Although Yale's teaching assistants have gone on strike to protest low salaries, graduate students at Ivy League colleges, Stanford and MIT have not unionized and are not likely to do so in the near future, officials at the schools say.

At Stanford, the graduate students' most recent run-in with the administration took place 15 years ago. Graduate school research assistants (R.A.'s), frustrated with low salariesand long hours, staged a walk-out and refused to resume work. The university took legal action against the R.A.'s, forcing them to return to work, says Mollie Goetz, student service officer at the graduate school.

"The R.A.'s demanded more compensation for their lab work. Eventually the university proved that their workload was in fact a necessary part of their education," Goetz says.

Since that time, Stanford has raised teaching assistants' salaries "significantly" and tried to cater to their specific needs, Goetz says.

"Ever since then, the university has been extremely sensitive to graduate student issues. There has been a determined effort to raise teaching assistant salaries over the last several years," Goetz says.

"There is a Center for Teaching and Learning which helps graduate students with their teaching responsibilities, but no university-wide organization or union to handle their complaints. It is more likely that any student concerns would be submitted to their individual departments," Goetz says.

Close But No Cigar

In a move that had less drastic consequences than similar actions at Yale, T.A.'s at the University of Pennsylvania recently formed the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GPSA) to ask the administration for a pay increase to compensate for a higher cost of living.

The GSPA obtained half of its request for a $1000 increase to students' yearly stipend of $6500, says the GSPA's Wayne Glasker.

Still, the yearly stipend "doesn't really cover the cost of living," Glasker says. Since T.A.'s are not allowed to be employed outside the university, they "are forced to take second jobs covertly," he says.

T.A.'s are not permitted to take outside jobs because they are expected to divide their time evenly between teaching and taking courses, says Donald Fitts, associate dean of graduate studies at Penn's School of Arts and Sciences. Whether or not T.A.'s salary is enough to live on "depends on your standard of living, doesn't it?" Fitts says.

Last year, Penn instituted a training program for T.A.'s, Glasker says. "I think the workshops have helped," he says.

Since then, "there is an improvement in T.A. teaching as registered by the lack of complaints by undergraduates," Fitts says.

Despite the presence of GPSA, T.A.'s at Penn are unlikely to unionize in the near future, Glasker says. The administration at Penn is very anti-union and the large number of people who want to teach would make it "very difficult" to form an effective union because "scabs" would fill any position left vacant in a strike, Glasker says.

Happy at Harvard