UT grad students rally for higher pay, tuition support
Hundreds of University of Texas graduate students rallied Wednesday to call on administrators to raise stipends and tuition waivers so that they can afford to live in Austin.
Hoisting signs that read “UT runs on grad student labor” and “We teach your classes, you better pay our (expletive),” the students spoke about living in cheap, roach-infested apartments, working outside jobs on top of their duties as teaching assistants and going without health insurance at times.
Research by a group of students dubbed Underpaid at UT shows that 65% of graduate students receive stipends of less than $18,000 a year, which is $7,000 below the cost of living calculated by the university. And although most top-tier research universities around the nation waive tuition entirely for graduate students with teaching or research appointments, UT waives only a portion, resulting in an average shortfall of more than $1,000 per student each semester. Some of UT’s roughly 200 academic departments cover that gap, but many students have to pay all or part of the bill.
“I am very empathetic to the position of the students,” said Mark J.T. Smith, dean of the graduate school and senior vice provost for academic affairs. “We understand the stresses involved. We recognize that this is an issue that does need to be fixed.”
Read more: https://www.statesman.com/news/20190501/ut-grad-students-rally-for-higher-pay-tuition-support
