February 22, 2008
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.
By Robin Wilson | Posted on Friday February 22, 2008 | PermalinkComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
One thing that should be added to the article is that this isn’t only about “aid”. Graduate students at the U of C are also organizing around teaching pay. At $1500 for a TA and $3500 for a stand-alone instructor per quarter, teaching wages at the University of Chicago are some of the lowest in the country. They have not increased a penny in 8 years, while the U of C has been raising advanced residency tuition fees at a rate that is inexplicably above inflation.
— Thomas Feb 22, 10:51 AM #
http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/article/9957
A culture of free inquiry
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.
— Toussaint Feb 22, 01:05 PM #
An image from the event:
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/8393/gradstudentsmarchfd7.jpg
— Andrew Feb 22, 04:27 PM #