GSU Statement on Wage Increases

Dear fellow graduate students,

Graduate Students United would like to convey its appreciation to the Graduate Teaching Committee for taking much needed action to redress the dismal state of graduate teaching compensation at the University. In particular, we would like to express special gratitude to the student representatives on the committee, Jeff Rufo, Kalina Michalska, and GSU organizer Andrew Yale, who devoted their time to making student voices and concerns heard. As many have seen, Provost Rosenbaum has chosen to accept all of the committee's recommendations, which raise compensation for
teaching assistants from $1,500 to $3,000, and for lecturers from $3,500 to $5,000. All other grad student teachers have also received raises, with the exception of those paid by the hour.

The committee should no doubt feel proud of the work they were able to do, and the changes represent a significant, material improvement in the quality of life for students working on this campus. We know that we are not alone when we look at our budgets for the year to come with more optimism than before. And after almost ten years without a raise, this move was long overdue.

But much is still to be done. The University is still among a minority of schools nationwide that does not pay health care to its employees – and many of us will have to deduct $1,845 from our new salaries to pay for health care. High advanced residency fees still force students to take jobs on campus to break even. This slows time to degree and creates a labor glut on campus — an odd scenario at a time when faculty and administration want to accelerate our progress toward our degrees. On May
20, GSU submitted a petition of 490 signatures to the administration, demanding that the university waive AR fees and pay for student employee health insurance. We are still waiting for a response.

More broadly, job access and working conditions remain ill-defined and open to abuse. Not all students, faculty, and administrators have the same expectations for interns and TAs – and what one student actually does for $3000 could be radically different from the next. Furthermore, it remains unclear how administrators prioritize student access to necessary jobs while ensuring that all students will remain financially secure. These issues will only become more complex when students funded through the Graduate Aid Initiative begin to seek teaching employment.

Luckily, the solution to these problems is in our hands. Action on student wages only came about when students organized, rallied, wrote letters and taught-out. Provost Rosenbaum acknowledges as much in his report. We all put this issue on the table and made administrators take action. As much as GSU appreciates the hard work of the committee, and looks forward to seeing it continue its work this coming year, we want to give equal thanks to all of the graduate students, from all years, divisions and schools, who came out in support of these issues.

The message going forward should be clear. The administration can be made to acknowledge the rights of graduate student employees – but we have to press the issue. By organizing together, we can consolidate the gains of the last year and ensure that all of our concerns are met. And by acting collectively, we can ensure that graduate student workers will play a sustained and meaningful role in negotiating the way this university operates. It is a mistake to leave graduate student needs solely in the hands of appointed committees that fundamentally have no power to make decisions. To represent our interests, we need to build an employee union with the power to bargain directly with the administration. If we don’t seize this chance, graduate student workers will again slip off the agenda and conditions will again be allowed to stagnate. We may all be richer for a time, but we’ll be selling ourselves, and future generations of students, very short.

Our next meeting is on Tuesday, September 16, at 4pm in Haskell 101.
Email us at gsu@riseup.net, or see our website at http://uchicagogsu.org/

See also the Provost's report and announcement:
http://provost.uchicago.edu/pdfs/interim_grad_teaching.pdf
http://provost.uchicago.edu/pdfs/student_remuneration.pdf

Interim Report from the Provost's Committee on Graduate Student Teaching

Interim Report from the Provost's Committee on Graduate Student Teaching
http://provost.uchicago.edu/pdfs/interim_grad_teaching.pdf

Dept. Provost announces increase in grad teaching pay

To: Students, Faculty, and Staff
From: Cathy J. Cohen, Deputy Provost for Graduate Education
Thomas F. Rosenbaum, Provost
Date: August 25, 2008
Re: Increase in Remuneration for Graduate Student Teachers

We are writing to update you on the work and recommendations of the Provost’s Committee on Graduate Student Teaching. We are pleased to announce that we plan to accept the recommendations of the committee, as detailed below. This will result in a significant increase in the remuneration for graduate student teachers, effective during the Autumn Quarter beginning in September.
In February 2008, the Provost, the Deputy Provost for Graduate Education, and the Vice President and Dean of Students established a set of action steps to address some of the key issues raised by graduate students during the previous year. One action was to have the Deputy Provost establish a committee of faculty, graduate students, and administrators to explore issues related to graduate student teaching. The Provost’s Committee was asked initially to focus on issues of remuneration for graduate student teachers, issuing an interim report at the end of Spring Quarter 2008. The Committee would then return to work Autumn Quarter 2008, addressing issues of pedagogical training, delineating graduate student teacher’s responsibilities, reviewing job classifications and the possible need for newly defined positions, and designing a plan to monitor the experience of graduate student teachers in the classroom.

The Committee submitted its interim report to the Provost at the end of June with a set of recommendations regarding remuneration of graduate student teachers. The report can be found in the news section of the Office of the Provost Web site (http://provost.uchicago.edu/). A series of meetings followed to obtain wide feedback on the report. We first met with members of the Committee in early July to discuss their findings and address any outstanding issues. We then met with most of the Deans of the Divisions and provided a period of comment for those Deans who could not attend the meeting. Toward the end of July we met with representatives from the Graduate Council to receive their comments and concerns. All of these meetings proved to be informative and insightful.

As noted above, the Provost has decided to accept and implement all the increases to graduate student teaching remuneration recommended in the report. These increases will take effect Autumn Quarter 2008. The total cost of these increases in remuneration for the 2008-09 academic year is $2.8 million. Maintaining remuneration at these increased levels will require similarly sized expenditures in future years which the Provost’s office will fund.

In the report, the committee makes specific recommendations for increasing the remuneration graduate student teachers receive across a number of designated positions. The recommended increases apply only to those making less than the recommended amount. Positions paid more than the recommended amount will remain unchanged.

Listed below is a summary of the accepted recommendations.

· Increase the remuneration for lecturers from $3500 to $5000
· Increase the remuneration for course and teaching assistants from $1500 to $3000
· Increase the remuneration for laboratory and lecture teaching assistants in the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division from a range of $650-$2750 to a range of $709-$3000
· Increase the remuneration for writing interns from $1900/$2000 to $3000
· Increase the remuneration for core interns from $1500 to $3000
· Increase the remuneration for writing program lectors for undergraduate courses from $1400/$1500 to $2500
· Increase the remuneration for writing program lectors for graduate courses from $2000 to $3000
· Increase the remuneration for preceptors from the range of $2500-$6500 to $7500 over three quarters
· Increase the remuneration for lectors in language departments from $1500 to $3000
· Increase the remuneration for drill instructors from $800 to $1500
· Increase the remuneration for studio assistants from $1000 to $1500

We urge each of you to read the entire report which is posted on the Office of the Provost website to gain a better understanding of the changes in remuneration recommended and accepted.

In addition to the increase in remuneration, we are adopting the recommendation of the committee to reduce stipends for teaching commitments in the 2008-09 academic year by the previous, lower remuneration levels for all teaching positions. Specifically, those students in the Social Sciences and Humanities Divisions whose stipends are scheduled to be reduced for required teaching expectations will have their stipends reduced only by the previous remuneration levels instead of the newly increased remuneration levels. Thus, students who were scheduled to have their stipends reduced by the amount they will receive for serving as a teaching assistant in one course as part of their teaching requirement will have their stipends reduced by $1500 instead of the new rate of $3000. This delay of one year in adjusting stipend reductions to reflect the new rates of remuneration will allow students time to plan for increases in their stipend reductions in accordance with their teaching requirements. We will begin to reduce stipends at the new levels of remuneration beginning in the 2009-10 academic year. We refer you to the report and your Dean of Students for greater clarification on how stipend reductions will affect students in each division.

We will continue to monitor annually the remuneration provided graduate students, with the goal of remaining competitive with our peers. We do not want to increase remuneration this year only to find ourselves in the same situation five years from now. As always, budgetary decisions must be made in the general context of the many demands on resources across the University.

As noted in the report, the issue of competition and comparisons to peer institutions is a complicated one. There will be those who point to other schools that seem to pay their students more to teach. On this issue we have two thoughts.

