Privilege and the Picket line: Why I’m on strike
Author: Milan
In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. Between 2005 and 2007 I completed an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. I worked for five years for the Canadian federal government, including completing the Accelerated Economist Training Program, and then completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Toronto in 2023. View all posts by Milan
On CUPE 3903: What’s at Stake & How to End the Strike Right Now
The TA Strike at the University of Toronto
The current teaching assistant strike at the University of Toronto and the one just concluded at York University must be seen in the context of a chronic structural problem in higher education. The problem is not confined to Ontario. It extends to all of Canada and indeed most of the “rich” countries of the world, whose young generation is getting poorer by the day. The lack of good jobs directs an ever increasing number of secondary school graduates to university. Governments support the idea with miserly scholarships that are yet better than nothing. But too often a university education turns out to be only a stop-gap measure that delays the student’s entry into the growing market of low-security, high-turnover, often part-time service jobs, ranging from serving coffee to telemarketing. One “solution” the Ontario government and others have found is to extend the young people’s stay in fool’s paradise, by funding more positions in graduate school. In my own Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, we were openly encouraged last year to admit as many master’s students as possible, so the University can benefit from provincial funding dedicated to this end.