In the spring of 2012, the three of us accepted admittance to the University of Illinois at Chi-cago’s MFA program on several premonitions and promises. A utopia of an art school, where all mediums worked, existed, and critiqued together. Atop these ideas it was a state school, and because of that, an affordable school.
Upon acceptance, we were told of an opportunity that UIC offers-teaching as instructor of record in our own class. This was also the selling point in determining if UIC made financial sense to all of us. We may not have been awarded a full ride, but we were convinced that our second year of graduate school would be spent teaching classes in return for a tuition waiver. Not to mention the experience that would vault us to the top of job searches post graduation. None of us could say no-a great city with a lively art scene, a great school offering low tuition or no tuition, and the experience of teaching our own class all within a two year program.
We bit.
There were twenty students in our graduate class that year-far more than the years prior of maybe 10 students. A push from the school no doubt, as all institutions do, to get enrollment up and money up. Our first meeting together as a class brought more news to us: in order to teach our second year, we had to complete at least one semester in AD500-a teaching “internship” as it was phrased in the catalogue-where we taught alongside one professor in their class. Many of our professors and advisors referred to us as their “TA” both in and out of the classroom while completing this requirement, and many relied on us just as they would a true TA. Grading papers, assignments, and quizzes. Installing to extreme hours of the night or morning. Presenting lectures or demonstrations on techniques, artists, or movements. Leaving us unattended with their class-in some cases more than 5 times a semester. For all intensive purposes-and as defined by our Graduate Union-we were performing the tasks of a full paid Teaching Assistant. Though at the time, this didn’t matter. We had our eyes on the prize of teaching our own class as second year graduate students.
Then a bomb was dropped on us.
Our last day of our first year as graduate students we had a final meeting. The news came outthough we had all heard rumors of it for monthsthat not everyone was going to be teaching a class as second year students. The college was in the midst of a major restructuring, becoming The School of Art and Art History, and leaving behind our Design counterparts. This switch left our enrollment down, thanks to art classes no longer being requirements for design students. And, of course, there were 20 of us. Never in the history of the school had there been enough undergraduate classes for 20 graduate students to all teach their own classes, something that would have been impossible for us to know before enrolling. Not only would we not be promised a teaching position, that but those who did teach, except for a select few, would only do so for a single semester. On top of this news they informed us that there would be no tuition compensation for the semesters lost teaching, effectively doubling our tuition. Our plans for attending an affordable state university while gaining valuable teaching experience had just been ripped away from us. We were stuck. A full year in. A full year away from completion. Too far in too back out. Too far in to transfer to another program. Too close to drop out.
The rumors had begun to foster an extreme level of competition among the 20 of us. Questions of who will get the teaching positions, and how they will decide started to pin us against one another. Amongst this competition, we found some small amount of camaraderie in how we could fight it and why we just spend all of our time-and tuition-taking a class to work as a Teaching Assistant so that we could get paid as second year teachers. Thankfully, we lived in the great city of Chicago where graduate students had a union. We couldn’t do anything about the department stripping away our second year teaching positions due to the loose and deceptive wording of our acceptance letters, such as “it is often the case that second year students are funded (tuition waiver and stipend) through teaching.” It had come to our attention that our first year spent as TA’s was under scrutiny by the Graduate Union. We approached our union grievance coordinator and explained to her what had been happening in our classroom under this “TA-ship”.
On May 13th, 2013 we filed a level three grievance against the University of Illinois at Chicago as a united group of graduate students. By mid-June the majority of our class members had disassociated themselves with the grievance due to extreme pressure and intimidation from professors. Three of us stood firm, we didn’t see the grievance as an
accusatory finger pointed at the art department or professors. It appeared to be a TA policy that was drafted in the dark, unwittingly against the Graduate Unions standards. After some meetings and growing animosity against us, it became clear that some members of the faculty took the grievance as a personal affront from us. We eventually saw an arbitration date, but never an arbitration room as the university pushed for a settlement the day of.
We stand here now, unsure if anything truly changed. We came to terms with the university, asked for sanctions to be put into place to prohibit the use of “TA-ships” and for fairness and transparency when admitting students.
We applaud the seven USC Roski School of Art and Design artist students for their courage to stand against a malicious administration at great personal cost. The example set by the Roski seven is the kind bold action that needs to take place when faced against a system that leaves students powerless to protect themselves. We had a graduate student union in place to protect the few of us from the mistreatment of the administration, but it could not protect us from the misleading promises that lured us into the program only to have the rug pulled out from under us, leaving us with massive amounts of debt and no teaching experience.
When faced with the question of “Is an MFA worth it” a wealth of feelings come to us. The first being complete and total defeat. Are we proud of the degree and the doors it opened? Yes. Are we proud that a piece of paper that says “Master of Fine Arts” hangs among the art on our walls? Yes. Are we proud of the over $100,000 of student loan debt that each of us have accrued? No. Are we proud of the monthly payments on our student loans that will quite literally never end? No. Are we proud that even with our MFA’s, we have to work full time jobs and do contract work on the side to make ends meet? No. Are we proud that we signed up for a program under false pretenses? No. Are we proud to have graduated with no teaching experience? No.
But, are we proud that we stood up for ourselves, and for our fellow MFA candidates when everyone else withered away? Absolutely yes.
By Melissa Myser, Erik Allen, Jonathan Rogers