"[Regarding graduate student teaching], things have gone too far: Graduate students are teaching more undergraduates, for more hours, and in more courses. In fact, teaching has become one of the principal contributors to lengthening time to degree. Too many graduate students become caught in a financial vise: Teaching is their only means of support, and their departments have economic and other incentives to make generous use of them as teachers."-Robert Rosensweig and John Vaughn of the Association of American Universities, Heading off a PhD Shortage
"I have had the privilege though my life to work in about every place you can do research. I worked in a university where I had grants and contracts and used graduate students. I worked for government doing research and R&D later. And I worked in private industry where I was doing R&D.Of all those places, certainly you get more productivity for your dollar in the university setting because you have slave labor available, the graduate students.
I was wondering if one of the reasons for the extension of the time that it takes to get the Ph.D. is the desire to maintain this slave labor force for a longer period of time."
-Congressman Roscoe G. Bartlett (Ph.D.), July 13 1995.
"The long time to degree and the concomitant costs erode the return on graduate investment in education. As you have already heard, there is no single factor that can be regarded as the dominant one contributing to the long Ph.D. experiences. But one contributor in my view, is the intense interest in research results and the reward structure associated with it for the faculty members."-Dr. Mark Wrighton, Chancellor Washington university
"On that same line, you have commented on the phenomenon of the itinerant postdocs and the longer period of time that people are remaining at this postdoc. Is that considered employment, or is that slave labor?..Originally, the postdoc was supposed to be a part of the educational experience. Now it is a never-neverland. It is neither employment nor educational in some cases....I have a sneaking suspicion that the science establishment benefits from this and may close their eyes to some of these conditions. ... I think you can overcome any bias that the institutions might have because you like a big supply of cheap labor to do research in universities and reach a better understanding of what the equities are..."-Congressman George E. Brown Jr. to Phillip Griffiths and Harold Varmus, July 13, 1995
"Although graduate students are a key component in the academic research environment, the principal purpose for the performance of graduate-student research is pedagogical: They need to learn how to perform research, demonstrate that ability in their dissertations, and then move on. Students should not be kept on for the benefit of a faculty investigator's project, or to generate more publications, or to learn yet another new research technique. Students are almost always better off expanding their research expertise as salaried Ph.D.s than as underpaid graduate apprentices."-Robert Rosensweig and John Vaughn of the Association of American Universities, Heading off a PhD Shortage