The lack of protections for graduate student workers is shocking IMO, especially in student housing.
Grad student workers of course don't get paid vacation, sick time, or anything like that. But you can't even just lower your hours since you're paid with a fixed stipend.
Contracts may be largely 20 hours per week, but they have all kinds of carve-outs where the university can force you to work up to 30/40 hours, like at the start and end of the year and during on-call (which is also 100% unpaid), taking time away from exams.
And universities mismanage the hell out of grad students, such as only giving purchasing power to one person instead of having backups. Or having horrible on-call coverage where you can expect 3+ calls per night, many of which are pointlessly mandated "escalations".
All of these problems can be fixed so easily (time off, on-call pay/coverage), but an enormous administration with a toxic culture of "No" prevents progress.
Universities are subject to very little oversight and regulation.
They basically are selling a luxury good to very unsophisticated buyers (you can't get much less sophisticated than the average 18yo). A lot of what they are selling will not be worth the time or money put in.
Instead of subsidizing them like crazy, the government should be looking into their dodgy practices.
> Universities are subject to very little oversight and regulation.
This varies by state too. Many of the UC's in California right now are basically becoming corporations. They argue that them making more money means they can better serve students, but they routinely lobby for less funding from California. That's because that funding comes with certain conditions, like accepting more Californian students.
The UC I went to, UCI, is facing a huge housing crisis and has been building a ton of new housing, but the amount of in-state students they're accepting hasn't changed since before 2010. Instead they've drastically increased the number of foreign students they've accepted. Those students usually pay more than twice as much as in-state and, counter to narratives about "increased diversity", often come from a very specific class background.
Their whole strategy is basically to wean themselves off of state funding so they can run the UC like a profit-driven corporation
Grad student workers of course don't get paid vacation, sick time, or anything like that. But you can't even just lower your hours since you're paid with a fixed stipend.
Contracts may be largely 20 hours per week, but they have all kinds of carve-outs where the university can force you to work up to 30/40 hours, like at the start and end of the year and during on-call (which is also 100% unpaid), taking time away from exams.
And universities mismanage the hell out of grad students, such as only giving purchasing power to one person instead of having backups. Or having horrible on-call coverage where you can expect 3+ calls per night, many of which are pointlessly mandated "escalations".
All of these problems can be fixed so easily (time off, on-call pay/coverage), but an enormous administration with a toxic culture of "No" prevents progress.