An Idea On Temple University Teaching Assistants Strike Impasse? (Harrisburg: health insurance, school)

[JimfromPennsyl]

I was reading an article in the Inquirer on the Temple University Teaching Assistants Strike and it was talking about the experience of a student in the course "Gender and World Societies" and how the strike has impacted that student. It occurred to me that the Temple University administration and others description of the dilemma posed by the terms sought by the teaching assistants is a false, unenlightened and is lacking of creativity; they say if we make the type of concessions being sought the administration would have to significantly raise Temple's tuition. Not so this course subject Gender and World Societies indicates the Administration has another option; what a waste of a course I haven't read the syllabus of this course but I bet you dollars to donuts the essence of the course is that women in World Societies throughout history have been treated like chattel by men they essentially have, had no rights, cannot work, cannot own things and don't even have the power to decide the clothes they wear or the man they marry! Why the hell do you have to spend six months teaching young men and women college students that what a waste of time; they can learn that this awful problem exists in this world by just reading the newspaper and watching the news on TV does the subject of Iran and the protests over the death of 22 year old Mahsa Amini caused by physical abuse during her arrests over not complying with Iran's rule for women on the wearing of a head scarf turn on the lights for anyone. America doesn't need our universities spending valuable time and money teaching students information that doesn't add or add much to their valuable knowledge base meaning doesn't increase their valuable knowledge level much more than they either have acquired or otherwise will acquire by being an ordinarily engaged people in our society! I suspect that Temple University probably has a lot of courses the administration could cut because either because like the aforementioned course they have little societal value from the standpoint of significantly adding value for University students in terms of helping them as human beings or citizens or the courses are not that popular, they have low enrollment numbers it's largely wasteful to carry them!

With this freed up money the administration could do right by the teaching assistants! These teaching assistant jobs take twenty hours a week and with their graduate studies these individuals realistically cannot hold second jobs so their compensation from Temple should try to provide a living wage! The Inquirer recently published an article about what other universities pay their graduate students; I believe the lowest yearly salary was at Penn State University which if I recall correctly paid their graduate students $25,000/year. Temple should offer that salary in the negotiations and further offer to pay the Lion's share of the health insurance premium costs for graduate student's children not the graduate student spouses, the spouses can get a job and pay for the added premium costs their enrollment causes on the family!

[thedirtypirate]

I don't disagree that Temple should be more in line with Penn State and Pitt. But It's pretty dumb to compare to Penn, a private institution with a massive endowment. I have seen that argument repeatedly made online.

I think one of the aspects I get frustrated with is Harrisburg politicians coming out against the school, like they haven't cut higher education funding by 33% in the last decade: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-...ts-to-students