Also, how can they take away tuition reimbursement for the whole semester if the strike hasnt been that long?
Garbage administration. I hope the students win and that this isnt the new normal.
It´s not about caving, I don´t think. It´s about maximum damage. University administration is one of the most ruthless groups you can come across. They´re well aware that they hold the future ambitions of these students in their hands. Even if they get sued, even if they lose, they´re well aware that they can utterly ruin a sizeable portion of the students they hit with this. They simply can´t afford to fight back, or wait to get the situation resolved.
These scumbags in university administration could not care less about ruining a student's future. They have nothing to lose.
Which is what I really think the core of the problem is. These people make decisions that can ruin of a whole host of people, but face no accountability for it.
I'm of the opinion that there should always be a remedy available for those wronged, and the ones doing the wronging should hope it's only via the court system.
Well, just look at how administrative errors, and professional misconduct by instructors is handled. I had a professor fail half the class because he lost the final exams, and another cohort because he made serious errors in the grading. The university did absolutely nothing to deal with it. While I was able to get the grade removed, I was directly told by the vice-dean to get out of the faculty for making a stink about it.
It took four years for the university to take action against the professor. Apparently the line wasn't even him telling students to kill themselves if they failed his course.
No joke, I managed to twist my way around bureaucrats for years, but university admissions was the one first I could just never beat
Have they miscalculated?
Not a comment on the right or wrong of this action but the article says this 80% of similar grad students have not gone on strike. Would be good to know how distributed across academic fields this strike is. If it is a few from each, then it seems Temple can just wait them out. If it is focused on just one area maybe not. This article is very light on detail.
Once again workers in this country are asking for the bare minimum as they continually get screwed over. Just another cartel taking away from people doing the actual work, with their endless army of bureaucrats.
Grad students are also very disposable, and, normally, prospective new students will have no idea of the wronged-student body count of any advisor or university.
One exception, in this case, is you have a group of students in the US national news, so it might be harder for this university to get grad students in the near future.
(Though US affluent families will be sending kids to ride out recession in grad school, and there's only so many admissions slots, so some kids can't be picky about where they go, even if they happen to have been paying attention to the news. And there's also international demand for US grad school slots.)
If your advisor is sympathetic, there's nothing that prevents you from continuing to work on your thesis. If you still have coursework, then you're probably out of luck, but if you're ABD, then you might be just fine. But that would require a sympathetic advisor.
I too hope they lose and are shamed (assuming they feel any shame at all). But I think they know what they’re doing