First is the recognition that a number of schools use a different system for calculating remuneration than what most of our divisions currently use. Some of our peers use a system of teaching fellowships in place of the general stipend support we currently provide. Students awarded a teaching fellowship are often expected to teach during the designated years of support. In such a system, if a student receives a teaching fellowship of $20,000 for the year and is required to teach three courses, the school might list the remuneration for graduate student teaching as $6,666 with the understanding that pay for one course is equal to one-third of the teaching stipend. We currently do not use teaching fellowships, so it may appear that our remuneration for required graduate student teaching is less than another school although our students are receiving the same amount of yearly support—often with a smaller teaching requirement. The use of teaching fellowships by other schools is not the reason we have trailed our peers in what we pay graduate students for their services in the classroom. In the past we neglected to pay attention to this important area of compensation. The use of teaching fellowships by other schools, however, makes comparisons of graduate student remuneration across schools more difficult.

Second, a number of schools have been able to increase the remuneration of graduate student teaching by limiting which students are eligible to teach. Specifically, at some peer institutions, students are only eligible to teach while receiving stipend support or holding a teaching fellowship—often during the first five to six years of graduate study. We do not impose such restrictions on graduate student teaching. The University has benefited from the expertise advanced graduate students often bring to the classroom. That said, we want to state emphatically that these increases in remuneration should not be seen as endorsing or facilitating an increase in the number of graduate student lecturers. We strongly encourage all divisions to work with their departments and programs to devise systems so that advanced graduate students have to rely less on teaching for needed support and can instead devote more of their time to completing their dissertations. These issues of teaching among advanced graduate students and time limits or caps on teaching will be addressed by the Provost’s Committee on Advanced Residence and Time to Degree.

We also want to underscore our belief, echoed by the committee in its report, that graduate student teaching is just one dimension—although a critically important one—of graduate education more generally. Classroom experience is an opportunity for graduate students to hone their communication, listening, and evaluation skills. In the classroom, through the guidance of a professor, graduate student teachers learn how to present material, listen to and address contradictory arguments, and evaluate and constructively engage the written and verbal work of others. We believe that teaching is an experience that benefits all graduate students whether their careers will be strictly academic or they choose some other arena through which to make a contribution. We hope that departments and programs across the University will take the announcement of these increases in remuneration to discuss among their faculty and students the purpose of teaching and how the teaching experience of graduate students can continue to be improved.

Increasing the remuneration provided graduate student teachers is part of our continued commitment to enhance graduate education at the University of Chicago. Over the past three years we have made significant investments in numerous areas to ensure that our graduate students have the resources and support they need to be successful in their endeavors. Through the Graduate Aid Initiative (GAI), we have significantly changed our funding packages, providing five years of full funding and health insurance and two summers of additional support to nearly every student matriculating to the University since Autumn 2007. We are expanding the GAI to include newly matriculating students in the Divinity School. For those students not covered under the GAI, we have worked with departments and divisions to increase the minimum stipends of many underfunded students.

The University now guarantees that every graduate student who matriculated since 2003 will have health insurance through the balance of their first five years of graduate school. We increased the number of Provost Summer Fellowships awarded this summer from 25 to 100. Provost Summer Fellowships will again be available next year. We will award 50 fellowships in the summer of 2009, up from the 15 originally budgeted. We have funded a new set of dissertation fellowships that will be available for at least five years, the first fellowships having been awarded earlier this year. The administration has secured an endowment of $6 million from the Mellon Foundation explicitly for the funding of graduate education. In the first five years of the endowment the award will be used to fund dissertation fellowships. More recently we suspended the annual increase of 5 percent in Advanced Residence tuition. We also have created a policy to ensure that graduate students who are new parents have greater flexibility in meeting their requirements.

Although we have made substantial progress in reinforcing the core aspects of our graduate programs, we will continue to review our policies and support. For example, the work of the Teaching Committee will continue through the Autumn and Winter Quarters. The Provost’s Committee on Advanced Residence and Time to Degree will intensify its work over the next year; the Vice President and Dean of Students, Kim Goff-Crews, will move forward with her committee to explore issues that confront international students; and the Council on Teaching will devote some of its time in the upcoming year to examining the training provided graduate student teachers.

One very important goal of our work concerning graduate education has been to strengthen the lines of communication between graduate students and the administration. Leading our efforts in this area is Professor Cathy Cohen, Deputy Provost for Graduate Education, whose responsibilities include not only providing better coordination across units responsible for graduate education and making the necessary changes to enhance the educational experience we provide graduate students, but also making sure that the concerns and opinions of graduate students are seriously considered when we decide our priorities and our commitment of resources. Toward this end, all of the recent committees examining issues that directly affect graduate students have included graduate student representation. As we did in this instance, both the Provost and the Deputy Provost have met with representatives from the Graduate Council to seek their input on the recommendations forwarded from University committees. We also have made ourselves available to discuss recommendations and decisions with a wider group of graduate students through forums and other meetings.

To extend this type of exchange between graduate students and the administration, this fall the Deputy Provost will begin a series of meetings with the graduate students in each department, program, and school. These meetings will be opportunities to hear the concerns of graduate students and also to discuss the efforts of the administration and how best to improve graduate education generally across the University. She also will continue to make regular presentations to the Graduate Council and will for the first time meet quarterly with the Directors of Graduate Studies across the University. We believe that graduate students are an important part of the University community who hold a unique perspective on the education delivered to both graduate students and students in the College. We want to hear from and work with graduate students. None of this is meant to supersede the essential communication and work that happens within the divisions, departments, programs, and schools, which hold the most important responsibilities in planning, improving, and protecting the exceptional education we offer graduate students.

We thank the committee for its hard work and look forward to its final report, which we expect to receive toward the end of the Winter Quarter 2009. Enjoy the rest of your summer and we look forward to seeing you in September.

For more: http://provost.uchicago.edu/pdfs/student_remuneration.pdf

Maroon Op-Ed: Strength in Number by Megan Wade

A recent article in the Chicago Reader sums up well the problem facing graduate students across the country: It is “the university as corporation, [the model in which] some university heads are calling themselves CEOs, graduate students are more than ever an exploitable source of cheap labor, and most Ph.D.s are doomed to a lifetime of multiple, low-paying, part-time jobs.”

While some universities move to amend the situation, the University of Chicago administration, once again, follows rather than leads. Provost Thomas Rosenbaum’s recommendations on graduate funding in February, while providing some additional funding opportunities, failed to address key financial issues for students—instead treating them as if they were employees of the University. (Though where that line rests is unclear. At an open forum in March, Rosenbaum consistently described departments as “hiring” rather than “admitting” graduate students into their Ph.D. programs.) Issues of increased pay for all teaching and T.A. positions, as well as the provision of appropriate benefits like health care for student employees, remained unresolved.

Click here for more:
http://www.chicagomaroon.com/online_edition/article/10487

Memo from Board of Trustees Student and Campus Life Committee

The University of Chicago Board of Trustees
Student and Campus Life Committee

Memorandum

To:
Hollie Gilman, Undergraduate Student Liaison
John Mark Hansen, Dean, Social Sciences Division
Rick Rosengarten, Dean, Divinity School
Erica Simmons, Graduate Student Liaison

From: Klingensmith, Chair, Student and Campus Life Committee

Subject: Recent Meeting on Graduate Student Funding Issues

I am writing on behalf of the committee to thank each of you for participating in the May 5, 2008, meeting to discuss graduate student issues, particularly the University's financial support of current and future graduate students. Strengthening our graduate programs has been identified by the administration as a strategic priority, and the Board recognizes and appreciates its importance. The Student and Campus Life Committee has the particular responsibility to understand the situation of the current and future student body so that it may advise the whole Board on strategic matters connected to student and campus life that support the institution's overall mission.

Although specific academic and administrative decisions remain the province of teh faculty and administration, it was very useful for the Committee to hear from your different perspectives more about the context and complexity of the issues having an impact upon graduate education at the university. We recognize and are sympathetic to the concerns expressed to us by current graduate students and wish that the University must manage carefully all of the many worthwhile demands on its resources and make decisions in the best interests of the University as a whole.

