Editor’s note: The following is an open letter from the UCLA Graduate Students Association to University of California President Janet Napolitano.
Dear President Napolitano,
As the organization representing over 12,000 graduate and professional students studying here at UCLA, we, the Graduate Students Association of UCLA, are writing to highlight the crisis the University of California is facing with respect to the competitiveness of graduate student support.The long-term disinvestment in graduate student support – the amount we receive for our work as teaching assistants, research assistants and when we are on fellowship – relative to our peer institutions poses serious challenges to the ability of the UC to retain its current graduate students and threatens its ability to recruit the best graduate students in the future.
The challenges we face at the UC with respect to the competitiveness of our graduate student support are thoroughly detailed in the 2012 Report of the Taskforce on Competitiveness in Academic Graduate Student Support adopted by the Academic Council of the statewide UC Academic Senate.The report bases its findings on the most recent Graduate Student Support Survey that documents how annual net stipends offered to UC students lag behind those of our competitors an average of $2,697.Moreover, once this absolute amount is adjusted to include the higher cost of living at UC campuses vis-a-vis our major competitors, the annual net stipend gap increases to $4,978.
We call on the Office of the President to act on the recommendations outlined in the Academic Senate’s report to rectify the uncompetitive stipends at the UC. These actions include:
- Increasing the compensation graduate students receive in their work as teaching assistants, research assistants and fellows to a level competitive with peer institutions.
- Reducing the financial impact of non-residential supplemental tuition.
- Eliminating systemwide time limits on teaching assistant employment.
Additionally, we would like to supplement the report’s prescriptions with our own recommendation to properly incentivize graduate students who procure outside funding.Currently, many external fellowships offer an award for the researcher’s living expenses but do not include funds sufficient to pay the costs of tuition.Accepting the external funding generally means forgoing the teaching assistantship or research assistantship through which graduate students receive a tuition remission in addition to the stipend that covers their living expenses.Providing tuition relief for students who receive external funding would remedy the stress placed on graduate students and their departments as they strategize how to accept external funding in the face of an unmet tuition burden.
We look forward to hearing about the action the Office of the President will be taking to make sure that the UC continues its tradition as a worldwide leader in public education and research by investing in its graduate students.
On behalf of the entirety of the Graduate Students Association of UCLA,
Nicole Robinson
President of Graduate Students Association
Cody Trojan
Vice president of academic affairs of Graduate Students Association