerned with how the strike will impact their grades — and wondering whether they’ll even get grades in the end. All are worried about how long the strike will last.
The UC system reached a tentative agreement with postdocs and academic researchers this week, agreeing to wage increases that the union says reflect the cost of living in one of the most expensive states in the country. But graduate students are still negotiating, and postdocs and researchers are continuing to strike with them.
The university has repeatedly emphasized that it expects faculty members to meet teaching and research responsibilities and ensure the continuity of instruction for students. A Wednesday letter from the UC system’s provost suggested alternate ways that faculty can show support for the strike. Colleges often respond to striking instructors by criticizing how work stoppages harm undergraduates’ learning.
People across the UC system have different perspectives on the strike and whom to blame for the ensuing chaos. But just about everyone feels conflicted in one way or another.
Peyton Quijano, a third-year biology major at UC-Santa Cruz, says she’s caught between wanting to support her TAs and being frustrated by yet another disruption to her studies. She says she understands why the strike has to happen. She’s also paying for her education and wants to get the most out of it.
“I just didn’t think the strike was going to go on this long,” Quijano said.
At UCLA, life hasn’t stopped. It’s just slowed way down.
Grading has been backed up, particularly for large lecture classes. Some students have had finals canceled or made optional. Other courses are operating as usual — save for the echoes of strike chants seeping into classrooms.
A spokesperson for UCLA didn’t respond to a question about how many classes had been canceled or affected by the strike.
Students who have returned to campus are there because their instruction is continuing — either modified or business as usual. By midafternoon on Thursday, nearly every desk was full inside UCLA’s main library.
Dylan Winward, a first-year student at UCLA, said one of his finals was made optional only five days before his exam was set to take place.
Over the last three weeks, Winward and his friends had been completing lectures and assignments from The Hill, a student hub for dorms, dining, and student services on UCLA’s campus. Winward and many of his friends said on Thursday that they were returning to the main campus for the first time since the strike began.
Although students said they sympathize with the TAs and others who are on strike, some are also concerned about grades. “I’ll be really upset if I put in all this work for finals and get nothing back,” said first-year student Sydney Roberts.
It feels a lot like when we were taking classes during the pandemic.
Jacob Castaneda, a third-year political science student who transferred to UCLA this semester, said his course load hasn’t been impacted. His final exams and essays are proceeding as usual. For his three lecture classes, each of which typically have TA-led discussions, his professors have committed to getting grades in on time.
For Mauve Spillard, a fourth-year comparative literature student, one of her professors who usually works with a TA has said grades will be turned in late.
Trent Brown, a first-year American literature undergraduate student, hasn’t had any classes or finals canceled since the strike began. But Brown is worried that delayed grading could affect students trying to apply for honors or other programs.
At UC-Santa Cruz, Quijano said her classes were canceled or moved online during the first two weeks of the strike; by late last week, some were back to in-person. She said her professors respect the cause of the striking workers, but they said they need to continue lessons for students to be able to complete the course.
But Quijano is struggling to get answers to her questions about the material without the help of TAs, and her labs have been canceled. Instead of conducting her own experiments, she has to write a paper based on a photo of the results she would have gotten.
“It feels a lot like when we were taking classes during the pandemic,” she said.
Much like during the pandemic, faculty members have had to make contingency plans.
Anna J. Markowitz, an assistant professor of education at UCLA, spent the weekend before the strike recording videos of lectures for her undergraduate Introduction to Quantitative Methods class. The next day, she stopped teaching.
Markowitz’s classes enroll 40 students, and she works with two graduate students. One of them runs the coding lab portion of Markowitz’s undergraduate course and grades all student assignments — work that has now been left ungraded. Markowitz said she will not submit grades or hold a formal final during the strike. For students who want to test their knowledge, she will release an optional exam, but it will not be graded.
I couldn’t look my students in the face and not fully support their right to strike.
As a graduate student at Georgetown University more than a decade ago, Markowitz said she earned the same wage as her graduate students make now: $25,000 for a three-quarter academic year. They are paid for part-time work capped at 20 hours a week, she said, but many graduate students work more.
