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)
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
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!
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!
Friday, February 22, 2008
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!
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.”
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.
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.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
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."
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)
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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
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."
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
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
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
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
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.
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.
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
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
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
Pennyless Student Stories, 2
FYI: The U of C hospital told me to get on public assistance when I couldn't pay a bill...
This summer the student care nurse sent me to get blood work to test for allergies, which turned out to be many hundreds of dollars not covered by insurance. I called the hospital billing people and told them I couldn't afford that and they said that I could apply for aid to have the bill reduced but that I first had to apply for medicare and if I were rejected, then they might reduce my bill.
I don't know what this means for your idea, but just thought I would share.
- Jn
Dear Provost Cohen:
I would like to express my views regarding the situation of advanced graduate students who need to support themselves by teaching in the college as T.A.s, preceptors and instructors. Simply stated, we feel it is absolutely incumbent on the administration to raise the salaries, which have remained at the same paltry level since 1998, the year I entered. I have worked six times as a TA, each time receiving no more than $1500 a quarter, since 2001. I have calculated that if the T.A. salary had been comparable to Yale's in a quarter system, or $4500, my debt level today would be half of what it is now, or some $20,000 less. To give you a sense of how much TAs work for this token wage of $1500, last quarter I graded 30 papers per week for a total of 240 papers during the quarter, spending up to 20 hours a week doing so. In addition, I am a preceptor for BA thesis writers, compensated with a yearly stipend of $6500, or a little over $2000 a quarter. I spend numerous hours every week meeting individually with students, reading their work and providing feedback, as well as conducting a seminar. In the spring I will teach a stand-alone course for which I will receive $3500; I have already put in many hours just in preparation for the course, and will be putting in many more once the course begins. So in total for this year, I'm making $11,500 for teaching or assisting in five courses, a sum that barely covers my rent, much less my living expenses, which the University estimates is some $20,000 a year. I have no other sources of income besides loans. I simply cannot understand why the University of Chicago, with one of the largest university endowments in the country, cannot raise these stipends to the level of a living wage and to adjust yearly for inflation, especially given the ballooning costs of health care. The University of Michigan, with a lower per capita endowment and facing continual state budget cuts, offers graduate teaching fellows $15,000 per semester plus health insurance. Why can't Chicago do the same?
Thank you for your understanding and consideration of these important matters.
Sincerely,
Mikael Wolfe
This summer the student care nurse sent me to get blood work to test for allergies, which turned out to be many hundreds of dollars not covered by insurance. I called the hospital billing people and told them I couldn't afford that and they said that I could apply for aid to have the bill reduced but that I first had to apply for medicare and if I were rejected, then they might reduce my bill.
I don't know what this means for your idea, but just thought I would share.
- Jn
Dear Provost Cohen:
I would like to express my views regarding the situation of advanced graduate students who need to support themselves by teaching in the college as T.A.s, preceptors and instructors. Simply stated, we feel it is absolutely incumbent on the administration to raise the salaries, which have remained at the same paltry level since 1998, the year I entered. I have worked six times as a TA, each time receiving no more than $1500 a quarter, since 2001. I have calculated that if the T.A. salary had been comparable to Yale's in a quarter system, or $4500, my debt level today would be half of what it is now, or some $20,000 less. To give you a sense of how much TAs work for this token wage of $1500, last quarter I graded 30 papers per week for a total of 240 papers during the quarter, spending up to 20 hours a week doing so. In addition, I am a preceptor for BA thesis writers, compensated with a yearly stipend of $6500, or a little over $2000 a quarter. I spend numerous hours every week meeting individually with students, reading their work and providing feedback, as well as conducting a seminar. In the spring I will teach a stand-alone course for which I will receive $3500; I have already put in many hours just in preparation for the course, and will be putting in many more once the course begins. So in total for this year, I'm making $11,500 for teaching or assisting in five courses, a sum that barely covers my rent, much less my living expenses, which the University estimates is some $20,000 a year. I have no other sources of income besides loans. I simply cannot understand why the University of Chicago, with one of the largest university endowments in the country, cannot raise these stipends to the level of a living wage and to adjust yearly for inflation, especially given the ballooning costs of health care. The University of Michigan, with a lower per capita endowment and facing continual state budget cuts, offers graduate teaching fellows $15,000 per semester plus health insurance. Why can't Chicago do the same?
Thank you for your understanding and consideration of these important matters.
Sincerely,
Mikael Wolfe
Monday, February 18, 2008
Pennyless Student Stories
It's really simple...As it becomes a choice between feeding my baby and staying in Chicago...well there isn't really a choice is there? Smart people in their late twenties who work hard shouldn't have to worry about feeding their children.
- Jason B.
I've been following the discussions regarding funding and would like to congratulate those individuals that have kept up the good fight. Since all of this began the year I was set to leave for the job market, I was no longer being funded or located in Chicago proper. But I continue to pay registration fees while I submit my dissertation and complete my degree. Such is the gist of this email.
I think the students should ask the president, and the bursar's office, for leniency and payment plans that will NOT penalize students with late fees and other extra charges intended to get more money. Late fees here are to the tune of $50 to $100 dollars. And often times, these fees are expected to be paid in full, which is to say the whole $784 in one lump sum. My rent isn't that high, so I think the students should argue for this particular leniency.
best of luck....Si se puede!
