IU to review grad student wages

The Graduate and Professional Student Organization has been working since last summer to improve graduate students’ salaries and course-change penalties, and its efforts now appear to have paid off.

The Bloomington Faculty Council passed the organization’s resolution to create a committee to examine the salaries of student academic appointees and another resolution about drop/add fees specific to graduate students.

Organization President Nick Clark said the initiative to study student academic appointees’ pay was one of the first the group took on when he was first elected in November 2007.

“We wanted to promote the issue of salaries,” Clark said. “As long as I’ve been here, it’s something graduate students complain about quite often.”

To research the current state of graduate students, Clark said the organization commissioned a report to compare student academic appointees’ salaries with other salaries on campus and graduate students’ salaries at other institutions.

From the results of the report, the organization concluded it should survey IU graduate students.

About 10 percent of the graduate student population – 803 students – responded to the survey, according to its findings. All major schools were represented.

The survey reported the average monthly salary of graduate students is $957 after taxes and that 46 percent of students work a second job. About 44 percent said their second job impeded their research progress.

When graduate students were asked what the highest priority to be addressed was, 28.3 percent – the most common response – mentioned the availability of financial aid, and 26.3 percent cited stipends for student academic appointees.

Clark said the organization decided to “seek an institutional solution” to the problem, which led to the BFC committee. The committee will meet every other year to look at stipends for student academic appointees.

“I think it’s an important step forward,” Clark said. “I don’t necessarily see salaries for any grad student rising because of all of this in the near future, but what it does do is create a mechanism by which grad students can make the case for getting paid more in the future.”

Organization Vice President Amanda Meglemre said examining stipends not only helps graduate students, but also the whole University.

“Stipends help us recruit better graduate students, which
improves research opportunities, which improves teaching for undergraduate students,”
Meglemre said. “It benefits everyone.”

Brian Horne, a professor in the Jacobs School of Music and chair of Student Academic Appointee Affairs Committee in the BFC, said his committee was unanimously in support of the resolution.

“The resolution we passed is self-perpetuating,” Horne said.

Clark said the salaries will not improve immediately.

“The nice thing about this committee is that it will continue to meet every other year into the future, so hopefully when times are better, there will be the case for grad students to say the minimum threshold should be higher,” Clark said. “We shouldn’t
be expected to live below poverty to do this.”

The BFC also passed a resolution regarding graduate student drop/add fees at its meeting April 21.

Clark said there are currently two sets of fees assessed for graduate students.

The first is a standard administrative fee assessed for all students who make a course change.

The second is a refund schedule because, according to federal law, the University has to give a type of refund if a student drops a course.

Clark said if a graduate student drops a course and adds another after the first week of classes, he or she will only be refunded 75 percent of their paid tuition.

“An out-of-state grad student that’s changing a four-hour course is looking at a fee of around $800,” Clark said.

The organization found the policy harsh and unfair because it does not apply to undergraduates, law students and business students.

The resolution still requires approval from the Office of the Registrar.

“It would have to go further up the chain, but we would endorse it to go further up the chain,” Horne said April 21 at the meeting.

Meglemre said she was glad the the organization’s resolution passed because of the time her organization has spent on it.

“We’re obviously very happy to see that pass,” Meglemre said. “It’s something we’ve been working on for almost this entire academic year.”