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

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.