Thread by @payusmoreucsc

Another core demand of our strike is the removal of non-resident supplemental tuition (NRST) for grad workers in the UC. The current TA only codifies existing practice, i.e. it makes no material improvement. What makes this demand so hard to win? What are the stakes here? 🧵

This was a major demand for a large portion of the grad workers. The TA delivers very little on that demand. If intl workers vote in high numbers, they have the potential to be decisive. Will they vote at all? If so, will they base their vote on the NRST provision?

This fall term, a full 33% of doctoral students at UC were “non-resident international,” numbering nearly 10,000 total. This is to say nothing of international master’s students, professional students, or undergrads covered by the contract.

universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/infor…

NRST refers to the additional tuition charged to out-of-state (non-resident) grads. Since international grads cannot become CA residents, NRST is a permanent feature of life and work at UC. It is essentially responsible for doubling their tuition.

It is true that most intl grads do not pay this tuition out of pocket (although some do), just as most grads have their regular tuition remitted by a fellowship or teaching appointment — a major early victory of our union local. Our appointments, however, do not cover NRST.

Before qualifying exams, NRST is usually covered by recruitment fellowships and/or by grants from various sources, internal and external to UC. After this, it is waived by the campus grad division for three years. So, what’s the problem?

NRST disciplines intl grads to normative time and academic standing far more systematically than grad workers who are US citizens. Any slip from the regular track means a ~$6k/qtr bill.

For many, this effectively means expulsion from the program, firing from the job, and possibly deportation from the country.

This is what made the removal of NRST such a popular demand among a huge base of workers throughout the contract fight and into the strike.

Our TA codifies, and makes grievable, the informal three-year waiver of NRST post-qualifying exam. This, it is true, is not absolutely nothing, but it’s not much either.

It does nothing for the pre-qual period. It is almost unheard of that intl grads do not receive the three-year waiver. And it does nothing to help intl grads beyond the three years. It preserves, rather than solves, these problems.

What seems curious is that, in many cases, we are talking about UC charging NRST with one hand, and then paying off (or waiving) the charge with the other. Why, then, has UC so staunchly resisted our demand for full and guaranteed NRST remission, when it is apparently costless?

Could it really be that they want to protect the integrity of this public institution and its mission to serve Californians?

This seems unlikely, given the staggering growth of international students. grad and undergrad, as a proportion of the UC student body.

The answer, in all probability, lies in the fact that, for lots of grad workers, NRST is funded by external sources, such as home governments. In these cases, NRST is not a matter of UC debiting and crediting its own accounts, but taking income from outside parties.

Since UC cannot charge NRST to some and not others, it charges all intl grads as much NRST as possible so that it maximizes its income from those grads who have external funding, while covering those who don’t. All grad student tuition has risen steadily for the same reason.

UC has likely refused our demand for blanket waivers and remission of NRST because it does not want to give up this considerable income stream. This, it should be clear, is just one instance of how UC’s funding structure has morphed from that of its historically public model.

Just like our demands for livable wages and comprehensive childcare, this demand is not only possible to win, it has real social and political significance when collectively fought for and struggled over.

Winning this demand would remove a deeply discriminatory aspect of our workplace, and meanwhile challenge the direction of UC’s funding and its political priorities, which have skewed, unswervingly, toward privatization.

The current TA, unfortunately, fails to do either.

It is up to us, collectively, to win a better one.

#UAWonStrike #FairUCNow #ucstrike