Philosophy graduate student Charles Bakker writes with an update on the situation noted previously (and see also):
I am writing to inform you that the University of Western Ontario has just ratified a new deal with the graduate teaching assistant's union (PSAC 610). While this deal is a marked improvement over previous deals, it does little to change the overall financial situation for graduate students at Western, especially those in the Arts and Humanities. For as it stands, our guaranteed funding package, which includes that money we earn as GTAs, and which does not include a waiver for tuition, still nets us less than half of what would be considered even just a living wage in the city of London, Ontario.
Even though Western is a publicly funded institution, their unwillingness and/or inability to compensate us fairly for the prestige which our cutting-edge research brings to the university entails that only those who are independently well-off can afford to receive a tax-funded graduate education at Western. Not only is this clearly unethical, but it is also short-sighted. For as the pool of potential graduate students able to study at Western shrinks, the probability of attracting the best and the brightest students will also shrink. Over time this will result in a diminishing of academic prestige, which will in turn eventually result in a diminishing of funding. It should be noted that much of the blame for this brain drain is to be placed on the provincial government of Ontario and the federal government of Canada for having long undervalued and underfunded higher education. However, that these larger institutions share a significant proportion of the blame only makes the problem worse. For it implies that not only are graduate students in Canada radically underfunded, they will likely continue to remain so for years to come.
