PhD students provide a lot of the teaching labor at universities as lecturers and teaching assistants. What do you think would happen if they were gone? This is precisely why striking is effective, because the universities need them.
Yes. From the article: "If the deal is approved by union members, graduate students would receive a minimum stipend of $34,000 by October 2024—a raise of $13,000 for some students". So as I said, professors are vastly more expensive.
> Also, wouldn’t that provide more actual jobs for PHd’s instead of competing for a scant number of jobs?
Yes. But it wouldn't do anything to save money on undergraduate education.
> Furthermore, I do not believe that the costs of undergraduate education are driven by professor salaries; I suspect there are other drivers like administrative overhead and overbuilt facilities.
Then what's the objection to higher stipends for PhD students?
Right, and this is why they are trying to underpay teaching staff.
There is no problem with “whiny” PhDs. The problem is with overpaid self-dealing administrators betraying the purpose of the institution.
TAs also grade quizzes, final exams, create questions for problems, etc... The professor often does very little work and leaves it to the TA, at least in my experience as a TA for physics courses. It's a lot more than just maintaining a lab.
It's a graduate student union. Both Masters and PhD students are in the same union.
> senior undergrads
1) They're not qualified.
2) Why would they even want to? It's time consuming and low paying. In fact, it would be even lower paying without a union, so senior undergrads would need to form one. Also keep in mind that PhD students are generally intending to go into teaching in the future, whereas undergrads generally aren't.
If they don't work for the university, these union negotiations don't affect them.
That is exactly what the union is negotiating.