UGA's graduate teaching assistants are half student, half teacher. The question is, are they "regular employees"?

B Y - L A U R A - W E X L E R

ristide Sechandice strides to the front of the room, turns his back on his History 122 class, and marks "World War II: The Phase of the Blitzkrieg" on the blackboard. Then, without so much as a throat-clearing or a hello, he whirls around and launches: "In 1938, Chamberlain--who was scared of flying, you should know--went to Hitler to get peace. 'Peace in our time,' Chamberlain called it. That was peace? It was a piece of paper."

For the next 50 minutes, Sechandice, 32, moves flawlessly through his lecture, adopting a British accent on cue, marking key dates on the board, and posing the question: "If you could go back in history and kick someone's ass, who would it be?"

At hour's end, a few students line up to speak with Sechandice. They approach him the way all students should approach teachers--with equal parts intimidation and excitement. After the last student shuffles out, Sechandice, having completed his teaching duties for the moment, converts to his other identity: doctoral student in history. He's one of UGA's 519 graduate teaching assistants (known as TAs) who divide time between teaching, taking classes, and writing dissertations.

"I love the teaching," says Sechandice. "I would like to have four to five hours to prepare for each lecture." In the next breath, however, he voices a harsher opinion: "Graduate education is one of history's last sweatshops."

Ben Salt, who lost his adult education assistantship last spring, echoes Sechandice's sentiments. "I like the teaching but I never felt I was given the respect," says Salt, coordinator of the Graduate Student Association, which represents 5,300 UGA grad students.

The apparent paradox in Salt's and Sechandice's comments alludes to a controversy brewing on many U.S. campuses, where graduate assistants are arguing that, because the work they perform is essential to their university's daily operation, they deserve better working conditions.

The controversy surfaced at UGA in 1997 with the formation of the Georgia Graduate Forum (GGF), a group of nearly 300 graduate assistants who want increased representation in University decision-making, regular employee status, higher stipends, and subsidized health insurance. A subset of GSA, GGF claims to represent UGA's 2,878 graduate workers--including TAs, research assistants, and lab assistants. GGF's campaign rests on the belief that better working conditions for graduate assistants will lead to better education for undergraduates as well.

But University administrators see nothing wrong with the current system. Their philosophy is that graduate assistants are not regular employees, but students working in a lab or a classroom as part of their education. And though such a debate may seem like semantics, recent history suggests otherwise. In an extreme situation at Yale in 1996, TAs withheld students' grades in an effort to gain the right to bargain with the university administration as employees. Despite a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that graduate assistants in private universities are employees, Yale administrators maintained that its TAs are students. As dean of Yale's graduate school Thomas Apelquist wrote in an editorial for the Chronicle of Higher Education, "The defining relationship between faculty members and graduate students is the educational one that brought them together, not the relationship of employer and employee."

Many UGA administrators share Apelquist's philosophy, arguing that establishing an employer-employee relationship or allowing graduate assistants to unionize--as they have at 19 campuses around the country, including the University of Florida, UC-Berkeley, the University of Oregon, and Rutgers--would shake the foundations of the apprenticeship system, which has served for 100 years as the bedrock of graduate education.

"For better or for worse, graduate students have become a full third party in education, along with faculty and administration. The administration knows the faculty couldn't get along without us." History department TA Aristide Sechandice

like the apprenticeship model," says former vice president for academic affairs William Prokasy. "To reject that would be to reject my life."

Prokasy is referring to the long-standing system in which graduate students become experts on a particular subject under the tutelage of mentoring professors. By assisting professors in the classroom or the lab, they also become proficient in teaching or research.

"I was a grad student in the '60s, and I started my grad student career as an employee in a professor's lab, washing glassware," says Gordhan Patel, dean of UGA's graduate school. "Eventually, I was given a research assistantship by this professor, and I worked. I was happy to have the assistantship."

In theory, the apprenticeship model is mutually beneficial. In practice, several factors complicate it. As in the case of Sechandice, many "teaching assistants" are actually teachers of record; they do not assist anyone. They create syllabi, plan class meetings, grade papers, and compute final grades. In UGA's English department, TAs teach 298 of the department's 300 sections of freshman English. Factoring in upper division courses taught almost solely by tenure-track professors, TAs and instructors (non-tenure-track faculty) still teach 70 percent of credit units offered by the English department.

In Romance languages last year, TAs taught 195 of the 463 sections (42 percent) offered. Tenure-track professors taught 125 courses, or 27 percent of the sections offered. In math--similar to English and Romance languages in the numbers of students it must educate--only 29 out of 325 courses were taught by the department's 40 TAs. But, says math professor William Kazez, instructors made up the difference.

Numbers like these make Sechandice and other GGF members suspicious about the apprenticeship model. They wonder: are we here to further our own education, or to act as a cost-effective way for departments to provide core courses to ever-increasing numbers of freshmen and sophomores? For instance, the English department pays a TA approximately $3,000 to teach a single course section. It would cost at least twice that much to have the same course taught by a professor.