We wish to thank in particular, Erica Simmons, Graduate Liaison, for raising many of the issues we discussed thoroughly through her term. We have been impressed with the work of the students who have supported her efforts and brought forth information and arguments that enabled all of us to think more broadly about these issues.

To be sure our discussion reinforced the importance of enhancing the graduate student experience in all of its components. We appreciate all the work that has been done to date and the Committee looks forward to being kept appraised by the administration of the work of Cathy Cohen and Kim Goff-Crews, including their review of teaching stipends and advanced residency tuition.



c: Members of the Student and Campus Life Committee
James Crown, Chair, Board of Trustees
Robert Zimmer, President
Thomas Rosenbaum, Provost
David Fithian, Secretary of the University
Kimberly Goff-crews, Vice President and Dean of Students
Martha Roth, Dean, Humanities Division
Cathy Cohen, Deputy Provost

Analysis of Teach Out(side)

The Teaching Out concluded on May 29th with roughly 1,500 undergrads, grads, and faculty participating. All this means that that with no budget, with poorly populated contact databases, only 10 days of preparation, and an informal agreement between the Graduate Funding Committee and Graduate Students United (GSU), we were able to motivate some 1500 or so people to recognize this cause and participate in an action. Since the Apple action several months ago, these numbers have constantly increased, and it seems now, exponentially. Since we began organizing this event, we have improved our contacts with students and GSU is building a membership base of student interested in improving the plight of student employees on campus.

The recent Maroon editorial aside, in the year or so since the GAI was announced, the efforts of GFC and GSU have been, at the very least, successful in bringing attention to issues that have been sorely overlooked for too long and, more realistically, have stirred a bureaucracy, notoriously lethargic in its efforts to recognize grad student quality of life issues, into making some movement.

While speaking with a member of the Graduate Funding Committee yesterday, it was brought to my attention that none of the committees focusing on advanced residency fees, health care, or international students plan on dropping any real suggestions until well into the next academic year. For those of us who will be back on campus in September, it would appear that we have to start thinking about these over a long period of time. And in regards to next year, we have the added advantage of a very receptive Student Government and the Liaisons to the Board in key positions to help build networks and voice our concerns far more directly to the administration than in the past.

Moreover, this administration is the first in recent memory that has had to contend with a determined, organized, responsive, and angry grad student body, coalescing – slower than we may have wished – into a formidable opponent. And whether or not one sees correlation or causation in such a situation, there is one thing we all know for sure: while this may be the best any administration has offered to grad students in years, they are still going to have to do a hell of a lot better if they don’t want to see 2000, 3000, 5000, or more students protesting on the quad next year.

If you have any thoughts, comments, or concerns, feel free to post them below.

Pictures from Teach Out(side): May 28th and 29th

Summary of Teach Out(side):

# of classes taught out on the quads:

Wed: 20-25
Thurs: 65
Total: 85-90 classes (impressive!)

Best class period: Thursday morning 10:30 – Noon @ 23 classes out at the same time

- from noon – 1:30 we had at least 17 classes outside

- it should be noted that at this point it was sunny and warm.

- Rain started around 1:15 and continued for about half an hour into the 1:30 – 3pm class period, so very few classes came out; but we still had 4 groups, sitting on fieldstone, huddling in archways and otherwise going on and beyond the call of duty.

- If it had not rained, we would have topped 100 classes over the two days.

A fairly conservative average class size would be 15 (many groups were 20+, some 30+ and of course there were smaller discussion groups, but I think 15 is fair and even 20 wouldn’t be stretching it).

So, if we use the most conservative estimates, 85 classes times 15 students per, we had 1275 grads, undergrads and faculty out there over two days. At the high end (90 classes * 20 students per) we had 1800 folks on the Quad.

Wednesday, May 28th 2008






Thursday, May 29th, 2008

TEACH OUT (side)

Wednesday May 28 & Thursday May 29

On the Quad

Attention University of Chicago Students, Staff, and Faculty

On Wednesday May 28th and Thursday May 29th, we call upon you
to hold your classes outside to show solidarity with graduate
student employees and their demands for fair pay, guaranteed
teaching opportunities, and health care benefits.

For over a year, we have been calling attention to the
shockingly low wages paid to graduate students teachers. Our
pay has not increased in over eight years. Whether we grade
papers as Teaching Assistants ($1,500 per quarter) or instruct
a course ($3,500 per quarter), our pay remains the lowest
among peer institutions and most area universities, and far
below the cost of living. Furthermore, none of the teaching
positions we hold include health care insurance or other
employee benefits,

The work we do is essential to the functioning of this
university, but we are paid as if we are disposable.

In response, Graduate Students United and the Graduate
Council's Graduate Funding Committee have been collecting
petitions, holding rallies, and organizing students to fight
for a change. While we have won some improvements in graduate
stipends, summer funding, and dissertation fellowships, these
limited changes have not met the needs of current students.

And it was only at the start of the Spring Quarter that we
were successful in getting the Provost's Office to convene a
student-faculty Committee on Teaching to review these and
other employment issues.

While this committee will likely recommend a much-needed raise
in teaching pay, these recommendations must be approved by
many of the same administrators who have failed year after
year to increase pay!

To help support the work of the Teaching Committee, Graduate
Students United and the Graduate Funding Committee is calling
for a two-day Teach Out so that the university can see how
much teaching we do as well as how much support we have from
students, staff, and faculty.


Who: All Students, Staff, and Professors

Where: Outside on the Main Quad

What: A Two-Day Teach Out in Solidarity with Graduate Students

When: Wednesday May 28th and Thursday May 29th

Why: Graduate students demand fair pay and health care
coverage for all university employees!

For more info or a PDF copy of the event flyer, contact:

Joe Bonni: joebonni@uchicago.edu

Toussaint Losier: tlosier@uchicago.edu

Sponsored by:
the Graduate Funding Committee
Graduate Students United

Chicago Maroon: Grad Group Seeks Better Benefits

The formation this school year of Graduate Students United (GSU), a group of graduate students seeking to improve graduate employee benefits at the University, has added yet another voice to the chorus of calls for better representation and funding at the University.

GSU was organized in September to present a unified group to advocate for graduate student worker issues.

“The main goal was to build the power of working graduate students,” GSU member Jack Lesniewski said. “Not to be relying on ad-hoc committees or on particular administration at particular points but to have a sustained power and presence that democratically represents the interests of working graduate students.”

Click here for more:
http://www.chicagomaroon.com/online_edition/article/9846

Article in the University of Chicago Magazine

“First we took our classes / Then we wrote up our MAs,” sang Joe Grim Feinberg, AM’06, a fifth-year anthropology graduate student and Graduate Students United (GSU) member, at a March 12 rally outside Swift Hall. “Then we took exams / And we proposed to dissertate. / Then we did our research in the field so far away. / Then we looked into our pockets / And we found we had no pay.”

Click to read more:
http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0856/chicago_journal/graduated_aid.shtml

Chronicle of Higher Ed:Grad Student Union Launched at U. of Chicago

In 2004, the Bush mob’s infamous executive arrogance in the Brown decision jammed the brakes on the organizing of graduate student employees at private universities (previously green-lighted by a bipartisan unanimous NLRB decision consistent with the law governing grad employees at public institutions, affirming the victory of GSOC-UAW at NYU).

Despite the setback, organizing is once more on the front burner at private universities in the U.S., including by committed, activist grad employees at the University of Chicago, outraged by an unfair stipend arrangement and by some of the lowest wages for teaching in the country (as low as $1,500 per quarter). As a result of graduate employee agitation, commonly through collective bargaining, 3/4 of university employers pay for graduate employee health insurance; the University of Chicago does not. Among the graduate employees that I met there last month was one whose earnings as a gardener offered far better pay than his teaching.

Click for more:
http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bousquet/grad-student-union-launched-at-u-chicago

Pics from Funding Rally

Chicago Reader response: Slaves to the System but Free to Organize

The members and supporters of Graduate Students United would like to thank Deanna Isaacs for her sensitive and sympathetic treatment of student labor and funding issues at the University of Chicago, as well as in the city’s universities and colleges more broadly. Readers who would like more information about these issues, such as our current organizing drive, should check out our Web site: uchicagogsu.org/index.html.

