The author started in the Ph.D. program in comparative literature at Princeton in 1992, a year after she graduated from college. She fell in love with mythology and the classical traditions and find herself teaching literature. In the remainder of her time at Princeton, she precepted for four or five more classes, got the chance to join the…

Graduate students face an array of choices when evaluating compensation-and-benefits packages that make comparisons difficult. A "Chronicle" survey shows that the offers to teaching assistants and research assistants vary widely. Some institutions cover 100 percent of graduate students' tuition, while others waive only a portion. It is possible to…

Even though the author and his colleagues are part of a major research university, they agonize, in meeting after meeting, over the 5 to 10-percent yearly cuts they need to make in their chemistry department's budget. By and large, those end up coming from education, not research, especially in faculty replacements and teaching assistants. The…

Describes how the United Automobile Workers has become a major force in organizing college teaching assistants. (EV)

Describes how unions organizing graduate students are enjoying unprecedented breakthroughs, such as their first recognition at a private university. Unions are facing obstacles as well, including continued administrative resistance and squabbles between national unions. (EV)

College administrators across the US are learning that chatter on e-mail, blogs, and social-networking sites can turn even minor faux pas into major controversies. The issue is discussed with reference to the firing of a teaching assistant whose Web site lampooned the president of Columbia College Chicago and left the institution facing serious…

Describes how, from one-day workshops to yearlong mentor programs, colleges are tying to do a better job of preparing graduate students to run a classroom. (EV)

Describes how New York University has become the first private institution to recognize the right of teaching assistants to bargain collectively and possible implications for other private institutions. (EV)

Reports that universities are citing a 26-year-old federal law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), to withhold information about teaching assistants from the unions trying to organize them. The graduate students say FERPA is being misapplied to squelch their organizing drives. Both students and administrators are quoted…

Describes how, as teaching assistants undertake organizing efforts on more campuses, small groups of TAs at some elite private colleges respond that unionizing is a bad idea. (EV)

Problems in the use of foreign graduate students as teaching assistants include cumbersome language proficiency testing, limited English proficiency, internal struggles in training programs, and rapidly increasing foreign graduate student enrollments. (MSE)

Many graduate students receiving stipends for research or teaching are being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. The situation is puzzling and angering administrators because the stipends have previously been considered tax-exempt. (MSE)

Discusses the increasing influence that the graduate student caucus is having on the Modern Language Association. Graduate students are now well represented on the organization's delegate assembly and executive council. Critics see the students as using fear and intimidation to press their needs in a bleak job market over other organizational…

The substantial increase in foreign graduate students who become teaching assistants has necessitated increased supervision and training, especially in communication skills, teaching methods, learning styles, and discussion group leading. (MSE)

A "Chronicle" survey of the pay and benefits offered to research and teaching assistants revealed a widening gap between public and private institutions. (Includes a table of stipends for graduate assistants at top research universities, and profiles of several graduate students' financial situations.) (EV)