IU looking at graduate dental plan

Health benefits for graduate student employees could change next year, following IU President Adam Herbert's October directive to consider adding dental insurance to the current program.\nWhile a decision won't be made until spring, graduate students are currently organizing efforts to promote awareness on the issue, which will be reviewed by the Student Academic Appointee Health Insurance Committee and passed to IU-Bloomington Interim Chancellor Ken Gros Louis for the final decision. \nCurrently, IU and Penn State University are the only two schools in the Big Ten that do not offer dental insurance to graduate student employees. \nEach year, the SAA Health Insurance Committee meets to review health insurance benefits that are offered to graduate students.\nNeil Theobald, head of the committee and vice chancellor for budget and administration, said last year the University's basic health care package increased by $422,000. Instead of changing coverage, Theobald said the University chose to pay for the increases in full and also provided salary increases to graduate students, totaling $1 million overall. \nHe said the committee would receive quotes from insurance providers in the spring to \ndetermine the cost of dental insurance, but said it was premature to predict any type of decision at this point. \n"We have to set priorities just like any budget we've got," he said. "You can either raise the revenue somewhere or cut expenses somewhere else."\nRepresentatives from graduate student organizations, though, say they would not be willing to take cuts to current health benefit plans to receive dental insurance. But they might be willing to accept smaller salary increases.\nEric Zeemering, moderator of the Graduate Professional Student Organization, points to results from an online survey his organization administered in May as evidence that graduate students would mostly be willing to give up a small percentage raise if it meant they would receive dental insurance. \nAccording to the survey, 56.1 percent of people said they would give up a $360 raise, or a 3-percent increase, to receive dental coverage. Seventy-six percent of respondents said they would prefer dental insurance instead of a raise of $240, or a 2-percent increase over the current average salary of $12,000 per year. Zeemering said 2,460 (out of about 8,200 graduate students) took part in the survey, \n"From the survey the GPSO conducted with the graduate school it seems pretty clear that dental insurance is the highest priority," he said. \nAnother graduate group, the Graduate Employee Organization, sent a petition to Herbert in September with 1,000 signatures from current faculty members, staff, graduate and undergraduate students advocating dental insurance for graduate students. \nUrsula McTaggart, co-coordinator on the steering committee for GEO, said her organization is pleased with the administration's response to the petition, which granted GEO a seat on the health benefits committee. But, she said, the University could still do more to help graduate students.\nShe specifically pointed to benefits in place at other schools, such as the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin, where graduate students have extensive benefits coverage, including dental insurance, "good grievance procedures" and child-care stipends. She said the GEO is currently considering forming a union as a way to strengthen its efforts to develop a collective bargaining agreement that could bring more changes.\n"We have seen around the country that the only way these changes can be made is when a collective bargaining union comes in and demands that changes be made," she said, also noting the inherent problems in the university system where graduate students are overworked and underpaid. "It's graduate students all around the country trying to deal with this larger structural problem of graduate student exploitation." \nFor his part, Gros Louis said he would have to see the committee's decisions before he could make a decision himself because of the varying degrees of dental insurance coverage. A plan could entail the University paying the full amount, the students paying the full amount, or a split, although he acknowledged that "the money is very tight."\nMcTaggart said she would like to see a plan where graduate students get free or nearly free dental examinations twice each year, something she said is a fairly standard practice at other universities. Zeemering said survey results show that graduate students are "clearly willing to pay a little bit in addition to the University in order to obtain that benefit."\nIf plans in the future don't provide dental insurance, graduate students say IU would be less attractive for the most qualified graduate students.\nWith less capable graduate students, Zeemering said the research capacity of the University could suffer, as well as the education given to undergraduates. Yet he took caution in sounding critical of the University.\n"I think the University administration is making a diligent effort to make dental insurance a reality," he said. "The challenge really is finding the money"