- Jose Angel
I am an advanced Ph.D. candidate in the Divinity School. I don’t even know anymore how I fit on the SR-AR scale and think I am unlikely to see much benefit from these discussions. But there is absolutely no question that I have been delayed in my program by my need to support myself by alternative means. . .
Because I had previously been enrolled in the school, regardless of the fact that I received minimal financial support during that time, I learned in my first quarter that my package would last only two years and then would disappear. Living my first year in a 1-bedroom apartment, I spent all of my stipend on rent and had to dip into my savings for other living expenses, including health insurance. Things became difficult when my computer crashed in Spring 2003, and I had to purchase a new laptop. That summer I worked full-time as a bartender (4pm to 2am, 4 or 5 days/week). Though I intended to spend the summer studying for my qualifying exams, I was able to do very little due to my demanding work schedule and difficult hours. The following year I moved into a townhouse with 4 other students so that I could reduce my rent to about $500/month. I continued to bartend 2 nights/week through the academic year.
I have not received a stipend for the last four years. In 2004 I began working as a Resident Head for the Office of Undergraduate Student Housing. The job provides an apartment, a meal plan in the dining hall (where I argue it is very difficult to maintain a healthy diet), health care, and a small annual salary. In addition, for three years I worked every quarter as a Writing Intern in the Humanities Core (earning in 2005 the Karen Dinal Award for excellence in the teaching of writing to first-year students). I have now lectured in the Humanities Core for each of the last three quarters (though it is quite rare that someone would be hired to teach for more than one quarter in a year), and I was a lecturer in Fall 2007 in the Big Problems program. Between the Housing job and my TA and lectureships I have been able to eek out a very modest but comfortable sort of existence. I have been incredibly fortunate to get the jobs that I have.
It is difficult to count the hours that I work in the dorm and even for teaching. Between them, however, I think that I work at least full-time for the University doing jobs not associated with my degree program. I love the work, but the jobs do distract from my own research. The dorm job can be psychologically very taxing. In order to make the progress now necessary on my dissertation I feel strongly that I need to move out of my dorm living situation, but I simply don’t have the resources to pay for rent and utilities, food, health insurance – a value of probably close to $20,000. So I feel stuck by my financial situation. Moving out would require finding other work which will likely also require a great deal of time.
Only just recently have I completed my dissertation proposal. I now may be eligible for writing grants. It’s unfortunate that they are apparently available only for a single year, but I’m hopeful I might be able to get one.
- B. K.
- Jason B.
I've been following the discussions regarding funding and would like to congratulate those individuals that have kept up the good fight. Since all of this began the year I was set to leave for the job market, I was no longer being funded or located in Chicago proper. But I continue to pay registration fees while I submit my dissertation and complete my degree. Such is the gist of this email.
I think the students should ask the president, and the bursar's office, for leniency and payment plans that will NOT penalize students with late fees and other extra charges intended to get more money. Late fees here are to the tune of $50 to $100 dollars. And often times, these fees are expected to be paid in full, which is to say the whole $784 in one lump sum. My rent isn't that high, so I think the students should argue for this particular leniency.
best of luck....Si se puede!
- Jose Angel
I am an advanced Ph.D. candidate in the Divinity School. I don’t even know anymore how I fit on the SR-AR scale and think I am unlikely to see much benefit from these discussions. But there is absolutely no question that I have been delayed in my program by my need to support myself by alternative means. . .
Because I had previously been enrolled in the school, regardless of the fact that I received minimal financial support during that time, I learned in my first quarter that my package would last only two years and then would disappear. Living my first year in a 1-bedroom apartment, I spent all of my stipend on rent and had to dip into my savings for other living expenses, including health insurance. Things became difficult when my computer crashed in Spring 2003, and I had to purchase a new laptop. That summer I worked full-time as a bartender (4pm to 2am, 4 or 5 days/week). Though I intended to spend the summer studying for my qualifying exams, I was able to do very little due to my demanding work schedule and difficult hours. The following year I moved into a townhouse with 4 other students so that I could reduce my rent to about $500/month. I continued to bartend 2 nights/week through the academic year.
I have not received a stipend for the last four years. In 2004 I began working as a Resident Head for the Office of Undergraduate Student Housing. The job provides an apartment, a meal plan in the dining hall (where I argue it is very difficult to maintain a healthy diet), health care, and a small annual salary. In addition, for three years I worked every quarter as a Writing Intern in the Humanities Core (earning in 2005 the Karen Dinal Award for excellence in the teaching of writing to first-year students). I have now lectured in the Humanities Core for each of the last three quarters (though it is quite rare that someone would be hired to teach for more than one quarter in a year), and I was a lecturer in Fall 2007 in the Big Problems program. Between the Housing job and my TA and lectureships I have been able to eek out a very modest but comfortable sort of existence. I have been incredibly fortunate to get the jobs that I have.
