UB Council briefed on graduate stipends

The Buffalo Room was packed with graduate students and supporters of the Living Stipend Movement on Monday as the UB Council examined the issue of PhD student stipends at its last meeting of the fall semester.

Provost Charles F. Zukoski introduced several presentations designed to offer information on the issue by noting that there’s global competition for the best graduate students. And UB, like other universities around the world, offers merit-based tuition scholarships, stipends and fellowships to attract PhD students to the university to serve as graduate assistants, teaching assistants and research assistants, he said.

This support is intended to “offset the expense of pursuing a doctoral degree, but not fully cover the cost of attendance,” he said.

Zukoski said UB has a process for continually assessing and improving academic programs, including PhD programs, in which faculty, department chairs and deans review graduate stipends and fellowships to ensure their programs are competitive.

“While PhD education is important, we must balance many competing priorities with the increasingly limited funds available to us,” he said. “Faculty and deans are empowered to manage their graduate programs and recruitment packages, and balance support for their many priorities.”

Craig Abbey, director of institutional analysis, explained that most PhD students at UB receive full tuition scholarships, an amount that totaled $9.8 million in fiscal year 2017-18. That $9.8 million was funded from UB tuition revenue, he said, adding that the university spent an additional $6.2 million that year on graduate tuition and scholarships, which came out of the academic units’ budgets.

Abbey echoed Zukoski in noting that stipends for PhD assistantships are designed to offset the cost of living. The minimum amount for stipends at the university is set by the contract negotiated between the Graduate Student Employees Union (GSEU) and the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations, he said, pointing out that all stipends at UB exceed the minimum amount set in the GSEU contract — $9,959, which works out to $12.45 an hour for a 20-hour week.

Abbey cited other sources of support available for PhD students, including doctoral recruitment and retention funds via GSEU; fellowships, such as Presidential, Schomburg and CAS Dean’s, through the university, and individual schools and departments; funding for research and conferences, such as the Mark Diamond Research Fund and the Gender Institute Dissertation Fellowship; and external funding from private foundations and government sources.

In comparison to other Association of American University (AAU) public institutions, UB falls in the middle of the pack, with an average stipend of $18,006, Abbey said, citing figures from the Association of American Universities Data Exchange. Stipends at AAU publics range from about $15,500 to $20,500, he said, with an average of $18,004.

Stipends vary according to discipline, Abbey explained. UB ranks near the top in chemistry, with an average stipend of $24,249, and in the 75th percentile in electrical engineering, with an average stipend of $19,393. However, in English, UB lags closer to the bottom among AAU publics, with an average stipend of $15,808, he said, although the department this fall implemented a plan to increase stipends by $3,000.

He stressed that decisions at UB regarding stipend amounts are made by the faculty and the deans.

Overall, UB invested $39.5 million in support for PhD students in 2017-18, Abbey said. Of that, $16 million was in scholarship support and $23.5 million in stipend support.  

He noted that most PhD students receive full tuition scholarships paid by UB, and some departments choose to cover student fees. However, not all PhD students receive stipends or scholarships. In 2017-18, 61 percent of PhD students received both scholarships and stipends, while 26 percent received neither scholarship nor stipend. Ten percent received a scholarship without a stipend, and 3 percent received a stipend without a scholarship.

Following Abbey’s presentation, Liesl Folks, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Robin Schulze, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), spoke about the graduate stipend situations in their respective units.

Folks said the minimum PhD stipend set by SEAS for 2017-18 was $18,200, and that departments within the school may set their own stipend levels above the minimum “because it’s a highly competitive market.”

Moveover, students may only receive this support for three semesters, she said. Faculty advisers must secure support from external sources to fund the stipends for the remainder of students’ PhD programs, and students are encouraged to secure paid internships or other paid work — either on campus or off campus — to cover other financial needs, she explained.

“We take very seriously reviewing the support that they have as they are admitted to the program to make sure there is a plan to make sure the students are supported,” Folks said.

Schulze said there’s no minimum stipend in CAS beyond GSEU’s mandatory minimum stipend of $9,959, with stipend levels varying widely across the college.

Departments are assigned graduate support budgets and each department is free, within their overall budgets, to use funds however they see fit to support graduate students, she said.

Several departments shrunk the size of their graduate cohorts and raised stipend levels, “and that’s absolutely appropriate given the shape of the national PhD market,” she said.

Other departments supplement their graduate support budgets through external grant funding, as well as recycling money obtained through indirect cost recovery, expanding master’s programs and developing continuing education projects, she added.

Schulze noted that CAS is facing a number of “financial pressures,” among them a $12-million deficit as a result of union-mandated pay increases.

“I would love to be able to raise those stipend budgets for each department, but honestly right now we’re simply trying to make it through the cycle of pay increases and stabilize the finances in the college.”

In his report at the beginning of the meeting, Michael Brown, student representative to the council, addressed the issue of stipends, saying that he felt it was the council’s “duty to advocate for fair compensation (for PhD students) that meets the rising cost of living.”

He said he would bring a resolution to the council’s next meeting in March formally asking the state legislature for more money in the 2019 budget to fund graduate students.

After the presentations by Abbey, Folks and Schulze, Brown repeated his belief that it was within the council’s power to advocate for more support for student stipends.

Although UB may be competitive with other universities regarding stipends, “the issue is that the stipends are not paying enough for students to pay rent, to buy groceries and pay for child care,” he said.

Council member June Williams Hoeflich disagreed, saying the council’s role is not to manage financial operations of the university. “I think our role is really an advisory role to the president and the senior officers,” she said. “I don’t think it’s our domain as a council.”