Entitlement in Academia: Multiperspectival Graduate Student Narratives

This chapter presents the lived experience of 10 doctoral students and recent graduates from a North American University, who like graduate students elsewhere, have faced upstream battles against excessive faculty entitlement. The six sections of this chapter, each by different authors, explore how entitlement in the University, is experienced from different perspectives. The first four sections explore the deleterious effects of excessive faculty/teacher entitlement which can lead to competitiveness, selfishness and aggression. Section five focuses on student entitlement as experienced by an immigrant graduate teaching assistant, and section six explores how both faculty and student entitlement may be experienced at different stages of the immigrant experience. It is hoped that this chapter will create a platform with which to highlight these topics for ourselves and other doctoral students attending other universities, so that relationships and opportunities may improve for everyone.