It is difficult to count the hours that I work in the dorm and even for teaching. Between them, however, I think that I work at least full-time for the University doing jobs not associated with my degree program. I love the work, but the jobs do distract from my own research. The dorm job can be psychologically very taxing. In order to make the progress now necessary on my dissertation I feel strongly that I need to move out of my dorm living situation, but I simply don’t have the resources to pay for rent and utilities, food, health insurance – a value of probably close to $20,000. So I feel stuck by my financial situation. Moving out would require finding other work which will likely also require a great deal of time.
Only just recently have I completed my dissertation proposal. I now may be eligible for writing grants. It’s unfortunate that they are apparently available only for a single year, but I’m hopeful I might be able to get one.
- B. K.
Friday, February 15, 2008
President Zimmer quotes from Maroon article
Zimmer pressed with students’ concerns
By Dasha Vinogradsky
Relevant Quotes:
"Zimmer also said that graduate-student funding was a top priority for the administration and that the administration is waiting for the provost’s report on graduate funding before it decides what actions to take. He added that the changes to graduate funding might not reach their final form for several years."
"In his opening remarks, Zimmer said that the University is poised to become one of the few remaining intellectually serious schools with a rigorous research environment."
"President Robert Zimmer broke bread with a group of 25 undergraduate and graduate students last Friday night at a lively dinner hosted by Student Government (S.G.). The event was a part of ongoing attempts to foster open dialogue between the U of C student body and administration that some critics believe has been conspicuously absent since Zimmer assumed office in 2006..." [Read full article at http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/article/9927]
By Dasha Vinogradsky
Relevant Quotes:
"Zimmer also said that graduate-student funding was a top priority for the administration and that the administration is waiting for the provost’s report on graduate funding before it decides what actions to take. He added that the changes to graduate funding might not reach their final form for several years."
"In his opening remarks, Zimmer said that the University is poised to become one of the few remaining intellectually serious schools with a rigorous research environment."
"President Robert Zimmer broke bread with a group of 25 undergraduate and graduate students last Friday night at a lively dinner hosted by Student Government (S.G.). The event was a part of ongoing attempts to foster open dialogue between the U of C student body and administration that some critics believe has been conspicuously absent since Zimmer assumed office in 2006..." [Read full article at http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/article/9927]
It's Time to Take Action on Graduate Funding
It's 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.
---
For over a year, we have been patiently waiting for the U of C
to take meaningful action on graduate funding, yet current
graduate students remain grossly underfunded. While
Northwestern University extended the benefits of a new aid
package to its current doctoral students, last year's Graduate
Aid Initiative left roughly half of us with less than $12,000
a year in stipend support and a quarter of us with less than
$5,000.
As Teaching Assistants, we have been waiting for more than
eight years for a raise. Yet TA pay remains the lowest among
peer institutions at $1,500 and teaching positions lack
healthcare and other basic benefits. While wages have remained
the same, the out-of-pocket tuition for advanced students has
consistently increased to where it is now more than half of TA
pay.
On Wednesday, February 13th, the Working Group on Graduate
Student Life in the Humanities, Social Sciences and the
Divinity School publicly released their long awaited report.
With one voice, graduate students will be calling on Provost
Thomas F. Rosenbaum to go beyond the Working Group's
recommendations to address key issues like stipend equity,
teaching pay, health insurance, summer funding, advanced
residency tuition, and support for international students.
We are also calling on Provost Rosenbaum to release his action
steps at a public forum open to all graduate students and to
continue to attend such forums to ensure that progress is made
on these issues. As graduate funding directly affects our
lives, we need to have a direct and ongoing dialogue with
those who are ultimately making decisions on these issues.
Please meet us at noon in the front foyer of the Regenstein
Library, 1100 E 57t street on February 19th.
Media contacts:
Duff Morton duffmorton@yahoo.com 773-562-3364
Toussaint Losier tlosier@uchicago.edu 215-837-4071
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.
---
For over a year, we have been patiently waiting for the U of C
to take meaningful action on graduate funding, yet current
graduate students remain grossly underfunded. While
Northwestern University extended the benefits of a new aid
package to its current doctoral students, last year's Graduate
Aid Initiative left roughly half of us with less than $12,000
a year in stipend support and a quarter of us with less than
$5,000.
As Teaching Assistants, we have been waiting for more than
eight years for a raise. Yet TA pay remains the lowest among
peer institutions at $1,500 and teaching positions lack
healthcare and other basic benefits. While wages have remained
the same, the out-of-pocket tuition for advanced students has
consistently increased to where it is now more than half of TA
pay.
On Wednesday, February 13th, the Working Group on Graduate
Student Life in the Humanities, Social Sciences and the
Divinity School publicly released their long awaited report.
With one voice, graduate students will be calling on Provost
Thomas F. Rosenbaum to go beyond the Working Group's
recommendations to address key issues like stipend equity,
teaching pay, health insurance, summer funding, advanced
residency tuition, and support for international students.
We are also calling on Provost Rosenbaum to release his action
steps at a public forum open to all graduate students and to
continue to attend such forums to ensure that progress is made
on these issues. As graduate funding directly affects our
lives, we need to have a direct and ongoing dialogue with
those who are ultimately making decisions on these issues.
Please meet us at noon in the front foyer of the Regenstein
Library, 1100 E 57t street on February 19th.