Click for more:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/letters/080515/

Chicago Reader: And All I Got Was This Lousy PhD

In February 2007, the University of Chicago announced a new program that promised to transform the lives of its graduate students. Beginning the following fall, almost every entering grad in the humanities and social sciences divisions would receive an annual stipend of $19,000 for five years, along with free tuition, guaranteed teaching opportunities, and other benefits. The $50 million program looked downright princely, until it became evident that none of the university’s 800 or so current grad students in those disciplines would be included.

Click for more:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/thebusiness/080501/

Open Forum

Open Forum
Wednesday, April 2
7-10 pm
Ida Noyes rm 216/217

The Graduate Funding Committee is holding an open forum to
discuss its plans for action in Spring Quarter.

We want to hear from everyone on what actions the Funding
group should take this quarter to get the University moving on
our demands.

Please come out and give us your imput and ideas!

RALLY FOR GRADUATE FUNDING

RALLY FOR GRADUATE FUNDING
Wednesday, March 12
Noon
Main Quad (near Swift)

• Guest Speakers
• Loud Music
• Refreshments
• Big Stage
• Graduate Funding Demands

"the university applauding itself"

I particularly like the part where i'm explicitly told that i suck. yeah.
kat.

----------------------

Graduate Aid Initiative

And on February 21, the Provost’s Office announced that the
Graduate Aid Initiative will extend to doctoral students in
the Divinity School. In addition, the University will provide
nearly $5 million in new support over the next five years for
current doctoral students in the Humanities, Social Sciences,
and Divinity.By 2013, the University will provide graduate
students with an estimated $13 million annually in new support.

This new model sends a clear signal: the best and brightest
students will be supported throughout their doctoral
studies—and they will be able to complete their degrees as
expeditiously as possible.

http://beta.uchicago.edu/features/20080225.shtml

Survey Results (Summary)

Number of survey responses: 455
Highest rating of any of the administrator’s actions: 5.04/10 (summer fellowships)
Most important funding issue to students: health insurance
Area of most need for students: teaching pay
Average willingness of students to participate in future action on graduate funding: 7.34/10
Dates of survey: February 23-26, 2008

• Please rate the Provost's responses in the following areas (score out of 10):
Stipends - 4.530612
Summer fellowships - 5.043478
Health insurance - 3.531178
Teaching pay - 3.2
Advanced residency tuition - 3.193548
International student support - 3.497653
Dissertation-year fellowships - 4.630734

• How important are the following issues to you (score out of 10):
Stipends - 8.063063
Summer fellowships - 7.538462
Health insurance - 9.033708
Teaching pay - 8.828054
Advanced residency tuition - 8.676471
International student support - 6.214123
Dissertation-year fellowships - 8.743764

• Please rate how much need you have in the following areas (score out of 10):
Stipends - 6.765116
Summer fellowships - 7.102088
Health insurance - 7.769767
Teaching pay - 8.151515
Advanced residency tuition - 7.945882
International student support - 3.397163
Dissertation-year fellowships - 8.016394

• How willing are you to participate in future actions on issues related to graduate funding?
Average score: 7.345109 (out of 10)

Maroon Article: "Major error inflates graduate aid estimate"

By Adrian Florido

http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/article/10004

The Office of the Provost’s Working Group overestimated the cost of extending full graduate aid benefits to all current students by nearly $24 million over four years, according to an independent analysis by a graduate student.
The roughly $57 million price tag calculated by the group failed to account for the reduced tuition rate that takes effect after graduate students enter their fifth year of study, according to Daragh Grant, a third-year political science graduate student who this weekend noticed the miscalculations while examining the group’s December report.
The Working Group was convened by Provost Thomas Rosenbaum last May to explore issues of graduate student life and to make recommendations on how the University could address student concerns about funding for current students. The move was a response to pressure by graduate students who organized after it was announced that benefits from the Graduate Aid Initiative, announced last February, would not be available to students who matriculated prior to the 2007-2008 school year.
The $57 million figure was cited by the Office of the Provost in its decision not to extend the generous Graduate Aid Initiative to all current students. Grant’s recalculation estimated that the actual cost would be roughly $33 million over four years.
Tuition for students beyond their fourth year—a status known as Advanced Residence (AR)—is about $15,000 compared to almost $37,000 for students in their first four years—known as Scholastic Residence (SR).
In calculating the expected costs of extending the Graduate Aid Initiative to students who did not benefit from its full-tuition and stipend allotments offered to incoming students beginning this year, the Working Group assumed all students would pay the higher SR tuition numbers, adjusted for tuition increases, through 2011.
But students progressing beyond their fourth year of study automatically begin paying AR rates, meaning that fewer current students each year will pay SR tuition without the benefit of Graduate Initiative Aid Funding. The 2010–2011 academic year will be the first year that all students in their first four years of graduate school will be covered by the initiative.
In neglecting to account for the decreased tuition rates for the group of students that each year passes into AR status, the Working Group overestimated the amount of extending the Graduate Aid Initiative to current non–initiative-eligible students by several million dollars each year—to the tune of $24 million over four years.
Grant also emphasized that the administration’s use of the $57 million figure was not entirely accurate because it included the cost for the current academic year. Because the Working Group’s recommendations would not take effect until the 2009 fiscal year, the estimates calculated for 2008 were effectively negligible, further reducing the total cost of full funding to about $17 million.
The revised numbers were presented yesterday to administrators who had been closely involved with the Working Group’s discussions and recommendations, including Deputy Provost for Graduate Education Cathy Cohen, Vice President and Dean of Students in the University Kim Goff-Crews, and Deputy Dean of Students in the University for Student Affairs Martina Munsters, who was the administration’s Working Group representative.
In an e-mail to Erica Simmons, graduate student liaison to the Board of Trustees, Munsters confirmed that Grant’s analysis was correct and that the Working Group’s calculations had “introduced a significant error.”
Munsters could not be reached for comment by press time.
Cohen, who has worked closely with members of the Working Group and been the public voice of the administration’s recent graduate funding efforts, said that while she had not taken a close look at the numbers, she and fellow administrators recognized that a significant error had been made.
“This is something that we take [seriously]; we want to look at the numbers, but the initial recalculation (putting the funding figure at $33 million) is one that we wouldn’t be able to meet to fund all graduate students,” Cohen said in a phone interview. She would not comment on specifics or speculate as to how the Working Group might have committed the error.
In light of the developments, some graduate students have questioned whether the revised numbers, had they been calculated correctly initially, might have altered the Working Group’s recommendations and thus the Provost’s provisions for graduate funding. Last week, the Provost committed almost $3 million for improved graduate funding that included minimum stipends for current students whose departments opted to reduce the number of newly admitted students next year.
“If they had started the year with this much smaller number, it might have been imaginable. Maybe if it had been [$33 million], they would have thought it might have been possible,” Simmons said, referring to the Working Group’s task of confronting the $57 million number when outlining its recommendations to the Provost.
“All of the cost-benefit analysis changes when the project is cheaper,” Grant said, claiming that the mistake showed that the Working Group didn’t approach the task seriously.
But Cohen said the revised numbers would likely have little effect on last week’s funding announcement.
“I have spoken to the Provost,” she said. “I don’t think it changes our response of last week at all… It’s not like we were a million or two million short [of the estimated cost for full funding],” she said.
Still, Simmons said that the development could have implications for graduate students’ response to future efforts by the administration to address graduate funding concerns.
As part of last week’s announcement, the Provost’s report detailed plans to convene committees to explore the issues of graduate teacher compensation and student health care, two major concerns of current students.
“It’s also really important because of the credibility of the efforts moving forward. It’s much harder to move forward working on committees that they want to form if we’re not confident that they’re able to consistently produce reliable numbers,” Simmons said.

Pennyless Student Story: Not Getting Paid

I'm a TA for a course in Humanities, but have not been paid at all during this quarter (not only do we get paid shit, but sometimes we don't even get paid at all).