“Knowing what my students make and knowing how bad I’ve been feeling about that for a long time, I couldn’t look my students in the face and not fully support their right to strike,” Markowitz said of her decision to not cross the picket line.
Markowitz is among 1,000 faculty who have pledged not to teach or submit grades until the strike ends. For some professors, it’s an act of solidarity. Others say that without the help of teaching assistants, it would be impossible to complete grading for classes with hundreds of students — no matter their personal positions on the strike.
David Shorter, a professor of world arts and cultures at UCLA, stopped teaching in solidarity with the graduate-student employees. He’s still holding listening sessions for his students, many of whom aren’t receiving clear directives from their professors or the university about how to exist amid the strike, he said.
Shorter is teaching three classes this quarter and doesn’t know how he’ll grade 300 papers before the end of the term, even if the deadline to submit grades is extended to January. He’d usually have the help of six TAs.
He stopped teaching his classes, one of which is an 80-person lecture, when the strike began. Nearly 25 percent of his students haven’t even returned to campus since Thanksgiving. And a lot of courses for the next term, he said, don’t even have TAs assigned yet.
While Shorter’s classrooms sat empty, a 300-person life sciences lecture at UCLA was nearly full on Thursday. Students were wrapped up in last-day-of-class chatter as the professor continued to make announcements about review sessions, about practice-exam questions, about their final — yes, there would be a final.
The professor went around the room as students were tasked with answering a practice question. Murmuring picked up among the students. They graphed their guesses and checked their responses with one another. The strike hadn’t changed much for these students, beyond canceling their TA-led discussion sections.
The Academic Senate at UCLA has released guidance suggesting that professors could shorten final exams or make them multiple choice, to ease the grading burden.
There have been a handful of incidents where strikers have interrupted midterm exams, said Winward, the first-year student; he reported on them for the campus newspaper, the Daily Bruin. He said some students are concerned about such disruptions happening again during finals week.
The University of California system views its graduate students like most colleges do: Their employment is “strictly part time,” and campus policy prevents them from working more than 20 hours per week. Meeting some of the students’ demands, university officials say, would cause an “unprecedented” and “unpredictable” financial impact.
The university has proposed paying TAs between $25,000 and $31,000 per year, and graduate-student researchers between $28,000 and $47,000 per year, for part-time work — which officials say would make UC graduate students the highest compensated among public institutions in the Association of American Universities. The union has called for a minimum salary of $54,000.
Another sticking point is housing costs. University officials have stressed that UC-owned housing for graduate students is already 20 to 25 percent below market rates. Tying raises to housing costs, as the union has called for, could cost hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to the university.
We’re eager to get back to work. We just want to make sure we are living and working in dignified conditions.
UC officials said they had reached agreements with other employee unions in the past year, demonstrating their “flexibility and a genuine willingness to compromise.” The university has proposed working with a private mediator to resolve differences, which the union doesn’t support.
Meanwhile, on most campuses, the deadline to submit final grades this fall has been extended — but only by a few days. And there’s little consistency across campuses.
Faculty members are also struggling to figure out what legal rights they have to participate in a sympathy strike.
A Wednesday letter from Michael T. Brown, the UC-system provost, stated that if faculty members choose not to hold classes or submit grades during the strike, the “university in turn may withhold their compensation.” If faculty members participate in a “partial strike,” where they don’t submit grades but continue to do research, they could also risk disciplinary action.
The letter said that faculty have the responsibility to maintain course and curricular requirements, including “the timely awarding and submission of grades.” The Council of UC Faculty Associations called the letter “misleading.”
For some faculty members, the university is making a frustrating, if not impossible, ask — especially after the pandemic left them feeling burned out and exhausted.
“Most of us are confused, if not stressed, because we just spent three years being very agile for our employers due to COVID,” Shorter said. “And now the expectation is that we would spend our holiday breaks or winter breaks grading hundreds of papers for a situation we did not create.”
The faculty associations’ council also released a Google form for professors to fill out if they expect not to be able to submit final grades without the help of TAs. As of Friday, the group said the total number of expected missing grades was 23,000.
Bernard Remollino, a graduate-student researcher and teaching assistant at UCLA, said what’s happening across UC campuses now sends a critical message: The university works because of its academic student workers. The question of when their work will proceed is up to the UC system, he said.