Media contacts:
Duff Morton duffmorton@yahoo.com 773-562-3364
Toussaint Losier tlosier@uchicago.edu 215-837-4071
Grad Funding: The Story Thus Far
Graduate Funding: The Story Thus Far . . .
Current as of February 14, 2008
This text is intended to make more accessible the diverse activity surrounding the effort to increase funding for current graduate students at the University of Chicago, activity that is a direct response to the new funding package aimed only at new graduate students. For any students who want to get involved or want more information, this document is meant to make that effort significantly easier. I apologize in advance for omissions, errors, and bias. Please forward this document to all interested parties.
- Brian Cody, Sociology - briancody@uchicago.edu - 386.965.1974 cell
I. Upcoming Events
II. Ways to Get Involved
III. Facts and Arguments
IV. The Story Thus Far (from my perspective)
V. Links.
I. Upcoming Events (events in bold are large public events)
• February 14: Read the Provost’s Working Group Report, leave feedback for administration on the Graduate Council Blog (http://sg.uchicago.edu/blog/category/assembly/gc/)
• February 18: Meeting with Provost about increased University commitments for current graduate students that go beyond the Provost’s Working Group Recommendations (closed meeting)
• February 19: Taking Action for Graduate Funding (large public event, noon at Regenstein)
• February: Documentary being made - contact Neal Patel (nhpatel@uchicago.edu)
• February: Press releases, push for articles, other promotional activities – contact Jenn Gregory (jaegregory@uchicago.edu)
• March 5: Rally for Graduate Funding (large public event, main quad 11:30am-1:30pm)
II. Ways to Get Involved
• Show up at upcoming events (above)
• Graduate Council’s Graduate Funding Committee (GCGFC) - focused on large-scale initiative to include current graduate students in the fellowship initiative, expand health insurance, improve teaching compensation/opportunities, international student funding, summer funding opportunities, advanced student tuition/fees remission, and dissertation writing support - email Averill Leslie (averill.leslie@gmail.com)
• Graduate Student Union (GSU) – focused on increasing teaching pay and teaching opportunities, expanded health insurance, and advanced student tuition/fees remission - email Duff Morton (duffmorton@yahoo.com) or Megan Wade (meganw@uchicago.edu)
• Graduate Council – formal student government, all issues of student, academic, and institutional life - email Anthony Green, President (ahgreen@uchicago.edu) or Erica Simmons, Graduate Liason to the Board of Trustees (ericas@uchicago.edu)
• Promotions and Design Work - support all efforts of communicating the graduate funding issue with the wider public - email Jenn Gregory (jaegregory@uchicago.edu) or Neal Patel (nhpatel@uchicago.edu)
III. Facts and Arguments
• Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
The logic behind the University’s new funding package applies to current students as well as new students: better scholarship, faster time to degree, more systematic teaching opportunities. President Zimmer was clear on the intent behind this initiative, and the university needs to become an advocate for students so it can achieve the goal the initiative set for ALL students across Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Divinity School. This means:
1. Inclusion into the new funding initiative for all graduate students years 1-5
2. Higher teaching pay, more opportunities, and health insurance for TAs
3. Increased dissertation support
4. Help international students’ situation
Whether this means finding funding, changing priorities, or raising new money, the administration needs to make a serious effort to make this happen if the University of Chicago is to improve and achieve the vision President Zimmer set out for the Graduate Aid Initiative.
• Funding Sources
The NACUBO endowment report for 2007 ranks the University of Chicago as the 13th largest endowment in the nation with $6,204,189,000 and 27.5% growth from 2006. Only 3 universities on the list reported a bigger growth last year than us. This huge increase could be put to improve scholarship among current graduate students rather than just new students and new buildings. Current graduate students need to be made a priority rather than being told “we can’t seem to find the money.”
• Cost of Living
Current students may feel lucky to be receiving a stipend of $3,000, $5,000, or even $10,000, but all of these packages fall dramatically short of the estimated cost of living for the nine-month academic year at the University of Chicago, currently estimated at $19,560. New students receive $19,000 a year which puts them much closer to the cost of living, through still well below the estimated cost of living for the twelve-month calendar year, estimated at $26,080.
• Precedents for including current students
Northwestern University implemented a very similar graduate aid initiative in January 2008 and included current students of their own choice without the need for student protests. The funding for all students in the Northwestern Graduate School is uniform across divisions, with the exception of the sciences. The new changes include increases to stipends, summer funding, health insurance, and TA availability for current students, as well as improved ways to monitor students' progression towards degree. The philosophy behind many of these improvements seems consistent with those articulated in the recent report from the Provost’s Working Group.
• Teaching Pay
• The University of Chicago pays $1500 for 10 weeks as a Teaching Assistant. This has not increased in 7 years while tuition and cost of living has increased.
• Harvard pays almost $7,000.00 (4.5 times) more than the U of C (20 hour/11 Week).
• Northwestern pays almost $4,000 more than the Univ. of Chicago (20 hour/11 Week).
• Columbia College pays almost $1,500 more than the U of C (20 hour/11 Week).
