An Unstable Bridge: A REEES Graduate Student Perspective on Contemporary Academia

Abstract

Our aim in this article is to foreground the specific role that graduate students play in academia today and some structural issues that are connected with it. As both workers and students, graduate students occupy a unique position within the larger academic system. They work at what for the majority is the beginning of a continuum of casualization, precarity, and adjunctification. Meanwhile, graduate students are educated following an older, apprenticeship-based model proper to a time when a PhD was a more likely bridge to secure employment. To articulate a REEES graduate student perspective, we interviewed eighteen REEES graduate students and recent grads from across the US focusing on these structural problems. At a moment when almost 75% of contemporary academic labor is carried out by graduate students and non-tenure track faculty, we hope to open up a conversation about contingent labor in REEES and to spotlight potential for practical changes.