A healthy choice

"You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.” \nIt’s not often one can liken the work of the Graduate and Professional Student Organization to the lyrics of the Rolling Stones. So we hope you forgive our taking the opportunity.\nYou see, we’re pretty excited about a change that will not only make life easier for IU’s graduate students, but should also help the University recruit top-quality instructors in the future. And it’s always cool to see a student organization actually get something out of the administration (besides a committee to investigate the possible formation of future committees).\nAs reported Monday, the University is planning to open a new health clinic akin to the IU Health Center that will provide “medical and dental care for graduate students, employees and their families.”\nThis clinic has been a long time coming. The recent push for dental insurance began in 2005 with public demonstrations by the Graduate Employees Organization, an activist group that seeks to unionize grad students at IU, and was taken up soon after by the GPSO, grad students’ official representative body with the University. \nUntil the announcement of this clinic’s creation, IU remained the only Big Ten school not to provide its graduate employees with dental insurance.\nMeanwhile, pressure has been mounting to make graduates’ health insurance more affordable ever since last year when the Chickering Group, IU’s insurer, raised their premiums 58 percent. Negotiations between IU, the GPSO and Chickering yielded a compromise result whereby premiums for graduate academic appointees were covered by the University, but grad students faced reduced benefits and high costs for insuring spouses and children. As insuring a spouse, for example, would cost $3,270 out of a $9,000 to $12,000 stipend – and the alternative was turning to state welfare programs – many graduate employees were nonplussed by this result (to put it mildly). We don’t have any word yet on what this clinic will mean in terms of savings, but it’s a promising first step.\nMaking IU more competitive in the search for graduate-student candidates should benefit the entire University community. With 38,247 students (29,828 undergraduate and 7,481 graduate), 1,323 faculty members with terminal (doctorate or professional) degrees, and an alleged student-faculty ratio of 18 to 1, it’s not hard to see how important graduate students are in filling the ranks of instructors at IUB. If only terminal-degree faculty taught courses, the student-faculty ratio would be more like 29 to 1. Imagine what those 100-level courses would be like. Furthermore, president-elect Michael McRobbie has repeatedly noted that an estimated one-third of all research is done by graduate students and that IU will soon need to replace retiring baby-boomer faculty.\nKudos to President Adam Herbert, the GPSO, the GEO and everyone else involved in this substantial investment in IU’s future.