I've been to payroll, and they told me I was not even in the system. She told me they would try to make sure I'd be paid for January and February on March 1. That was 10 days ago, and I have not heard anything else from them. I also went to see the department secretary, who was also surprised I was not being paid, although there wasn't much she could do. By the way, thanks for the hard work of SG!

- A.D.

REPORT CARD ON GRADUATE FUNDING

REPORT CARD ON GRADUATE FUNDING
Thursday, February 28
Noon
Main Quad (near Swift Hall)

Come to the public unveiling of the Report Card on Graduate Funding, which grades University of Chicago administration's responses to issues of graduate funding, with grades provided by student responses to the survey on graduate funding.

Take the Survey on Graduate Funding
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ybnRxh9kHWo4889WrnlcCQ_3d_3d

See you all Thursday!

Survey on Graduate Funding and Provost Action Steps

To all students:

Please take a few minutes to complete a survey regarding graduate funding and reactions to the Provost's new action steps regarding graduate funding.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ybnRxh9kHWo4889WrnlcCQ_3d_3d

Deadline: noon on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

Thanks!

Student Response to Provost Action Items

So I was interested to see the email from Provost Rosenbaum this afternoon that proposes "actions [that] will materially improve the circumstances of graduate students in Divinity, Humanities and Social Sciences as well as addressing a broad range of concerns affecting graduate and professional students". I was especially pleased to see that the university is willing to commit $4.7 million which, whilst not enough to rectify the manifest imbalances that exist in the funding of current graduate students, still appears to signify something of an effort to improve graduate life.

Pleased, that is, until I read the details of the proposal. Although I am very happy for our colleagues in the Divinity School will benefit retroactively from the Grad Aid Initiative (receiving $1.4 million over the next four years), I am slightly surprised that the amount of money being made available to current graduate students at Div school is over 47% higher than the money being made available through the slots-for-cash program in the Social Sciences and the Humanities combined. [If, indeed, this money is for graduate students already here, I thoroughly applaud the administration's efforts. I wonder, however, whether the $1.4 million identified includes not only students here right now but also the cost of covering students that will arrive in the fall?]

Carving out the Divinity School, the remaining proposals suggest that the university is willing to provide $3.3 million to improve the lives of current graduate students in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Ten percent of that money will be enjoyed by a maximum of 110 students that receive summer funding over the next two years (assuming no student receives more than one such award). The slots-for-cash program will provide a further $950,000 of funding that can be utilized by the 800 or so students in these divisions not yet covered by the Grad Aid Initiative. If this is divided equally between all of these students, each will receive $1187.50 next year (about $1050 after tax) which is a little less than a third of the cost of advanced residency for a quarter. This, of course, all depends on the rather absurd assumption that this would be evenly divided between all students which is itself rendered impossible by the fact that it doesn't apply to all departments. It is fair to say, therefore, that the slots-for-cash money offers little guarantee of equity between current graduate students, and even if it were to be equitably distributed it would make little difference to graduate students who are struggling to pay their rent at the same time that they are trying to produce their research.

This leaves $2.2million which will be used to fund 15-20 write-up fellowships for the next five years. This is a pretty welcome move, though unfortunately it is a move that can benefit only 75-100 graduate students in these divisions, and only those that are able to get across the gaping funding hurdle posed by a fifth and sixth etc. years without any funding whatsoever, forcing them to teach countless classes being paid whatever low-rent wage the university is willing to offer for the 2008-09 year (which is highly unlikely to reach the dizzy heights of our peer institutions). [Let's face it, when the university administration fights as hard as they did last fall to resist a wage increase of a mere 4% for those employees of the university who literally keep the show on the road from a day-to-day basis, what are the chances that they will be willing to redress the massive gap in pay between TAs at this university and those at peer institutions?] A second, and more critical point here, is that the idea that there exist 80 write-up fellowships in the Humanities and the Social Sciences already, ignores the reality that these fellowships are not available to all students. To the extent that some of these fellowships are available to strictly defined constituencies, this needs to be made clear in the Provost's communication to avoid appearing like he has over-egged the cake.

In total, therefore, the Provost has just announced a series of proposals that will benefit fewer than half of the students that are currently financially disadvantaged by the fact that they are students at the University of Chicago. Even if the slots-for-cash program were to be combined with the increased summer funding and parceled out as 427 awards of $3,000, this would still provide money to little over half of the students in these divisions that lack funding, and still at a level insufficient to pay for even a single quarter of advanced residency. In short, these initiatives are unlikely to be of much help to people who face advanced residency fees in 2008, no funding from the university, and the daunting prospect of writing a dissertation while teaching a bunch of classes for which their colleagues at Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, Brown, Northwestern etc. etc. would be paid two or three times as much.

I don't mean to sound entirely negative, however. I am glad the university is going to investigate further the options for increasing TA salaries. I am glad that the question of advanced residency fees is being investigated. And, as an international student, I am particularly glad that the specific problems faced by international students are being investigated by the university. I also, in the past week, had the opportunity to speak with Professor Cohen, and Kim Goff-Crews, both of whom I found to be engaged and genuinely concerned with issues of graduate student life. I think that the meetings they have been holding with students are an admirable and important contribution to addressing the concerns of current graduate students. However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating (to continue this cute little baking metaphor). If the proposals that these new committees produce are inadequate, if the university continues to demand that already underfunded students pay advanced residency fees, and if we continue to be offered salaries for TAing that are radically at odds both with the work required and with the salaries being paid to our colleagues at peer institutions, then the university cannot expect its graduate students to continue to support a structure of employment that perpetuates significant disadvantages for those it employs--at both a financial and an academic level. If the university cares about graduate student life, then it has to act as if it cares. Constantly coddling us with words of affection does little to pay the rent.

Best regards,

Daragh Grant
Department of Political Science
University of Chicago

Maroon article, "Provost’s office outlines new plan for graduate aid"

Provost’s office outlines new plan for graduate aid

http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/article/9978

By Adrian Florido and Nathalie Gorman
Fri Feb 22 02:51:00 -0600 2008

The Office of the Provost yesterday announced significant changes in the allocation of financial aid to current graduate students, who benefit little from the $50 million Graduate Aid Initiative for incoming students announced last year. Current graduate students in the Humanities and Social Sciences had decried their exclusion from the package, culminating in a protest Tuesday where over 150 students gathered in the foyer of the Regenstein Library and marched to the administration building to demand increases in funding.

The provisions put forward in a report posted on the provost’s website include minimum stipends, an increase in the number of summer and dissertation fellowships, and the expansion of the Graduate Aid Initiative to cover incoming students in the Divinity School, who did not previously benefit from the plan.

The report also detailed plans by Deputy Provost for Graduate Education Cathy Cohen to convene committees charged with exploring potential headway into improving compensation for graduate student teaching and health coverage, two of the funding issues most pressing for many graduate students.

The announcement comes a year after a contingent of graduate students across the divisions began organizing in response to the lack of funding provided to students who enrolled prior to the 2007–2008 school year by the Initiative. Many students voiced disappointment that the plan had been formulated with little input from current students and pressed President Robert Zimmer, Provost Thomas Rosenbaum, and other administrators to address the disparity between incoming and current graduate students.

In May, Rosenbaum convened the Working Group, a committee of faculty, administrators, and students charged with making recommendations for improving the experience of graduate students on campus. The Office of the Provost developed the plan announced today after consideration of the group’s December report.

Under the provisions of the revamped plan, departments within the Humanities and Social Sciences divisions have the option of reducing the number of new students admitted to their programs and instead redistributing the funds offered by the Graduate Student Initiative to current students. Departments adopting this option will offer current students a minimum $10,500 stipend in the Humanities Division and $15,000 in the Social Sciences Division and the Divinity School.

Although the Office of the Provost has encouraged all departments to adopt this “slots for funds” option, several departments in both divisions have not committed to doing so.

Students in departments opting not to reduce the number of admitted students would have no stipend alternative, said Cohen, although summer and dissertation-year fellowships would still be made available to them.

In addition to the stipend option made available to departments, the provost will increase the number of $3,000 summer fellowships to 100 each year, up from 25, and also add 15 dissertation-year fellowships for students beyond their fifth year who are no longer eligible for standard graduate funding options.

