Ever since graduate students successfully achieved union certification believing this would force MIT to pay higher wages for their laboratory labor while they studied to earn lottery tickets to win the impossible dream of becoming tenured professors, a secret project to replace them with AI robots was launched. 

“It’s simple economics,” explained the Beaver’s anonymous source. “Overproduction of PhDs is a systemic problem, driven by the fact that grad students are willing to work cheap in return for a magic credential. Like NCAA Division I football, the whole thing falls apart if you have to pay the serfs market wages.”

“Robots don’t sleep, don’t eat, don’t file grievances that have to be adjudicated, and never go on strike. We all watched unions convince the manufacturing sector that a shift to robots was the only way to stay in business. It’s hard to imagine a different outcome at research universities.” Savings from replacing human grad students and postdocs will be plowed into expanding MIT’s ever-growing DEI workforce.