• Teaching Opportunities
Due to the Graduate Aid Initiative, Teaching Assistantships will be mandatory for all incoming graduate students. In a matter of one year, it will be impossible to fill TA-ships with an even marginal percentage of current students. Raising teaching salaries will, unfortunately, have a minimal effect on the approximately 1,000 current graduate students who are currently under-funded. There simply aren’t enough undergraduates to go around, so additional teaching opportunities are needed to properly train our future educators at the University of Chicago.
• Artificially Limiting the Discussion
The scope of the Provost’s recommendations are expected to be small ($500k-$2 million) and not include a serious initiative to raise the money needed to fully cover all Social Science, Humanities, and Divinity School students, even though President Zimmer initially told graduate students that no options were off the table. In Spring 2007, the Provost convened the Working Group on Graduate Student Life in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Divinity. Students in this group did meet with Provost Rosenbaum to discuss the possibility of new forms of aid, and the Provost suggested that new financial resources might be found. This approach has been abandoned without explanation or rationale.
• Dissertation Support
Neither new incoming students nor current students have sufficient resources for dissertation-writing support. Millions need to be raised for more endowed dissertation writing grants to support graduate students during this critical time of researching and producing new knowledge.
IV. The Story Thus Far
• February 7, 2007: An email goes out from President Zimmer announcing a new Graduate Aid Initiative that gives all future incoming graduate students in the Humanities and the Social Sciences five years of funding ($19k/year) plus two summer stipends ($3k/summer); total cost is $50 million. Current students get health insurance through their fifth year; total cost is $2 million. Divinity School students are not included in the main fellowship portion of the initiative. (see original Zimmer email under “Links”)
• The stated goals of the initiative were to respond to “our obligation to support these programs at the highest level, allowing us to continue to attract emerging scholars who will shape academic fields and set the intellectual agenda in the decades to come” as well as “to allow students to engage their work at a more intensive level, with one result being a shortening of the time to complete degree requirements.” The program also “systematizes opportunities for students to develop a range of teaching experiences” and responds to calls “from faculty that a significant increase in graduate student support should be the highest priority for the Humanities and Social Sciences” (quotes from Zimmer email). Even though the same logic applies to them, current graduate students are not included in the initiative.
• February 28, 2007: At an open meeting with Deputy Provost Martha Roth, current graduate students express confusion and anger over not being given additional resources so they too could improve scholarship quality, shorten time to degree, have more meaningful teaching opportunities, and have funding that matches the cost of living in Hyde Park.
• March 2007: Ad-hoc group of students get together to advocate for graduate funding after meetings with Martha Roth (later becomes GCGFC)
• March 6, 2007: Provost Rosenbaum announces 30 new summer fellowships (increased to 40 later); 270 people apply by deadline, demonstrating the need for more financial support for current students.
• April 23, 2007: Open forum with Provost’s administrative staff. Students launch survey to see where graduate students perceive need for aid. 600 responses total.
• April 24, 2007: Erica Simmons, an early member of the ad-hoc student group and strong advocate of increased graduate aid, wins election as the Graduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees
• April-May, 2007: Graduate students meet with division Deans and central administration to better understand the logic of not including current students, and what could be done.
• May 2, 2007: Three students from the ad-hoc group present a proposal to President Zimmerman, Provost Rosenbaum, VP David Green, Deputy Provost Martha Roth and Deputy Dean for Student Affairs Martina Munsters. The proposal calls for full inclusion of current graduate students in the new initiative based on cost of living and the stated goals of the program (stipends, summer support, health insurance, advanced residency tuition waivers, increased teaching pay, and increased funding for international students). The only thing explicitly rejected is guaranteed support for students through their twelfth year.
• May 2, 2007: In response to student proposal, the Provost’s Ad-Hoc Committee is formed with graduate students and administrators to study the issue of increased funding for current students. Committee members: Alison Winter, Chair (Associate Professor of History), Brian Clites (third-year graduate student in History of Religions), David Martinez (Associate Professor of Classics), Martina Munsters (Deputy Dean of Students for Student Affairs), Rachel Ponce (fifth-year graduate student in History and CHSS), Thomas Thuerer (Dean of Students, Division of Humanities), Greg Weinstein (fifth-year graduate student in Music).
• May 2007: The ad-hoc student group gains official recognition as the Graduate Council’s Graduate Funding Committee (GCGFC). [Note: this is the ‘official’ acronym according to the Graduate Council records, though GCCGF and GCCGA have also been used].
• May 2007: The Graduate Student Union (GSU) begins organizing events focused on unionizing, improving teaching salaries, and improved access to affordable health care.
• June-September 2007: Provost committee works on the issue of graduate funding throughout the summer. Erica Simmons presents information to the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees on the funding situation for current students, informed them of the charge of the provost committee, and discussed the challenges graduate students face as a result of limited financial support from the University.
• September-December 2007: GCGFC pushes for more funding, Maroon article comes out about continuing student frustration, students are told to wait for the Provost committee report to be released.
• December 8, 2007: Erica Simmons presents information to the Trustees on teaching compensation for graduate students including statistics that compared the U of C to peer and local institutions. Trustees were particularly concerned to hear that our graduate students were taking teaching positions at other local universities because of the difference in compensation rates. They were equally alarmed to hear that the U of C had fallen so far behind its peers.