Student leaders of the effort to pressure administrators to implement increased funding for current graduates have expressed only limited satisfaction with the provost’s provisions.

“Rather than taking decisive action to create equity across the board in terms of graduate students being funded...the cash for slots program sort of passes the buck off to the departments,” said graduate student and organizer Toussaint Losier.

But Cohen said that ultimately that decision is not up to administrators to make.

“These decisions are best handled at the departmental level. Often departments would say that, given the needs of the faculty and the program, that they were making a different decision,” she said.

The reaction from graduate student activists was mixed.

“It’s a step in the right direction....I’m grateful, I think all of us are, to have more support from the administration,” said graduate student Duff Morton, who has worked to organize student support for graduate funding initiatives.

But Morton and Losier felt that the Provost’s provisions did not go far enough in ensuring that current graduate students would be able to adequately provide for themselves during their academic years.

The level of compensation for graduate student teachers, who are paid significantly less than students at peer institutions, is among their chief concerns.

“We want people at this University who teach to be able to live by teaching,” Morton said. “Right now, there’s no way for people to survive by teaching on campus.”

Administrators agree that this is a concern that will take top priority in upcoming discussions about improving graduate funding.

“Everyone in the administration acknowledges and understands that we seem to be lagging behind peer institutions,” Cohen said.

According to Cohen, administrators hope to implement recommendations made by the committee convened to address graduate teaching remuneration by the start of the 2008–2009 school year.

But Morton was only cautiously optimistic about the short timeline.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said.

The administration will also continue to explore the issue of health coverage for current students, said Kimberly Goff-Crews, vice president and dean of students in the University.

Although the Graduate Student Initiative announced last year did provide health insurance for most current graduate students, many beyond their fifth years still are not covered, and the issue has also been one of organizers’ rallying cries. At the protest Tuesday, two baskets of apples were deposited in front of Rosenbaum’s office in a move graduate students hoped would inspire greater concessions from administrators.

Cohen’s reaction to the protest was positive. “I thought it was respectful, I thought it was smart,” she said. “All of this is about dialogue. Different students have different needs. We try to address the needs of the largest group of graduate students that we can.”

Maroon article, "A Culture of Free Inquiry"

A culture of free inquiry

http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/print/9957

By Toussaint Losier & Anjanette Chan Tack
Thu Feb 21 23:30:00 -0600 2008

Over a year ago this month, newly inaugurated University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer made two important announcements that have raised concerns about core principles. On February 2, the Office of the President revealed that, in spite of the demands made by a broad-based campaign for divestment, the Board of Trustees voted to maintain financial involvement in companies linked to the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Five days later, Zimmer announced the creation of the Graduate Aid Initiative to improve funding for incoming doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences, and eventually, the Divinity School. Although apparently unconnected, both of these developments reveal the University’s prioritization of market calculations over its own values.

Ironically, a commitment to the University’s fundamental values was supposed to lie at the heart of both pronouncements. Referencing the 1967 Kalven Report, Zimmer warned that divestment from the “crisis in Sudan” would compromise our “institutional culture that promotes and preserves free inquiry and the expression of the fullest range of perspectives.” Several days later, Zimmer lauded the new initiative as a way to “ensure that doctoral students in these programs are among the most generously supported in all of higher education.” These stated concerns masked both past failings and continued inaction.

Our investment in companies complicit in mass murder and ethnic cleansing did not become public knowledge until a group of students brought this reality to our attention. While subsequent activism engendered rich debate on campus, Zimmer’s announcement cast a moral stand for human rights as a threat to the very exchange of ideas this activism had fostered. If anything, the past year has shown us that it was the president’s announcement that has most threatened this institutional culture by silencing free inquiry, rather than encouraging it, particularly in regard to the University’s investment practices.

Similarly hollow rhetoric was used in the original unveiling of the Graduate Aid Initiative and its offer of full tuition, health insurance, a $19,000 annual stipend, and two summers of $3,000 research support. Unlike its peer institutions, the U of C did not include current students in its new funding plan. Instead, this initiative ignored the systematic underfunding of current graduate students, with roughly half of us getting by on less than $12,000 in stipend support. While the University’s own calculations place the annual cost of living at $26,080, nearly a quarter of current graduate students receive $5,000 or less in aid.

Those graduate students who have been able to make up the difference by relying on savings or taking out loans unwittingly demonstrate how graduate education remains a distant dream for those without similar privileges. Meanwhile, those of us who work a second job unrelated to our research often find ourselves relegating the “life of the mind” to a part-time pursuit.

Surprisingly, the ability of graduate students to contribute to the University’s mission through our scholarships is even further circumscribed when we work as its teachers and research assistants. Although these jobs are vital to a culture of free inquiry, salaries have not increased in eight years and they still do not come with standard benefits like health insurance. Where a survey of peer institutions found a range of pay rates, the average of $5,868 is well above the $1,500 for teaching assistants at this university. An instructor position pays only $3,500 per quarter. Teaching is essential to the University’s mission and is described as part of graduate professional development, but it is a job that graduate students cannot rely on to make ends meet. And much like the immorality of the University’s investments, there was little discussion of this issue until a group of students began to demand change.

While the steps announced Thursday by Provost Rosenbaum are a step in the right direction, they do not directly address the issues of underfunding and underpayment. Rather than bringing about equity in stipends, “slots for cash” places the responsibility on departmental decisionmakers, long the drivers of funding inequity. And instead of taking decisive action to bring teaching pay up to the level of our peer institutions, plans for change have been further delayed.

Four decades ago, the Kalven Report stated that the “great and unique role” of the University of Chicago lay in “fostering the development of social and political values in a society.” It is a role that is carried out by faculty, students, and staff in their scholarship and their political activism. Today, it is clear that a transformation of values is needed at this institution as much as in the world outside of it. For it will not be possible for us to have an ethical and collegial academic community that positively impacts the world around it unless this university places its “core principles” ahead of market values.

Anjanette Chan Tack is a second-year doctoral student in the sociology department. Toussaint Losier is a second-year doctoral student in the history department.

Article from "The Chronicle of Higher Education"

Graduate Students Rally for More Aid at the U. of Chicago

http://chronicle.com/jobs/blogs/onhiring/474

"About 150 graduate students at the University of Chicago marched to the provost’s office this week to protest the administration’s financial-aid policy.

Last year the administration unveiled a plan that gives graduate students in the humanities, social sciences, and the Divinity School $19,000 each per year for five years, plus $3,000 each for two summers of study. The package, which the administration said would cost $50-million, is available only for graduate students who enrolled beginning in the 2007-8 academic year.

Graduate students who were already attending Chicago have complained that it is unfair to leave them out. They have lobbied the administration to provide the same benefits to about 800 graduate students who enrolled before 2007-8. Half those students, said Joseph Jay Sosa — a graduate student in anthropology — earn only $12,000 a year and have no summer support. And about a quarter of those enrolled before this year have fellowships that amount to less than $5,000 a year, he said.

The graduate students have established a blog where several tell stories about earning so little that they and their children qualify for food stamps and can’t pay their medical bills.

Julie A. Peterson, a spokeswoman for the university, said it simply wouldn’t be financially feasible to give the new aid packages to graduate students who were enrolled before this year. On Thursday the administration released a plan that will give $4.7-million in additional aid to graduate students left out of the new package.

But the students say that the offering isn’t enough and that they are considering taking steps to start a union."

