The proposed filing by the National Labor Relations Board of an unfair labor practices complaint against Yale University would reverse a longstanding NLRB position that graduate students are not considered employees if they receive payments for teaching and research activities directly related to their educational programs. The proposed filing presupposes a view of graduate education that fundamentally misconstrues the actual nature of graduate education in the United States and could produce damaging alterations in the conduct and financing of this exceptionally effective enterprise. Graduate students pursuing the Ph.D. degree are expected to acquire a rigorous understanding of existing knowledge in a given discipline, the ability to advance the frontiers of that knowledge through research and scholarship, and the communications skills necessary to disseminate their knowledge and understanding to others. Graduate education in this country accomplishes these ambitious objectives through a rich and varied mixture of instructions, independent learning, and apprenticeship teaching and research activities.
Graduate students take courses, and they teach courses.
They study research methods, and they conduct research, initially assisting in the projects of others and finally conducting independent research for their dissertations. Although the implementation of these activities varies by discipline, by institution, and by student, the objectives remain the same. Graduate students and faculty mentors interact variously as student and teacher and collaborating junior and senior colleagues. Graduate students in these learning roles carry out responsibilities to undergraduates as well as to members of their own research teams. But in all these activities they are fundamentally students.