Graduate teaching assistants at the University of Michigan are once again on strike. There is a sweet irony in seeing the misguided ideas of academia contribute to its disruption, though I'm sure the parents paying tuition would be unhappy to learn that the stated aim of the union is to shut down the university until they can extort more benefits and pay.

As a former graduate teaching assistant at UM, I can tell you what that pay was, at least a few years (and strikes) ago. In return for teaching a couple of hour-long discussion sections a week, the content for which is largely pre-determined by the professor, graduate teaching assistants receive a full tuition waiver (worth at least $11,000), virtually free health care, and pay amounting to about $15 an hour. On top of all that, virtually none of them can teach worth a darn.

Despite this relatively good treatment, the graduate student union goes on strike about once every other year, holds rallies at which they all sing the Communist Internationale, and fosters the delusion that its largely white upper class members have somehow immersed themselves in the class struggle.

The solution is simple. Have every graduate student sign a form during enrollment that gives the university the right to summarily expel him in the event that he engages in a strike. Of course that won't happen. It would encroach upon the equally distorted self-image of the university administration, which is that in acquiescing to the students' demands it is doing a good turn by the working classes. Everybody wins in this self-indulgent game.

Except, of course, the people who are paying the bills.