I also have followed this thread with interest. I agree that many of us have been motivated by curiosity rather than being driven by career -- possibly due to being in biology rather than business. That aside, I am not aware of any unification of graduate and post graduate scientists in the academic systems. If we organized this we could very easily put together a page with the current minimum stipends, office space, teaching salaries, average number of years until graduation, course loads, tuition waivers, top-ups, etc. for each department within each academic institution. This would offer prospective graduate students useful information for choosing schools. This would also help current graduate students with the argument that institutions need to be competitive to recruit top students. Because graduate students are short term employees there will always be less incentive to lobby for change. Value? The contribution towards teaching and the universities has been discussed. However the value of the research is being fairly poorly recognized by society and perhaps by the university administration. These are assumptions but if 50% of biological/environmental research is done in an academic setting and if graduate students outnumber faculty by at least 2:1, this would mean that half of this scientific research is being done by highly educated minimum wage workers. This is an important contribution that I don't think many people are aware of. However this leads to other issues that would be easier to address via an organization. I am not aware of such an organization in Canada?
Wyth Marshall
