Does Publishing Matter? A Guide for Engineers in the Real World

[hadsed]

Something small that I'd like to note is that in software, if you have done internships, co-ops, or worked on any kind of project with tangible outcomes, it counts as work experience. Job descriptions that say intermediate level with perhaps 2 years experience are jobs that recent graduates of B.S. programs are eligible for.

I assume that if it is a comparison made by those in industry for B.S. holders, it is certainly a valid comparison to be made for graduate students as well. There are a lot of jobs where the required/desired experience is lessened for Ph.D holders than for M.S. holders -- this would indicate that graduate work also counts for work experience.

 

[twofish-quant]

Something small that I'd like to note is that in software, if you have done internships, co-ops, or worked on any kind of project with tangible outcomes, it counts as work experience.

It's not a small thing. The trend in education has been to try to move away from "book learning" to co-ops/internships/project based learning. Conversely, in any job nowadays, you have to keep learning or else you are sunk. Every month, HR and compliance assigns me some online courses that I have to take.

The idea that first you are a "student" and then you are "real" is something that doesn't fit the current workplace or university. I was no less an employee when I was a graduate student, and I'm no less a student now than I was when I was in graduate school.

One other thing to note is that once you get done with the master-level course work, the rest of your classes are typically "notational." When I was doing my dissertation, I had to sign up for X units of graduate research, which was a "notational" course that was listed in the catalog but wasn't a "real" course. The thing about public universities is that everything works off credit-hours, so those courses were actually bookkeepping conventions.

I assume that if it is a comparison made by those in industry for B.S. holders, it is certainly a valid comparison to be made for graduate students as well. There are a lot of jobs where the required/desired experience is lessened for Ph.D holders than for M.S. holders -- this would indicate that graduate work also counts for work experience.

It works this way for investment banks. If you get a job at an investment bank fresh out of school with an MBA, you get hired at the analyst level. With a Ph.D., you get hired at associate level. With a post-doc or junior faculty, you get hired at the vice-president level. Associate level is analyst + three years experience.

FYI, here is a list of links to graduate student employee unions

http://www.2110uaw.org/gsoc/union_links.htm

The history section of UAW local 2865 is also quite interesting. Apparently, in order to get representation, the UC students went on strike in 1998, and in the state of California at least there is an official ruling that graduate students are employees and therefore can form unions for collective bargaining.

http://www.uaw2865.org/about/2865-faqs

 

[twofish-quant]

There's also this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_student_unionization

Apparently the current situation is that students at public universities have collective bargaining rights, but students at private universities do not, and there is a big effort centered at NYU to get the NLRB to change a ruling denying collective bargaining rights to private universities.

This is sort of important because if you are a physics undergraduate, I think it would be useful for your education to spend some time in the library reading about the history of the labor movement, since this may be part of your graduate education. One thing that I found interesting is that graduate students in state universities systems are able to unionize because state public universities are exempt from Taft-Hartley. When Taft-Hartley was passed in 1947, Federal union law was stronger than state law, however now the situation seems to be the reverse with some states providing more union protection than the federal government.

As far as the leaving it to the government to decide whether you are "really" a student or an employee, this leads to some absurd conclusions if you think of it as anything other than a bureaucratic label. Under that criterion, graduate students in public university in California are "real employees" but those in private universities are not except between the years of 2000 and 2004 when the NLRB approved the NYU petition and issued a new decision regarding Brown University.

If you think of it as a bureaucratic label then it makes sense. People want to label things to benefit themselves. University administration insist that graduate students aren't "real workers' so that they can screw them over, and if you just accept those labels without pushing back when you can, you too will be screwed. One trick with labels is to convince group B that they can sit back and watch group A be screwed over since the rules are different from group B. However, often this isn't true. If you think that as a post-doc you somehow "deserve" health benefits, you'll be in for a shock. The millisecond people think that they can cut your benefits without something bad happening, they will.

 

[ParticleGrl]

Ah, but is this universal? Postdocs ALWAYS gets benefits. It is part of the job offer

I don't know any graduate student who didn't get medical through their university. I only know one postdoc who gets benefits (he is a at a national lab). So I don't know if this is universal or not- but my limited, anecdotal data suggests that graduate students are more likely to get medical benefits than postdocs.

Graduate students at my university were union represented and signed a standard employment contract with the university. Postdocs did not sign such contracts, and were generally at-will employees with few-to-no benefits.

 

[twofish-quant]

People seem to be assuming that status is exclusive, which doesn't make sense. No one is arguing that graduate students aren't students, but in physics (and not law or medical school) it's standard for student to also be workers. I knew some geologists that were working on their Ph.D.'s part time, and no one argued that because they were students, they weren't also workers.

It's also worth noting that the compensation for teaching assistants at UT Austin is comparable to that of adjunct faculty at Austin Community College.

Ideas have consequences and one reason that graduate students have started to unionize now is that for decades people had this idea that eventually they'd graduate from a peasant to become a lord. If you are a peasant, and you think that in a few years, you are going to be a lord, then you aren't going to rock the boat. However, once we start telling people that they aren't going to be lords, and a peasant will stay a peasant forever, then they'll get restless.

 

[twofish-quant]

I don't know any graduate student who didn't get medical through their university. I only know one postdoc who gets benefits (he is a at a national lab). So I don't know if this is universal or not- but my limited, anecdotal data suggests that graduate students are more likely to get medical benefits than postdocs.

California public universities graduate students are unionized and the University of California graduate employees went on strike in 1998 and got the administration to recognize their union and a contract which included health benefits. California public universities graduate students can organize because of California state law and some rulings by the state government labor board.

So far, this hasn't extended to private universities which are covered under Federal law, although there seems to be some interesting things happening with NYU.

http://chronicle.com/article/NLRB-Officials-Ruling/127958

This is an example where your vote matters. The reason that the NLRB has come to different conclusions at different times was that Clinton was President, then Bush, then Obama.

Graduate students at my university were union represented and signed a standard employment contract with the university. Postdocs did not sign such contracts, and were generally at-will employees with few-to-no benefits.

Another example of the "if they can screw you, they will" principle in action.