• December 2007: Members of the provost committee share their initial findings with a limited number of graduate students. Final report, including a separate graduate student addendum expressing concern, is submitted.
• January 14, 2008: Provost committee report (draft form) comes to light. Students decry the narrowness of the Provost’s recommendations over email and at GCGFC/GSU meetings.
• January 28, 2008: GC forum with Deputy Provost Cohen. Presents draft recommendations of the Provost committee. Students ask how much money the Provost is looking at, no clear answer though told anywhere from $500,000 upwards (though not too much upwards). Report clearly does not consider full 5-year fellowships for all current students to be an option, and the scope of proposed recommendations is very narrow.
• February 6, 2008: Open forum w/ Cathy Cohen (Deputy Provost), Martina Munsters (Deputy Dean of Students in the University for Student Affairs), and Kimberly Goff-Crews (Vice President and Dean of Students in the University). Over 100 graduate students attend, many angry speeches concerning the lack of funding across the life of graduate work, as well as the lack of prioritization on the part of the University to find or raise money for current students. The sizeable increase in the University of Chicago endowment was noted as one possible source for funding current students, which was reported to be an average of around $13 million a year over the next 4 years (total: $54.2 million).
• February 8, 2008: GCGFC group has meeting with Provost’s staff. Focused on full coverage instead of the report recommendations because the report is too narrow. Agreed to smaller meeting (4-6 students) to discus larger funding issue rather than a large-group forum to discuss the Provost recommendation report only.
• February 13, 2008: Provost committee report “officially” comes out, all the options are limited and do not address large-scale inclusion of current graduate students in the initiative (see Links, “Provost’s Working Group Report”). Students meet to plan ways of gaining administrative support to advocate on their behalf for additional support.
V. Links
Original Email from President Zimmer Announcing Graduate Aid Initiative
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/07/070207.graduate.shtml
Provost’s Working Group Report
http://sg.uchicago.edu/gradcouncil/docs/GSLWorkingGroupReport.pdf
Northwestern University - New Graduate Funding Package (January 2008)
http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/docs/N.W.G.S_strplan08Finalnew.pdf
NACUBO University Endowment Report
http://www.nacubo.org/Images/All%20Institutions%20Listed%20by%20FY%202007%20Market%20Value%20of%20Endowment%20Assets_2007%20NES.pdf
Maroon Article - 11/13/2007
http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/news/2007/11/13/grad-students-keep-up-calls-for-funding/
Maroon Article - 02/01/2008
http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/news/2008/02/01/graduate-aid-study-group-preps-report/
Funding Initiative Blog – “U of C Blogspot”
http://uofcgradfunding.blogspot.com/
Graduate Council Blog
http://sg.uchicago.edu/blog/category/assembly/gc/
Current as of February 14, 2008
This text is intended to make more accessible the diverse activity surrounding the effort to increase funding for current graduate students at the University of Chicago, activity that is a direct response to the new funding package aimed only at new graduate students. For any students who want to get involved or want more information, this document is meant to make that effort significantly easier. I apologize in advance for omissions, errors, and bias. Please forward this document to all interested parties.
- Brian Cody, Sociology - briancody@uchicago.edu - 386.965.1974 cell
I. Upcoming Events
II. Ways to Get Involved
III. Facts and Arguments
IV. The Story Thus Far (from my perspective)
V. Links.
I. Upcoming Events (events in bold are large public events)
• February 14: Read the Provost’s Working Group Report, leave feedback for administration on the Graduate Council Blog (http://sg.uchicago.edu/blog/category/assembly/gc/)
• February 18: Meeting with Provost about increased University commitments for current graduate students that go beyond the Provost’s Working Group Recommendations (closed meeting)
• February 19: Taking Action for Graduate Funding (large public event, noon at Regenstein)
• February: Documentary being made - contact Neal Patel (nhpatel@uchicago.edu)
• February: Press releases, push for articles, other promotional activities – contact Jenn Gregory (jaegregory@uchicago.edu)
• March 5: Rally for Graduate Funding (large public event, main quad 11:30am-1:30pm)
II. Ways to Get Involved
• Show up at upcoming events (above)
• Graduate Council’s Graduate Funding Committee (GCGFC) - focused on large-scale initiative to include current graduate students in the fellowship initiative, expand health insurance, improve teaching compensation/opportunities, international student funding, summer funding opportunities, advanced student tuition/fees remission, and dissertation writing support - email Averill Leslie (averill.leslie@gmail.com)
• Graduate Student Union (GSU) – focused on increasing teaching pay and teaching opportunities, expanded health insurance, and advanced student tuition/fees remission - email Duff Morton (duffmorton@yahoo.com) or Megan Wade (meganw@uchicago.edu)
• Graduate Council – formal student government, all issues of student, academic, and institutional life - email Anthony Green, President (ahgreen@uchicago.edu) or Erica Simmons, Graduate Liason to the Board of Trustees (ericas@uchicago.edu)
• Promotions and Design Work - support all efforts of communicating the graduate funding issue with the wider public - email Jenn Gregory (jaegregory@uchicago.edu) or Neal Patel (nhpatel@uchicago.edu)
III. Facts and Arguments
• Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
The logic behind the University’s new funding package applies to current students as well as new students: better scholarship, faster time to degree, more systematic teaching opportunities. President Zimmer was clear on the intent behind this initiative, and the university needs to become an advocate for students so it can achieve the goal the initiative set for ALL students across Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Divinity School. This means:
1. Inclusion into the new funding initiative for all graduate students years 1-5
2. Higher teaching pay, more opportunities, and health insurance for TAs
3. Increased dissertation support
4. Help international students’ situation
Whether this means finding funding, changing priorities, or raising new money, the administration needs to make a serious effort to make this happen if the University of Chicago is to improve and achieve the vision President Zimmer set out for the Graduate Aid Initiative.