"For better or for worse, graduate students have become a full third party in education, along with faculty and administration," says Sechandice. "The administration knows the faculty couldn't get along without us."

Many TAs use their hefty teaching percentages, coupled with the fact that they comprise 26.6 percent of UGA's instructional faculty, as justification for gaining "regular employee" status. They say they do the work of employees, often for as long as five or six years as they move through masters and doctoral degrees. Shouldn't they receive the benefits--sick leave, health insurance, retirement benefits?

Labor relations expert Joel Douglas doesn't think so. "It seems to me that when one is a graduate student, that is not a career. The goal should be to graduate, not to become an employee," says Douglas, professor of labor relations at CUNY's Baruch College. "On the other hand," he adds, "universities exploit graduate employees."

"I personally don't believe students are being exploited in aggregate," says Prokasy. "I view the doctoral education as necessarily including how to teach. We have a responsibility to provide some instructional learning."

"It's an essential part of graduate training," says professor of higher education Tom Dyer. "In some cases, teaching becomes on-the-job training, preceded by a seminar focusing on teaching methods. In my own case, it was one of the best parts of my graduate education."

Further, Patel says, "If we're really looking for cheap labor, there are plenty of Ph.D.s out there who will teach for less money than we give TAs. Having TAs teach our courses is not necessarily the most cost-efficient way to do it."

The most cost-effective way to teach classes, says Mike Hendrick, assistant to the head of the English department, is actually to hire adjunct instructors, known as "freeway flyers" or "academic gypsies."

"Talk about institutions exploiting people," says Hendrick. "There are schools which deliberately hire a core of adjuncts and keep them at 35 hours a week so they're ineligible for benefits. We have never been told to do that."

Instead, the English department puts a force of 90 TAs to work. That alternative has drawbacks, too, according to the Modern Language Association, which recently advised departments to reduce graduate student enrollment in light of a bleak job market. MLA members worry that as TAs and instructors shoulder more and more of their university's course loads, they do a disservice to their own prospects for jobs as tenure-track professors.

"Many universities, and ours in particular," says history professor Robert Pratt, "have now resorted to bringing in more graduate students than we need in a program to perform various kinds of labor. You need them to grade papers and serve as assistants because enrollment is increasing."

"I asked one of the Georgia Graduate Forum students why he had come to Georgia. The answer was, Georgia had a better assistantship than the other places he was accepted." Gordhan Patel, dean of the Graduate School

n early June, GGF sent a letter to UGA President Michael Adams, requesting a change from "student worker" to "regular employee" status.

"To deny us employee status is to deny the value of the work we do every day in the trenches of undergraduate education," said Sechandice at GGF's spring rally. Says English TA Paul Farr: "I think most parents would be upset to find out that the teachers teaching their sons and daughters the core curriculum are not considered staff members at this University."

Alongside demands for employee status and greater representation, GGF members claim the administration acts unjustly in denying them health insurance and a "living wage." An informal study of GGF members reveals that only 21 percent have some type of health coverage. Husband and wife Clai Rice and Lydia Whitt, English TAs, have two children. Because UGA does not provide health insurance for TAs or their families, the children are on Medicaid. Recently, Whitt needed $2,000 in dental work; it was not covered by the student policy she pays $508 yearly for. "How are we going to pay for it?" asks Rice. "That's a good question."

Sechandice, who is $65,000 in debt from his undergraduate and masters studies, says he doesn't expect to live well as a graduate student, but he believes a living wage is a moral issue. "When the university doesn't pay a living wage, it is an admission that unless you are of a certain wealth or class, you're not welcome at the University," he says. Last year, Sechandice's stipend was $8,550--plus free tuition.

But some aren't sympathetic to GGF's point of view. "All these people whine about benefits--if they wanted to make good money, they should have gotten a real job," says Dan Campbell, a senior management information systems major who's been taught by a half-dozen TAs during his UGA career.

"I'm quite happy with my teaching assistantship," says Ushiri Kulatunga, a chemistry graduate student from Sri Lanka who teaches a lab section. "I feel I'm here to get an education. I'm not here as a permanent employee. When I get my education, I'm going to have a good job, so I'm not worried about it."

With only about two-thirds of UGA's graduate students receiving stipends, Patel says it's unreasonable that those lucky enough to have assistantships are complaining. He points to the fact that free tuition is worth as much as $10,000 per year to an out-of-state student.

Sam Evans, a doctoral student in adult education who does not have an assistantship, also doesn't sympathize with the graduate assistants' complaints. "They should be happy," says Evans. "Otherwise, go get a job. I know people who have assistantships and don't do anything all quarter."

"I feel, based on the assistantship data I have, that we provide good assistance for graduate students here," says Patel. "Now, some people just want to be unhappy. I could be unhappy with my own salary. President Adams could be unhapy with his salary. You have to look at that unhappiness in the context of reality. I asked one of the Georgia Graduate Forum students why he had come to Georgia. The answer was, Georgia had a better assistantship than the other places he was accepted."

