University cracks down on grad student strike in effort to preserve undergrad education

Temple University is cracking down on the Temple University Graduate Student Association (TUGSA) strike by revoking tuition remittance and health insurance for strikers as the walk-out begins to impact undergraduate students.

The move bucks the trend in recent months of university administrators capitulating to student union demands.

Temple graduate student workers have been on strike since January 31, disrupting campus life for undergraduates in a variety of ways.

TUGSA has been negotiating with university administrators since February 2022 for increased pay, better healthcare options, and increased parental leave, according to the strike website.

[RELATED: Union agreement stops strike, keeping 77,000 students in class amid ‘learning loss’]

The Temple administration has responded to TUGSA by requiring striking students to pay their full tuition balance by March 9, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Strikers have also, according to Higher Ed Dive, had their health insurance benefits revoked.

The TUGSA strike is part of a larger trend of graduate students using collective bargaining techniques to increase their pay and benefits.

In January, after a six-week strike of University of California (UC) system students, administrators granted an increase of annual pay to $34,000 for graduate students working part-time and $70,000 for post-doctoral fellows working full-time, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

The strike of approximately 48,000 UC graduate students and post-doctoral fellows was reportedly the largest in student worker history.

Indiana University graduate students also successfully agitated late last year for fee reductions, better healthcare options, and improved student-administrator communication avenues.

The national average salary for graduate teaching assistants is $17 per hour, according to ZipRecruiter. Temple graduate students earn $19,500 over two semesters. This equates to approximately $27 per hour for a 20-hour work week, which is $5 more than the average hourly wage in Philadelphia.

[RELATED: End to graduate workers’ strike may be near]

Temple’s comparatively tough stance against striking graduate students was called “vindictive” and “cruel” in a Feb. 9 statement released by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which interprets the removal of tuition remittance and health insurance as punitive to low-income graduate students.

The administration of the Pennsylvania university, however, may view these measures as necessary to end a strike they see as straining undergraduate students.

Provost Gregory N. Mandel alleged in a Feb. 8 statement that striking graduate students are encouraging undergraduates to skip their classes and not submit coursework. These allegations are corroborated by an undergraduate petition being circulated by TUGSA, requesting that undergraduates protest classes that have replacement teaching assistants or instructors.

On Tuesday, Mandel issued a further statement, saying, “Our commitment is to provide our graduate student employees with fair compensation and benefits that are competitive with the market, support their continuing education and enable them to pursue their future careers. We also need to ensure that Temple remains economically sound and able to provide an excellent education to our students.”

Campus Reform will continue to follow and report on this story as it develops.

All relevant parties were contacted for comment by Campus Reform. This article will be updated accordingly.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article mistakenly read that the hourly rate of Temple graduate students is $5 more than the median hourly wage in Philadelphia, but has been updated to say that Temple graduate students earn $5 more than the average hourly wage in Philadelphia.