• Funding Sources
The NACUBO endowment report for 2007 ranks the University of Chicago as the 13th largest endowment in the nation with $6,204,189,000 and 27.5% growth from 2006. Only 3 universities on the list reported a bigger growth last year than us. This huge increase could be put to improve scholarship among current graduate students rather than just new students and new buildings. Current graduate students need to be made a priority rather than being told “we can’t seem to find the money.”
• Cost of Living
Current students may feel lucky to be receiving a stipend of $3,000, $5,000, or even $10,000, but all of these packages fall dramatically short of the estimated cost of living for the nine-month academic year at the University of Chicago, currently estimated at $19,560. New students receive $19,000 a year which puts them much closer to the cost of living, through still well below the estimated cost of living for the twelve-month calendar year, estimated at $26,080.
• Precedents for including current students
Northwestern University implemented a very similar graduate aid initiative in January 2008 and included current students of their own choice without the need for student protests. The funding for all students in the Northwestern Graduate School is uniform across divisions, with the exception of the sciences. The new changes include increases to stipends, summer funding, health insurance, and TA availability for current students, as well as improved ways to monitor students' progression towards degree. The philosophy behind many of these improvements seems consistent with those articulated in the recent report from the Provost’s Working Group.
• Teaching Pay
• The University of Chicago pays $1500 for 10 weeks as a Teaching Assistant. This has not increased in 7 years while tuition and cost of living has increased.
• Harvard pays almost $7,000.00 (4.5 times) more than the U of C (20 hour/11 Week).
• Northwestern pays almost $4,000 more than the Univ. of Chicago (20 hour/11 Week).
• Columbia College pays almost $1,500 more than the U of C (20 hour/11 Week).
• Teaching Opportunities
Due to the Graduate Aid Initiative, Teaching Assistantships will be mandatory for all incoming graduate students. In a matter of one year, it will be impossible to fill TA-ships with an even marginal percentage of current students. Raising teaching salaries will, unfortunately, have a minimal effect on the approximately 1,000 current graduate students who are currently under-funded. There simply aren’t enough undergraduates to go around, so additional teaching opportunities are needed to properly train our future educators at the University of Chicago.
• Artificially Limiting the Discussion
The scope of the Provost’s recommendations are expected to be small ($500k-$2 million) and not include a serious initiative to raise the money needed to fully cover all Social Science, Humanities, and Divinity School students, even though President Zimmer initially told graduate students that no options were off the table. In Spring 2007, the Provost convened the Working Group on Graduate Student Life in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Divinity. Students in this group did meet with Provost Rosenbaum to discuss the possibility of new forms of aid, and the Provost suggested that new financial resources might be found. This approach has been abandoned without explanation or rationale.
• Dissertation Support
Neither new incoming students nor current students have sufficient resources for dissertation-writing support. Millions need to be raised for more endowed dissertation writing grants to support graduate students during this critical time of researching and producing new knowledge.
IV. The Story Thus Far
• February 7, 2007: An email goes out from President Zimmer announcing a new Graduate Aid Initiative that gives all future incoming graduate students in the Humanities and the Social Sciences five years of funding ($19k/year) plus two summer stipends ($3k/summer); total cost is $50 million. Current students get health insurance through their fifth year; total cost is $2 million. Divinity School students are not included in the main fellowship portion of the initiative. (see original Zimmer email under “Links”)
• The stated goals of the initiative were to respond to “our obligation to support these programs at the highest level, allowing us to continue to attract emerging scholars who will shape academic fields and set the intellectual agenda in the decades to come” as well as “to allow students to engage their work at a more intensive level, with one result being a shortening of the time to complete degree requirements.” The program also “systematizes opportunities for students to develop a range of teaching experiences” and responds to calls “from faculty that a significant increase in graduate student support should be the highest priority for the Humanities and Social Sciences” (quotes from Zimmer email). Even though the same logic applies to them, current graduate students are not included in the initiative.
• February 28, 2007: At an open meeting with Deputy Provost Martha Roth, current graduate students express confusion and anger over not being given additional resources so they too could improve scholarship quality, shorten time to degree, have more meaningful teaching opportunities, and have funding that matches the cost of living in Hyde Park.
• March 2007: Ad-hoc group of students get together to advocate for graduate funding after meetings with Martha Roth (later becomes GCGFC)
• March 6, 2007: Provost Rosenbaum announces 30 new summer fellowships (increased to 40 later); 270 people apply by deadline, demonstrating the need for more financial support for current students.
• April 23, 2007: Open forum with Provost’s administrative staff. Students launch survey to see where graduate students perceive need for aid. 600 responses total.