“We’re eager to get back to work,” Remollino said. “We just want to make sure we are living and working in dignified conditions. And that’s it.”
LOS ANGELES — Postdoctoral scholars and academic researchers on Tuesday reached a tentative labor agreement with the University of California but will remain on strike in solidarity with thousands of graduate student workers at all 10 of the university system’s campuses.
The union representing the scholars and researchers hailed the deal as a major victory and said it would provide “substantial wage increases that address cost of living.”
In addition to pay hikes of up to 29%, the agreement would provide increased family leave, childcare subsidies and lengthened appointments to ensure job security, according to a statement from United Auto Workers Local 5810.
The agreement must be ratified in a vote by members.
Letitia Silas, executive director of UC’s labor relations, said the university system was pleased to have reached a deal that honors the workers’ contributions.
“These agreements also uphold our tradition of supporting these employees with compensation and benefits packages that are among the best in the country,” Silas said in a statement.
The postdoctoral employees and academic researchers make up about 12,000 of the 48,000 union members who walked off the job and onto picket lines three weeks ago. About 36,000 graduate student teaching assistants, tutors and researchers are bargaining separately and remain on strike, calling for increased pay and benefits.
Union leaders have said the strike could be the largest work stoppage the prestigious public university system has ever faced.
The academic workers say with their current salaries they can’t afford to live in cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego and Berkeley, where housing costs are soaring.
Organizers from the United Auto Workers, which represents the employees involved, have said there is no end date for the strike.
WASHINGTON — A new group of Rhodes scholars from the U.S. has been selected for the prestigious academic program in a selection process that was conducted online for the third consecutive year.
The class of 32 scholars for 2023 was “elected entirely virtually, with both candidates and selectors participating remotely, safely, and independently,” American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust Elliot F. Gerson said in a statement early Sunday. “As successful as the process was, we of course hope to return to in-person interviews and selection next year in cities across the country, as had been done for over a century.”
Interviews for the 2021 and 2022 scholarship classes were conducted virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2023 class is expected to begin studies at the University of Oxford in England in October in pursuit of graduate degrees in social sciences, humanities and biological and physical sciences, the trust said.
The U.S. scholars, who are among students selected from more than 60 countries, were vetted by 16 independent district committees from a pool of more than 2,500 applications. From those applicants, 840 were endorsed by 244 U.S. colleges and universities.
After receiving the endorsements of their schools, most of the district committees chose 14 or more applicants for online interviews. The committees met separately between Nov. 10 and 12 through a virtual platform and promoted 235 finalists from 73 colleges and universities, including nine schools that have not previously had a student win the scholarship, the trust said.
The scholars’ financial expenses for two to three years of study – averaging about $75,000 per year – are covered by the Rhodes Trust, a British charity established to fulfill the bequest of Cecil Rhodes, a founder of diamond mining and manufacturing company De Beers.
The scholarships were created in 1902, with the inaugural class entering Oxford in 1903 and the first U.S. Rhodes scholars arriving in 1904, according to the website of the trust’s American secretary.
TUCSON, Ariz. — A former University of Arizona graduate student arrested in the fatal shooting of a hydrology professor was being held without bond Friday after a judge ruled there was enough evidence to try him on charges of first degree murder and aggravated assault.
An interim complaint in the case released Friday says Thomas Meixner, who headed the school’s Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, was shot four times on Wednesday afternoon. The shooting happened inside the Harshbarger Building, which houses the hydrology department. Meixner was pronounced dead at a hospital.
According to the complaint, a second person, whose name was blacked out, was treated at the scene after being struck by a bullet fragment.
The complaint signed by a judge late Thursday at Pima County Justice Court said there was reasonable cause to proceed in the case against 46-year-old Murad Dervish. In Arizona, charges are not filed until a preliminary hearing takes place, and there was no word on when that would happen.
The Pima County Public Defender’s Office confirmed it received the case but has not yet assigned an attorney who can speak on Dervish’s behalf.
Campus police said a female called 911 around 2 p.m. Wednesday asking for police to escort a former student from the Harshbarger Building. Officers were on their way when they received reports that a man had shot someone then fled.