Grad Funding Committee Mtg, Thursday 2-3

Meeting of the GCGFC (Graduate Council's Graduate Funding Committee)
Thursday, February 21
2-3pm
Ex Libris (basement of Regenstein Library)
**Come to plan more graduate funding initiatives and reaction to Provost recommendations**
Contact: Toussaint Losier (tlosier@uchicago.edu)

Provost Makes Official Recommendations

Full report at: http://provost.uchicago.edu/pdfs/gradstudentconditions.pdf

Summary from the email to all students:
* Total amount over five years: $4.7 million
* Allow departments in the Social Sciences and Humanities Divisions to reduce the number of new graduate students admitted in 2008-09, and use the reallocated funding to raise the stipend level for current graduate students. The resources made available by the Provost’s Office, the Divisions and the Departments to improve the stipends of current students will be $529,000 in the Humanities and $421,000 in the Social Sciences. The following Humanities departments have elected to participate: Art History, Cinema and Media Studies, Classics, Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, English, History of Culture, Jewish Studies, Linguistics, Music, New Testament, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Slavic Languages and Literatures. Participating departments in the Social Sciences are Sociology, Political Science, History, and the Committee on Social Thought.
* Expand the Graduate Aid Initiative to include matriculating doctoral students in the Divinity School beginning in 2008-09. In addition, Divinity also will reduce the number of students admitted in order to reallocate funds to raise stipend levels for current graduate students. This represents a new funding commitment of $1.4 million over four years in support of current graduate students.
* Increase the number of Provost Summer Fellowships from 25 to 100 in 2008, and from 15 to 50 in 2009. (The number of fellowships each year will decrease as the number of students in Scholastic Residence not covered by the Graduate Aid Initiative also decreases.) This new funding commitment of $330,000 is coming from the Provost and the Vice President and Dean of Students. The Summer Fellowships, awarded competitively, are designed to assist students so they may concentrate on undertakings such as preparing for exams, completing a thesis or conducting research during the summer.
* Increase the number of dissertation-year fellowships by 15 during the 2008-09 academic year. Currently there are 80 such fellowships offered within Humanities or Social Sciences, allowing advanced graduate students whose funding has expired to concentrate on completing their dissertations. The new fellowships will be funded for the next five years, with a goal of expanding to 20 new fellowships during that period and raising sufficient funds to fully endow the new fellowships into the future. The University’s five-year funding commitment for this program will be more than $2 million.
* Appoint a committee to review the compensation structure for graduate student teaching, with a goal of implementing the accepted recommendations by the start of the 2008-09 academic year. In addition, the committee will be asked to make a wide range of recommendations concerning the roles and responsibilities of graduate student teachers, pedagogical training, and systems for monitoring and improving the experience of graduate student teachers.
* Appoint a committee to review the advanced-residency system and the yearly increases in advanced-residency tuition.
* Appoint a committee to recommend improvement of services in support of international graduate students.
* Review the effectiveness of health insurance programs and health care services for graduate students.
* Strengthen the mechanisms for consultation with graduate students, and develop regular surveys of graduate students.

Open Forum on Grad Funding, Thursday 3-5

Open Forum on Graduate Funding
Thursday, February 21
3-5pm
Hinds 101

Original email from Dean of Social Sciences Patrick Hall:

"As many of you know, the Working Group on Graduate Student Life has submitted a report and a set of recommendations about graduate student experience to the Provost. The report and recommendations are available at and . The Provost will soon announce specific action steps in response to these recommendations.

I invite students in the Social Sciences to an open forum this Thursday, February 21, to discuss these matters with myself and with the Dean of the Division, Mark Hansen. The forum will be held in Hinds 101 (the Henry Hines Geophysical Sciences building, 5734 Ellis Avenue), from 3:00 to 5:00. We look forward to a lively and informative discussion."

Pennyless Student Stories, 4

I am a student of the Social Sciences Division in advanced residence. The school still charged me $1,900+ for tuition per quarter. My RA job pays $14 per hour ($0.5 up from last year). The tuition is therefore equivalent to 136+ hours per quarter. Since I am an international student and can only work 19.5 hours during the quarter and 35 hours off-quarter, 136 hours per quarter means 7 weeks per quarter. In other words, most of my earnings during a quarter goes to tuition and other inescapable expenditures and I have only 3 weeks' earning for rent, food, utilities, and so forth. The only time I can try to break even is during the summer. My colleague from UCLA told me that they did not have to pay any tuition for three years after they proposed. As you can imagine, I have to pay most of my expenses out of my pocket and this is not funny when your parents have retired.

I did have a choice when I came here. Like Mr. Neal Patel in his horror stories sent to Provost Rosenbaum several weeks ago, I did believe in "the Life of Mind", and I have since been duly punished for my naivete, inanity, stupidity, you name it. When I came here, the stipend of the U of C was 50% below what I would have received at Penn and Berkeley, and these two school offered something more. Penn offered a desk plus insurance and Berkeley promised additional scholarships. What's even worse is that the stipend of U of C decreases by year in program, something students at other schools have never heard of. They did say you can maintain your stipend by working as a TA, but what they did not tell you is that those positions are very limited in scope and there are far more applicants than positions. As a result, at my fourth year in program, my stipend was only half of what I would have received elsewhere. How naive I was. When we went to a workshop at OSU last summer, we were so embarrassed to discuss our plight with students from other schools.

What's worse is that the school does not offer any support for presentation at annual meetings, even if I have something to present. My friend told me that OSU offered $2,000 for such meetings, regardless whether a student has paper or not, and my colleague from Madison told me that, despite the financial difficulties at Wisconsin such that the amount has been frozen for 10 years, they still get $750 if they have papers for the show.

Let's also forget about summer support at the U of C.

Even Loyola's Ph.D. students in English receive more than most of us old students. Their current rate is $16.5K per year. See the following link:

http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=Loyola

I do not understand how the U of C dares to call its alums for donation if the school itself offers so miserably meager when the students are at school.

- CM

TODAY!! Taking Action for Graduate Funding

Its Time to Take Action on Graduate Funding

Noon
Tuesday, February 19th
Front Foyer of the Regenstein Library


Join the Graduate Council's Committee on Graduate Funding and Graduate Students United in calling on the U of C administration to take meaningful action on Graduate Funding.

After gathering at the Regenstein Library at noon, we will be walking over to the Administration Building to show that more work needs to be done on these issues. Using an apple, a symbol of education, each of us will be able to leave a message about how important it us for us as students and teachers, workers and neighbors, to see change on these issues.

Pennyless Student Stories, 3

Here is what life as a graduate student has been like for me
so far:

The funding package I received was one of the most generous available to my cohort in the History Department. And yet. My son (who was 3 months old when my program began) qualified for food vouchers under the WIC program, and since I was breastfeeding, I also qualified for food vouchers until his first birthday (thereafter, he alone remains eligible). The WIC program is targeted at low-income mothers & children, but, as can be seen from their eligibility guidelines, most Uof C graduate student parents without additional sources of income would surely qualify. My son also qualifies for free health insurance under the "All Kids Covered" program. We have only ever shopped at thrift stores for clothes for the three of us, and for toys and books for my son. We are lucky to have the Family Resource Center nearby, whenever my son gets bored of his sad old toys. We have hitherto relied on public transport for all our grocery shopping, which was tough in the winter with a young child. I grew up on thrift store clothing and am proud to support Chicago's public transport system, but I feel that the University takes the sacrifices made by the graduate student population to study at this institution too lightly. I used to have a job, and so I do remember being able to afford haircuts, and the occasional purchase of makeup or new clothing... The University's lavish expenditure on catering at high profile events is offensive to those who are obliged to scrimp and save daily (and hoard leftovers from these events). Is it not an indictment of the system that events on campus advertising "free" food are such a draw in an affluent private institution?

The tiny number of times we allow ourselves meals out, trips to the cinema or theater seems too frivolous to mention. We have been able to travel home to see our families solely through their generosity. This year, my husband and I are both receiving the most generous aid packages available (he entered this year and thus has the new 19500 deal), and yet, with no support for childcare available, we have taken on an extremely time consuming (albeit rewarding) position with the Office of Undergraduate Student Housing (as Resident Heads), without which we could not afford childcare. As international students, my husband and I are not eligible for most of the research fellowships normally applied for my students whose program requires a prolonged period of field research abroad. I have no idea how I will afford my year of archival research, scheduled for 2009-2010. We spent all our savings on my first research-related trip, last summer.

The Provost's Working Group Report reinforced general concerns with our doctoral program which I had since I entered. I will focus on just two interrelated observations, one to do with student living costs and one to do with the way those costs relate to the time required to complete a degree.

