The underpaid, overworked graduate students teaching undergraduate courses while juggling their own research and barely surviving.
Academic Labor Reality
Teaching Assistants (TAs)—graduate students teaching discussion sections, grading, and holding office hours—are higher education’s backbone. Around 2015-2018, TAs began sharing struggles on Twitter: poverty wages ($15,000-25,000/year), 60+ hour weeks, food insecurity, and doing professors’ work while being called “students.”
Unionization Wave
TA organizing accelerated at Columbia (2014 strike), UC system, and private universities. Harvard TAs walked out (2019) for higher pay and healthcare. The hashtags documented labor actions, highlighted exploitation, and built solidarity. Universities resisted, claiming graduate students were students, not workers—despite teaching hundreds of undergrads.
COVID-19 Exploitation
The pandemic exposed TA precarity. TAs taught remote classes, managed Zoom chaos, and supported struggling students—while facing evictions and health risks on graduate stipends. Some universities cut TA positions. The crisis strengthened union drives and highlighted how universities relied on exploited graduate labor.
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