Campus alerts instructed people to avoid the area, which was under lockdown. Classes, activities and other campus events were canceled for the rest of the day.
State troopers arrested Dervish a few hours later about 120 miles (190 kilometers) northwest of the Tucson campus.
The complaint said officials found a 9mm handgun in the vehicle, along with ammunition consistent with the 11 casings found at the shooting scene.
The relationship between Dervish and Meixner remains unclear, but the interim complaint said a flyer with a photograph of Dervish, a former graduate student, had been circulated to university staff in February with instructions to call 911 if he ever entered the building. It also said he was “expelled” and “barred from being on University of Arizona property.”
“Dervish has been the subject of several reports of harassment and threats to staff members working at Harshbarger,” the complaint said.
Meixner was an expert on desert water issues. Faculty and former students described as a kind and brilliant colleague.
“This incident is a deep shock to our community, and it is a tragedy,” University President Robert Robbins said in a statement late Wednesday.
Meixner earned a doctorate in hydrology and water resources from the university in 1999 and joined the faculty in 2005 before becoming the department head in 2019.
Twenty years ago this month, a disgruntled University of Arizona nursing student shot and killed three nursing professors before taking his own life.
TUCSON, Ariz. — The University of Arizona has released the name of a professor who authorities said was fatally shot on campus by a former graduate student.
University President Robert Robbins identified the victim late Wednesday as Thomas Meixner, who had headed the school’s Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences.
“This incident is a deep shock to our community, and it is a tragedy,” Robbins said in a statement. “I have no words that can undo it, but I grieve with you for the loss, and I am pained especially for Tom’s family members, colleagues and students.”
Police said Meixner was shot Wednesday afternoon inside the Harshbarger Building, which houses the hydrology department.
Meixner was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
A few hours after the shooting, state troopers stopped a former graduate student, 46-year-old Murad Dervish, in a van about 120 miles (193 kilometers) northwest of the Tucson campus, university Police Chief Paula Balafas said during a news conference.
Dervish was being held at the Pima County jail awaiting his initial court appearance. It wasn’t immediately clear what charges he might be face or whether he has a lawyer yet who could speak on his behalf.
According to campus police, a female called 911 at around 2 p.m. Wednesday asking for police to escort a former student out of the Harshbarger Building. Balafas said someone recognized Dervish “and knew that he was not allowed inside the building,” although Balafas didn’t explain why.
Officers were on their way to the building when they received reports that a man shot and wounded someone before fleeing, Balafas said.
The building is near the university bookstore and student union, and campus alerts instructed people to avoid the area, which was under lockdown.
Classes, activities and other campus events were canceled for the rest of the day. Classes resumed on Thursday, but Balafas said the building where the shooting happened might remain closed.
When asked how well Dervish and Meixner knew one another, Balafas said she didn’t know.
Meixner earned a doctorate in hydrology and water resources from the university in 1999 and joined the faculty in 2005 before becoming the department head in 2019. He was considered an expert on desert water issues.
Various faculty members and former students took to social media to praise Meixner as a kind and brilliant colleague.
Karletta Chief, director of the university’s Indigenous Resilience Center, said she met Meixner when she was a graduate student in 2001 and he was new to the faculty. While she was not one of his students, her research in hydrology led to frequent collaborations. The last time she saw Meixner, who was a big supporter of Native American and indigenous communities researching water issues, was a week ago at a seminar his department co-sponsored.
Chief said she emailed Meixner and several others in the hydrology department after the shooting, and that she was devastated to learn he was the one who had been shot.
“It’s just unimaginable that anybody would have any direct anger toward him. He was completely the opposite of that. He was just so kind and positive and always wanting to help,” said Chief, who noted that Meixner never mentioned to her if there had been any trouble with a current or former student.
Meixner was also generous outside of campus, Chief said. He once gave money for a marathon that she ran to benefit the Lymphoma Society.
“He shared that he was thankful for me doing this run and he was a cancer survivor,” she said.
It was 20 years ago this month that a disgruntled University of Arizona nursing student shot and killed three nursing professors before taking his own life.