1) The university does not really know how the average graduate student supports him- or herself in a given year. The figures in the report seem to suggest that many or even most of these students, unless they can access significant outside funding, would live in what can be only described as poverty, especially when they are in advanced residency. Nor does there appear to be any predictably available and generally accessible institutional mechanism that could lift them out of it. Indeed (on the basis of the report at any rate) the longer students are here, the poorer they are likely to be. Surely such a serious and general problem requires a serious response that would address the student body generally. The report documents the problem more effectively than it addresses it. The report suggest a number of new Advanced Residency fellowships, for example, and these would no doubt be helpful, but it also seems to be a winner-take-all sort of program: the fact that some students will win them is predicated on the fact that a larger pool of applicants won't. It would not truly address the fact, which the report makes obvious, that a very large number students - even a majority of them - who do not have access to significant outside resources can scarcely pay half the cost of living as a graduate student.

2) Student funding appears to be structured on the basis of a degree program that does not really exist. Current funding seems to assume 5 years of funding on entry (though not everyone has even this) plus perhaps one more year on a write-up grant to finish off the dissertation -- i.e., the funding regime seems to presume that students take five or six years to graduate. But it takes virtually all students years longer than this to complete a degree, leaving the average student unsupported for a large percentage of their time in the program (8 or 9 years on average). Thus the degree program entails a disparity between the resources that students require to complete it and the resources available to help them to do so. This problem is a general one, which arises predictably on a program-wide basis because of factors that are well beyond the agency of individual students to change. As such, it would be inadequate to try to solve the obvious funding gap by a focus on giving incentives to students to make them try to finish more quickly (a position which the report found among several informants in the faculty and administration). This would only work if most students were actually finishing in five or six years, while a few others inexplicably took longer, just needing an extra push to get them to finish on time. In the situation of the program as it stands, however, an insistence on the principle of incentive would, in effect, convert an institutional problem into an individual responsibility. The funding gap would remain substantially unfilled.

- a.a.

A Question for the Administration

Hello,

I know many people have personal stories to share. My funding was neither particularly bad, nor so good that I don't have to worry about money. I'm in my sixth year now, anyway. Higher TA salaries would help a lot.

My question for the administration is, why does every plan have to be perpetual? I understand that endowing every expenditure is all the rage among the ruling classes these days, but it is a very expensive and perverse priority that I do not share. I find it strange and presumptuous that I am being asked to buy into this logic.

I believe if you want something that costs money and you have the money to pay for it, you should pay for it and keep moving.

In the evening funding meeting last month, Cathy Cohen explained that the reason the University won't provide more fellowships to current students is because it costs close to $500,000 to endow one $20,000 annual award. That may well be true, but that's not what is needed. The administrators seem to be trapped in a very small and expensive, endowed way-of-thinking, and they are unable to see that a temporary problem (funding for current students) requires only a temporary solution.

I think the current model of development and the scale of the University of Chicago's endowment (yes, I now it's "only 13th" in the nation) calls into serious question the appropriateness of these institutions' non-profit, tax-free status. If the administration fails to appreciate the problems of the next few years, and revels in the anticipated glories of the institution in the distant future, I would urge lawmakers to tax university endowments. There is no reason the society at large should effectively subsidize what is going on at the country's richest universities, while families mortgage their homes to pay for an education.

Even a year of loans for school is a big burden on students, that casts a long shadow well into their careers. Yet the administration feels no urgency. The tax-free status is a privilege that has been granted by the American people so that schools can afford to attend to their true constituents: actual students and the society these students will go on to serve.

The tax-free status is not a right to horde money and pretend that it takes half a million dollars to pay a $20,000 bill. As the recent news from Northwestern showed, university administrators can very simply include current students in funding improvements.

But they have to want to, first.

--Julia Brookins

Letter to the UofC Community (Pennyless Student Stories)

To the University of Chicago Community,

Let me begin with an expression of my love and adoration for the University of Chicago, its rigorous academic environment, and the people, the students, and the faculty who reproduce that environment every day through selfless hard work. It is they who make this institution, in my estimation, the finest place to study, teach, and learn in the world.

I know many graduate student educators, teaching assistants, research assistants, student employees, and lecturers who share these very same feelings for the university. I hear them say it all the time, and they comport themselves in a way that makes these feelings evident everyday.

Regrettably, the University of Chicago also leaves many graduate students feeling seemingly contradictory, bitter sentiments, such as naiveté and guilt.

We feel gullible and naïve because, for all of our hard work and for all the enthusiasm and love with which we make the University of Chicago what it is on a daily basis, we are paid like some cheap outsourced academic commodity. After all, what is our peculiarly low pay but another way of telling us that we are expendable, that we are not valued? For imparting our knowledge and giving our own vitality to the students we so adore, we are recompensed as if we were the butt of a perpetual joke at a roundtable of the university's economists and financial advisors – "if we pay them as little as possible, we can minimize our expenditures and can dramatically increase our net profit ratio. They will come back for more. They need us more than we need any one of them." [Table bursts into laughter].

But they need us.

We are left feeling guilt because we know that the pleasure we receive in working to provide the nation's "finest undergraduate education" comes at the expense of our health, our future finances, and similarly, the well-being of those close to us. It affects everything we do, even though we dust it off or put it away somewhere with the hope that we can just work hard and do the best for ourselves, for our students, for the university. "That will be enough," we hope. "That will make everything okay."

Just how poor is our poor compensation? Teaching assistants and interns receive $1,500 for a quarter of work, which – when considered in terms relative to our "competitor academic institutions," is nothing short of a travesty, an egregious injustice. At best, this is a mere third of the money graduate students are currently receiving to do similar work at comparable private universities. Lecturers meanwhile receive $3,500 per quarter for a "stand alone" course. As you may have realized, this is less than the amount that comparable schools pay their teaching assistants. How can such gross underpayment be justified in any way that might be interpreted as reasonable by graduate students?

Perhaps worst of all, the compensation received is insufficient to pay the health care and compulsory admission fees for graduate students who are beyond their fifth year. Who in their right mind should ever have to teach for a loss of income? What kind of academic institution would ask their graduate students to do such a thing?

This injustice has been a dirty little secret for the university and its graduate students. Yet, it is becoming less of a secret everyday. People all over are learning about and discussing our situation. Faculty are talking about it. Undergraduate students are talking about it. But what can be done to remedy this situation – this injustice – so that feelings of naiveté and guilt are replaced by a sense of pride, by a sense that we are valued and respected employees and educators?

It can be remedied in three ways.

1) Compensate University of Chicago graduate student employees (teachers, instructors, teaching assistants, interns) at the socially normative rate for the work being performed. A fair wage should be provided to all university lecturers, interns, and T/As. A fair wage should be determined through an analysis of the socially normative rate of recompense for the work being completed, taking into account regional differences in the cost of living, and the level of academic education and support being provided. That rate MUST be reviewed and adjusted annually for inflation, just as my university apartment rent is adjusted for inflation.

2) Waive the Health Care fee for all graduate students employees, regardless of their year in the program: At present, beyond a student's fifth year at the University of Chicago, health care and activity and wellness fees amount to $2,400 annually. This is true even if a graduate student lectures University of Chicago undergraduates for three quarters. Given the rising health care costs (relative to our static wages), it is becomingly increasingly clear that waiving the basic health care fee is essential for the survival of students employed by the University. Again, no one should have to work for a loss of income.

3) Waive the tuition fees for the said student employees, just as other private universities do for their student employees. By waving these fees, the University administration would make graduate student life in the critical dissertation writing years more palatable, allowing us to perform our jobs better and to finish our degrees faster without the added pressure of having to replace income lost to these fees by teaching at other universities or going further into debt.

The fact that the University of Chicago's graduate students, who provide a good percentage of the nation's "finest undergraduate education," are greatly under compensated for their work should be nothing less than an embarrassment for this university.

It is time for this university, which so dearly values education and growth of the mind, to demonstrate that it similarly values its educators. What graduate students are asking for is just, it is right, it is fair. We do not expect any lesser treatment from an institution that we give so much of our life force to with so much vigor on a daily basis.

Sincerely,

Gregory Malandrucco
Ph.D. Student, Department of History
The University of Chicago