• April 24, 2007: Erica Simmons, an early member of the ad-hoc student group and strong advocate of increased graduate aid, wins election as the Graduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees
• April-May, 2007: Graduate students meet with division Deans and central administration to better understand the logic of not including current students, and what could be done.
• May 2, 2007: Three students from the ad-hoc group present a proposal to President Zimmerman, Provost Rosenbaum, VP David Green, Deputy Provost Martha Roth and Deputy Dean for Student Affairs Martina Munsters. The proposal calls for full inclusion of current graduate students in the new initiative based on cost of living and the stated goals of the program (stipends, summer support, health insurance, advanced residency tuition waivers, increased teaching pay, and increased funding for international students). The only thing explicitly rejected is guaranteed support for students through their twelfth year.
• May 2, 2007: In response to student proposal, the Provost’s Ad-Hoc Committee is formed with graduate students and administrators to study the issue of increased funding for current students. Committee members: Alison Winter, Chair (Associate Professor of History), Brian Clites (third-year graduate student in History of Religions), David Martinez (Associate Professor of Classics), Martina Munsters (Deputy Dean of Students for Student Affairs), Rachel Ponce (fifth-year graduate student in History and CHSS), Thomas Thuerer (Dean of Students, Division of Humanities), Greg Weinstein (fifth-year graduate student in Music).
• May 2007: The ad-hoc student group gains official recognition as the Graduate Council’s Graduate Funding Committee (GCGFC). [Note: this is the ‘official’ acronym according to the Graduate Council records, though GCCGF and GCCGA have also been used].
• May 2007: The Graduate Student Union (GSU) begins organizing events focused on unionizing, improving teaching salaries, and improved access to affordable health care.
• June-September 2007: Provost committee works on the issue of graduate funding throughout the summer. Erica Simmons presents information to the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees on the funding situation for current students, informed them of the charge of the provost committee, and discussed the challenges graduate students face as a result of limited financial support from the University.
• September-December 2007: GCGFC pushes for more funding, Maroon article comes out about continuing student frustration, students are told to wait for the Provost committee report to be released.
• December 8, 2007: Erica Simmons presents information to the Trustees on teaching compensation for graduate students including statistics that compared the U of C to peer and local institutions. Trustees were particularly concerned to hear that our graduate students were taking teaching positions at other local universities because of the difference in compensation rates. They were equally alarmed to hear that the U of C had fallen so far behind its peers.
• December 2007: Members of the provost committee share their initial findings with a limited number of graduate students. Final report, including a separate graduate student addendum expressing concern, is submitted.
• January 14, 2008: Provost committee report (draft form) comes to light. Students decry the narrowness of the Provost’s recommendations over email and at GCGFC/GSU meetings.
• January 28, 2008: GC forum with Deputy Provost Cohen. Presents draft recommendations of the Provost committee. Students ask how much money the Provost is looking at, no clear answer though told anywhere from $500,000 upwards (though not too much upwards). Report clearly does not consider full 5-year fellowships for all current students to be an option, and the scope of proposed recommendations is very narrow.
• February 6, 2008: Open forum w/ Cathy Cohen (Deputy Provost), Martina Munsters (Deputy Dean of Students in the University for Student Affairs), and Kimberly Goff-Crews (Vice President and Dean of Students in the University). Over 100 graduate students attend, many angry speeches concerning the lack of funding across the life of graduate work, as well as the lack of prioritization on the part of the University to find or raise money for current students. The sizeable increase in the University of Chicago endowment was noted as one possible source for funding current students, which was reported to be an average of around $13 million a year over the next 4 years (total: $54.2 million).
• February 8, 2008: GCGFC group has meeting with Provost’s staff. Focused on full coverage instead of the report recommendations because the report is too narrow. Agreed to smaller meeting (4-6 students) to discus larger funding issue rather than a large-group forum to discuss the Provost recommendation report only.
• February 13, 2008: Provost committee report “officially” comes out, all the options are limited and do not address large-scale inclusion of current graduate students in the initiative (see Links, “Provost’s Working Group Report”). Students meet to plan ways of gaining administrative support to advocate on their behalf for additional support.
V. Links
Original Email from President Zimmer Announcing Graduate Aid Initiative
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/07/070207.graduate.shtml
Provost’s Working Group Report
http://sg.uchicago.edu/gradcouncil/docs/GSLWorkingGroupReport.pdf
Northwestern University - New Graduate Funding Package (January 2008)
http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/docs/N.W.G.S_strplan08Finalnew.pdf
NACUBO University Endowment Report
http://www.nacubo.org/Images/All%20Institutions%20Listed%20by%20FY%202007%20Market%20Value%20of%20Endowment%20Assets_2007%20NES.pdf
Maroon Article - 11/13/2007
http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/news/2007/11/13/grad-students-keep-up-calls-for-funding/
Maroon Article - 02/01/2008
http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/news/2008/02/01/graduate-aid-study-group-preps-report/
Funding Initiative Blog – “U of C Blogspot”
http://uofcgradfunding.blogspot.com/
Graduate Council Blog
http://sg.uchicago.edu/blog/category/assembly/gc/
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