UT-Austin Faculty & Staff Solidarity with Graduate Student Workers

This university runs its research programs on graduate students. Fair compensation is essential.

After Harvard, UT is the richest university in the world. Too expensive for students to get living wages? What about limiting the number of high-paying administrators? This is a top-heavy university that keeps adding high-paying associate deans and vice provosts for equity. What about DOING equity?

Cost of living in Austin has increased significantly in the last years. And graduate students suffer directly from the price of parking, food, health care, housing, child care, etc. The income of graduate students is low and hasn't been raised to keep up with these increasing costs. As my colleague Alberto Martinez wrote: "At the same time, record-breaking salaries for administrators, for themselves, and allocate monies for countless pointless luxuries. How many millions are wasted on consultants? (Poorly doing labors that UT experts would do correctly and for free.) How many millions are burned on athletics administrators? 23-carat gold leaf. The luxury carpets. The expensive dinners with fine wine. The entertainment budgets. The flights. The expensive hotels. The $8,700 per locker. The Yellow Brick Speedway, poorly constructed, replaced, now cracking again. The bonus "loans" for the rich, which don't have to be repaid. The leftover catered meals thrown into the trash. The former Law School Facilities Director who stole $1.2 Million. The consultants again. Etc. There are individuals who can fix the salaries of graduate students simply by changing their priorities. That is, by choosing to live up the moral standards that the state and the public expect of them." It is time that UT-Austin focuses on the hard-working graduate students who are one of the main backbones of this university.

UT should used its substantial endowment to afford its students a decent living first and foremost!

Costs have gone WAY up in Austin, and students need financial support to thrive and succeed in school and in future careers.

Signing in solidarity with all graduate students workers without whom the university cannot fulfill its mission. These demands are reasonable and meeting them is the least this well-endowed institution can do.

Please heed this reasonable demand for graduate students to be afforded the resources necessary to live and to do their work, which is so essential to every aspect of our mission.

What supposedly changes the world can't actually start here without the labor of graduate student workers in making it start in the first place. They deserve commensurate compensation.

UT could not operate without graduate student workers. Their compensation should not only be commiserate with the amount and importance of the work they do, but also account for Austin being the 8th most expensive city to live in the US. UT must do something to counteract the cost of living in the city if graduate students are expected to live here.

Solidarity with graduate student workers! Let's also not forget our hardworking staff, who make all things possible. You can do better, UT.

it is unacceptable to pay graduate workers less than a living wage. they deserve way more than a living wage, what about a thriving wage? we're talking the bare minimum here! the cost of living continues to skyrocket in Austin and UT has more than enough money to meet these demands and support hardworking folks, relieving some of the financial stress that they shouldn't be dealing with in the first place.

I agree that graduate students are not getting paid enough at UT, especially considering the extreme cost of living here in Austin.

We've already lost so many folxs to other industries that are higher paying and have more flexibility or better benefits. We need to increase support for graduate students.

I support this, UT must pay graduate student workers a living wage!

Grad stipends have not kept pace with the skyrocketing cost of living in Austin. We need to support our students better to allow them to live and study in this city.

If we are are serious about maintaining UT Austin as a top-tier research university, we must pay our graduate students a livable wage. Doing so would allow them to focus on their research, teaching and professional development so they are in the best possible position at graduation, and prepared for an extremely competitive job market.

Isupport efforts to pay our graduate student workers a living wage!

Solidarity with Graduate Student Workers!

I heartily support efforts to pay our graduate student workers a living wage!

Didn't the dean just double her own salary?