Graduate students aired their concerns about possible fee increases at Monday night's Graduate and Professional Student Council meeting.
Faced with increasing debt, the Graduate School last semester proposed to increase the annual fees for graduate and master's degree students from $2,700 per academic year to $3,700 for 2004-2005. The school will present the plan to the Board of Trustees later this month.
At the meeting, GPSC President Elayne Heisler distributed to the GPSC representatives part of her report to the trustees on the issue. The report, printed on GPSC letterhead although not an adopted resolution, expressed some of the negative responses Heisler said she received regarding a possible increase.
Students said they considered the proposed fee increase highly burdensome, particularly for humanities students, who generally take more than six years to complete their doctorates.
"It is our concern that some of the rhetoric from the administration includes the implication that this is due to the laziness of some humanities students, rather than recognizing that our research genuinely takes time," said Andrew Sparling, a fifth-year history graduate student.
The Graduate School financially supports students through their first five or six years, depending on the department. Six years is often below the national norm, according to Heisler's report.
"[A]fter six years of intensive study, students are often at the point when they can least afford to self-pay their fees," she wrote in the report. "For most graduate students, the final years are filled with laboratory research (biology, chemistry, etc.), international travel (cultural anthropology, history, political science, etc.); the last years are when students are most invested in the dissertation process and, therefore, least in the position to advocate for their personal and family interests."
Three history graduate students attended the meeting to express their strong opposition to the increase. They said the increase would particularly hurt international students who face more restrictions in receiving loans.
They also suggested the Graduate School increase stipends to cover the increase in fees. Heisler said she had proposed this to Lewis Siegel, dean of the Graduate School, who had questioned where funds for the stipends would come from. Siegel has said the University currently ranks as the least expensive doctoral program among 12 comparable institutions and that the school's goal is to move to the middle through tuition and fee increases in the next three years.
Simon Krysl, a student in the literature program, asked how the fee costs alone compare to those at the other 11 institutions. "We need to have fees separated from [tuition cost comparisons between schools] if we are really concerned about how graduate students live," Krysl said. "It's fees that are really affecting people's lives."
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