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Grad Students Facing Stipend/Salary Cuts?

Brian Leiter

A graduate student writes:

A friend who is writing a dissertation at another university has just found out that his funding was cut by $1000 this year.  I felt terrible for him (and lucky for myself), but began wondering if other programs have had to do this. I also wonder what philosophers think about this as a policy during these tough financial times.  There has been lots of discussion concerning faculty furloughs, but a pay cut for students seems even worse: in this case, the student is still teaching the same load, for less pay, and isn't even given the fiction that he is thereby allowed to take unpaid time off.  In addition, a pay cut for grad students is taking money away from those who have VERY little.  I would be interested to see if you or your readers have any thoughts about this situation.

This is the first I've heard of something like this, but I am curious how widely it is going on, if it is.  Comments are open; comments referencing particular departments will have to be submitted with a full name for publication; other comments will require a valid e-mail address, which will not appear.  Submit comments only once, they may not appear right away.

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10 responses to “Grad Students Facing Stipend/Salary Cuts?”

  1. Michael Kremer

    Here at the University of Chicago, PhD students in the humanities and social sciences had just gotten a big improvement in support along with increases in pay for additional teaching or teaching assistant work. None of this was taken back. However, the number of PhD students admitted this year has been reduced by 1/3 or more in all departments, and the number of (tuition-paying) MA students was increased.

    Reply
  2. Aldo Antonelli

    This seems extreme to me. Even at the University of California, where we are all having to take salary cuts in the form of furloughs (probably unjustified: http://changinguniversities.blogspot.com and http://universityprobe.org ), funding for graduate students has been maintained, for reasons of fairness pointed out in the original posting, but also because the State pays UC more for graduate students than for undergraduates. So I am surprised at the reported cut — although it might have been enacted "locally" by a particularly mean department rather than as a result of a general policy.

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  3. poor grad student

    The treatment of graduate students in the midst of these budget cuts is unjust. Thank you for finally raising awareness about it.

    In my experience, graduate students are the first to get hit — they do not have the long-term contracts faculty have and, for some reason, many universities refuse to touch undergraduate funding. Here at my university, grad students have had their TA loads significantly increased (literally doubled in some cases), with no corresponding pay increase, and we had our limited travel funding (which was already very small) cut by a third.

    In addition, we also took on a significantly smaller number of graduate students this incoming year. That's clearly the best approach, rather than cutting finding and/or increasing workloads on current grads. But in our case, the university did both.

    Reply
  4. Jon Lawhead

    At Columbia, we've been lucky enough not to have our funding explicitly cut–though the customary cost of living increase to the fellowship stipends isn't going to be enacted this year, it looks like. I'm all for an all-around tightening of the belt in tough financial times, but (as others have pointed out) any further tightening of most grad students' belts would result in asphyxiation. If anything, rather than cutting living stipends, it seems that most departments could cut back on the other "fringe" funding opportunities: that is, travel stipends for conferences and the like. It's unfortunate that it has to be done (especially for students who are about to go on the market and are actively engaged in intense CV-building), but it's better than (say) not being able to afford to eat.

    Reply
  5. Grad student wanting to take action

    Both of the primary responses (by universities / departments) mentioned so far – taken in the wake of widespread economic distress – that concern graduate students are worrisome. Those are, of course, either cutting stipends or reducing the number of new graduate students departments admit and fund.

    Obviously, the economic problems are real and universities cannot ignore them. Nonetheless, they certainly seem to affect public institutions the most. I agree with some of the above comments that cutting the number of incoming students is better than reducing current students' funding. Neither is good, but the current funding levels at most all institutions (with a few, but not many, exceptions) already place grad student recipients at or near the poverty level. And, of course, if one is serious about one's studies, there is certainly little time to try to earn extra income. The situation of the grad student can be seen as even more precarious once one realizes that the benefits received are often minimal (e.g., receiving dental insurance seems to be rare in most programs). So, one or two unfortunate and uncontrollable circumstances could easily put a student in financial distress and perhaps necessitate his/her leaving the field.

    One response that students should really consider, in my opinion, is unionizing. I am aware of some part-time (or adjunct) teachers' unions at some institutions, but (a) they seem rare, and (b) they are not specifically targeted to and may easily not include all grad students. However, that is better than nothing, and it has been my experience, being a student in 3 grad programs at 3 institutions, that those with unions got better pay and better benefits.

    Is it possible and/or potentially in our best interest for grad students to organize? If so, would this be best done in separate groups – institution by institution – or might it be successfully done on a larger scale? Faculty have unions and those unions are frequently rather successful in defending faculty interests. Who's defending the grad students' interests?

    All thoughts and suggestions will be appreciated.

    Reply
  6. David Hilbert

    In the University of Illinois system – Chicago, Champaign, Springfield – furloughs are being discussed but graduate students have been exempted. At UIC, our TA stipends are unchanged from last year but that is a consequence of the ongoing negotiations between the graduate student union and the university, not the budget crunch. We've had some pressure to keep the numbers down and the department budget has been cut which hurts extras like travel but I don't see any move to cut stipends (which would have to be negotiated with the union) in the offing.

    Reply
  7. Allen Hazen

    Maybe Jon Lawhead could ask someone senior at Columbia for details, but I ***think*** that at some stage late in his career Sydney Morgenbesser (bachelor of simple tastes but full professor) negotiated a deal with the Columbia administration by which he took a voluntary pay reduction, the savings going to help grad student stipends in philosophy.

    And, for curiosity, has anyone noticed news of any university presidents / vice chancellors announcing that times are hard and to start things off THEY are taking pay cuts?

    Reply
  8. Jacob Stegenga

    At University of California, San Diego, graduate student travel support has been eliminated, which amounts to either not attending conferences or taking roughly a 5% cut. Stipends, though, have thus far been maintained.

    Reply
  9. Mark Pickering

    At Boston University, graduate student stipends have not changed this year, from what I can tell. The only cut we have seen is in the printing allotment–from over 2000 pages to 500 at university printers (outside the department).

    Reply
  10. Grad Student Forced to Take a Paycut

    At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the furloughs apply to graduate student lecturers though not to TA's. Such furloughs apply even if graduate students are within their years of guaranteed funding. It should be noted that graduate student lecturers at the UW must pay tuition, as well (though this has always been the case).

    Reply

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