According to a national survey of graduate assistantships conducted by the University of Nebraska, at Rutgers University an English TA makes about $10,000 for 15 hours of work per week; at the University of Florida, it's about $6,000 for 10 hours of work; at the University of Minnesota, it's $9,400 for 20 hours of work; at the University of Utah, about $7,600 for 25 hours of work; and at UGA, about $10,000 for 13 hours of work. Because there's a range in job descriptions--and a range of benefit packages offered in addition--it's difficult to determine exactly what these figures mean. But it's safe to say that UGA's stipends fall well within the national average.

Chemistry TA Brian Decker, who earns $14,000 yearly, says arguing that UGA's stipends are in line with the national average belies the issue. "This is a societal problem," says Decker. "But I'd say on the scale of things, UGA is being less progressive than other universities."

The Nebraska survey also reports that 38 percent of 121 universities surveyed provide some measure of health insurance. UGA currently provides graduate assistants only with the option to buy the student health plan; because they are not classified as employees, they are ineligible for the comprehensive and cheaper plan the University provides its employees through Blue Cross Blue Shield. "It is not true that the majority of institutions provide health care for graduate assistants," says Patel. However, both he and Prokasy say they support the idea.

But, in order for the University to provide health benefits to graduate assistants, says associate vice-president for human resources Carlton James, one of two things must happen first. The Board of Regents must change the status of graduate teaching assistants from "student worker" to "regular employee," or they must declare that graduate assistants--regardless of the fact they're not regular employees-- are eligible for health benefits. Either option, says James, requires investigation into cost and funding sources.

t's likely that every UGA student will be taught by a TA at least once during his or her undergraduate education. So, an important question in this debate is whether students get their money's worth when a TA, instead of a professor, teaches their class. Though some, like Campbell, say having a TA is "like paying full-price for a half-price teacher," most parties agree UGA's TAs do an effective job.

"A good share of the credit hours generated by TAs and instructors are in what I call 'skills acquisition' courses--freshman composition, introductory foreign languages, and others," says Prokasy. "Most of what gets done in there can be managed and learned by instructors and TAs."

Though Prokasy acknowledges the use of TAs and instructors is, in part, a cost-saving measure, he says: "I don't think on balance we do ourselves a huge service by spending a lot more money getting these courses taught by professors when graduate students can do it just as well. It's a cost-saving measure, but if it works, why shouldn't you cut costs?"

Prokasy and other administrators say that despite the myth that TAs are poor teachers, they're often the best candidates to teach the lower-level courses. "The TAs have a nice relationship with their students," says Hendrick. "Many a student has been helped by a TA in their first year."

"I observe TAs all the time," says Kathleen Smith, TA program coordinator for the Office of Instructional Support and Development. "I have no apologies for their performance."

"I would actually rather ask help from someone my age," says Max Cooper, a junior psychology major. "It's a lot less intimidating."

ome faculty members support better working conditions for graduate assistants for reasons beyond the working conditions themselves. According to anthropology department head Stephen Kowalewski, "It's come up in our recruiting of students from the very best schools. People ask about health coverage. They ask about the living environment and the working conditions."

Associate vice president for academic affairs James Fletcher maintains that attractive work conditions for graduate assistants are essential to UGA's reputation. "We're not getting the best graduate assistants there are," says Fletcher. "Our assistantships are miserly, our tuition waivers are bad, and we don't offer health care."

But Doug Bachtel, a housing and consumer economics professor who was recently named GSA's adviser, says that perhaps more pressing than the need to better graduate students' working conditions is the need for them to become involved in UGA's decision-making process. Bachtel fondly remembers his days as president of Ohio State's graduate student council. "I met with the president every other week," he says. "I had an office, a secretary, and a $20,000 yearly salary."

The graduate school funded Bachtel's position, and the investment paid off, he says, in "incredible involvement of grad students. Every committee had a grad student. The experience was so wonderful."

In his 18 years at UGA, Bachtel has not seen a single graduate student on the committees he's served on. There are no student representatives on the 29-member Graduate Council, which advises Patel in decisions regarding the graduate school.

"Theoretically, the opportunity for graduate students to be involved has existed always," says Patel. "No one has taken it up."

Though the graduate school provided an assistantship for GSA's coordinator when the organization was created nine years ago, it does not provide a stipend currently. Recently, GSA was informed they are no longer entitled to an office at the Tate Student Center. Bachtel is working to change that.

"Without funding, a graduate student government can't work," Bachtel says. "I think the University would be better off with a fully-functioning, well-advised graduate student government. It's a win-win scenario."

With the benefit of the University's financial and institutional support, he says, participants in a graduate student government gain training above and beyond teaching and research. "At UGA, there are no great men or women, only great committees," says Bachtel. "A graduate student government is simply another form of university governance. It's a wonderful training ground for graduate students--many of them are going to go on to leadership positions, and this is where they have to learn to work within an administration."

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