Union-Busting at Boston University?

To the Editor:

Leonard Cassuto, in his Chronicle Review essay, “Why Has Boston University Stopped Accepting Grad Students?” (December 10), suggests that BU’s action might either have resulted “from anti-union animus” or, alternatively, from “economic contraction.”

Ph.D. programs in the humanities have always been a game of numbers; in my prior experience as Director of Graduate Studies for the field of architecture at Cornell, Ph.D. students typically served as TAs during the three years that they didn’t receive their two years of fellowships. Since our colleges pay the costs for teaching assistantships (whereas the graduate school pays for the fellowships), both administrative bodies had financial constraints in terms of the number of Ph.D. students admitted. Naturally, the colleges also benefited from the grad teaching that is done with these assistantships, but there are only a certain number of such positions that the colleges need in any given year. Another “number” that enters into these calculations is the number of Ph.D. students that each graduate faculty member supervises: As admissions to the PhD programs are cut or reduced, the number of faculty “needed” to supervise them also decreases, although this number is also affected by the required and elective courses that must be offered (for both undergraduate and graduate programs). So it’s a fairly complex set of intersecting costs and benefits that need to be reconciled.

My point is that the action taken by BU seems consistent with this ethos, driven by financial considerations above all else — what they call “long-term sustainability.” Naturally, professional Master’s programs (which tend to be money-makers) and grant-based Ph.D. programs in science and engineering are not subjected to the same set of constraints. None of this seems surprising, and if this “pause” by BU serves to demoralize or weaken the grad student union, it may well be that the administrators who made this decision wouldn’t mind that outcome. But I doubt that union-busting was their primary motivation, even if it turns out to be a welcomed secondary effect.

Jonathan Ochshorn
Professor Emeritus

Department of Architecture
Cornell University