Only about 33 percent of Ohio University’s graduate students also work for the institution.
The amount the university sets aside for stipends to pay the graduate students fluctuates every year, but typically accounts for about 25 percent of OU’s budget for wages.
Graduate, teaching and research assistants, positions held by graduate students, are paid $12 to $33 an hour.
The maximum number of hours a graduate assistant can work a week is 20 hours.
"Students are often awarded them as part of the offer for graduate admission," Associate Dean for Graduate College David Koonce said in an email. "All of this happens within individual departments."
"The debate is whether or not graduate students as graduate assistants are a financial sinkhole for the university,” said Carl Edward Smith III, president of Graduate Student Senate. "There's an entire camp that argues back and forth saying yes, graduate students are a complete loss in revenue for the university."
Koonce said there are two ways you can deal with cutting stipends: either reduce the monetary amount the student receives or reduce the amount of awards by hiring less students.
Graduate students receiving a stipend are given at least $3,600 per semester; the average is about one and a half times that.
For some, such as Maggie Clark, who is getting her master’s degree in public administration, that stipend is the only reason they are able to attend OU.
"I've had to finance my schooling since undergrad ... Really the only viable way to receive another degree or pursue a master's degree is through the stipend and the scholarship I have," said Clark, interim-vice president of legislative affairs on Graduate Student Senate.
And others are in a similar situation.
"I would have no way of paying my rent, utilities, other living costs, food, groceries, medical bills and anything else if I did not have the small stipend I have," Smith said. “If I lost my graduate assistantship, I would have to find local work that in order to make enough money to pay all my basic utilities and living cost, I would have to work too many hours to also do well in my graduate program.”
Smith said as a result he would probably have to drop out of OU.
“Graduate students probably rank last in university community members who get their problems solved by OU administration,” Smith said.
An area which had some flexibility because people were not on long term contract were the short term contracts that graduate students were on, Koonce said.
“I think many of them are being paid what I would consider a fair wage,” Koonce said. “They teach classes, they run the labs, they do the things that are often highly skilled that being in rural Appalachia we don’t have a population we can draw upon to support that."
Every college department has its own local budgets that manage the stipends for the graduate students, Koonce said.
Cutting graduate student stipend funding is an opportunity lost for students, Koonce said.
“Graduate students have a degree in hand, usually very hirable, and so there’s an opportunity cost,” he said. “They are forgoing a real salary and a real job in many cases to come to graduate school to better themselves, better their employment opportunities, better their education and this has to make economic sense for them.”
Smith, who thinks the stipends are “a necessary condition” for the advancement of graduate students, would like to see the amount raised.
"A lot of problems at OU get solved and the administration does solve student problems, but I would say they disproportionately solve administrative, faculty and staff problems before solving student problems,” Smith said.
Miami University and Kent State University also view stipends as a priority.
"For full time graduate students ... I would probably say that we have two thirds of our students on some kind of support,” said Jim Oris, interim dean of the graduate school at Miami.
At Kent State they are determined by the different departments, said Cheryl Laubacher, director of Graduate Student Admissions at Kent State.
"Of course it's a priority, we know that in order to be competitive ... offering stipends is going to make or break the difference for students," Laubacher said. "It's always a high priority for the individual departments. Each of them handle them differently. It really depends on what their department priorities are."
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