MIT graduate students vote to unionize
For anyone not familiar with the world of academia, grad students actually have a good bit more power available to them by organising sensibly than you might think. The same is also true for early career postdoctoral research staff. This is because most of the work that actually matters is being done by these individuals, in a very pyramidical structure, but the money stops rolling in without the work that the base of the pyramid is delivering.<p>Tenured professors and others win research grants, and are only as good as their last grant. If they stop running on the treadmill, they won&#x27;t get any more grants, as their pitch becomes less compelling than others&#x27;.<p>They win a grant, but the actual research work is then done by postdoctoral researchers and grad students. They do the actual work, write it up, and pretty much everything else. Often they even win the grants in the first place. The exception is that when there&#x27;s some credit to be gained for the work, the professor will reappear to take center stage and give interviews.<p>If the grad students organise, the wheels could begin to fall off quickly - if projects are delayed, grant payments won&#x27;t come through. If they are not teaching classes, someone else has to teach them. If the research isn&#x27;t getting done, someone has to speak with funders on calls. Someone has to write reports. There&#x27;s more to be done than the professor can do, and they will rapidly end up snowed under, unable to function, and unable to deliver papers on their grant. That will make it harder for them to get their next pet project funded.<p>Unfortunately, many people go into academia believing it to be a bastion of meritocracy where their efforts and skill will be rewarded, and they spend some number of years believing this before they start to realise what is actually going on. Some will make it to be a professor, others become disillusioned and go elsewhere. In my view though, the model is quite broken, and too reliant on a professor claiming credit for others&#x27; work without challenge, even though the work of their (hidden) team was the meaningful intellectual input, and some of them would probably be better as the professor.