Those undergraduates need to learn the conditions under which they (ie, their parents) are “paying 25k a year.” If graduate student ground is lost little by little, just as adjunct ground has been lost, and just as tenure-track positions shrink to a tiny portion of the teaching force, we’ll complete the slide to becoming Ye Olde Underpaid Overworked Factory Minions. They should understand that preserving graduate students’ traditional benefits is a key part of their own “right” to have instructors who enjoy secure jobs, a reasonable teaching load, and a living wage.

I know that every little piece of ground denied to me as a graduate student ends up influencing my performance in the classroom. Do I mean to cheat my students? Absolutely not. Do issues like wages and working conditions affect the quality of my work? Absolutely. I resent having to pay for my own copies to give them syllabi, study sheets, and handouts; I go to the classroom in a bad mood if I’ve just learned about not getting a travel grant, about being denied the opportunity to teach a great class, etc. You get the point.