The Graduate Grind

Book excerpt: Examining common assumptions and routines through the lens of critical theory, the authors question several aspects of graduate education, including the conception of graduate students as institutional capital; institutionalized prejudice based on age, gender, sexual orientation, race and class; and competing power and value systems. The authors allow students to tell their own stories, thus humanizing the results of abuses generated by a flawed system. Finding a current exploitation of students unconscionable, Hinchey and Kimmel call for a new vision of graduate education, one in which students are valued and treated as unique and vibrant individuals