Graduate Workers Party President claims that current compensation puts many students at poverty line.
After Graduate Student Senate tabled a resolution for a presidential committee boycott and protested the university’s general fee in front of Peden Stadium last month, graduate students are seeking to increase the compensation graduate assistants receive.
One such graduate student is Shehzad Ahmed, a second-year Ph.D. student studying mathematics and chair of the Graduate Workers Party.
“At Ohio University, we’re assured by the university that our primary role is that of a student,” Ahmed said in an email. “With that in mind, it would make sense to expect that the stipend offered should amount to something like a living wage.”
Graduate assistance receive compensation through stipends and tuition waivers. Ahmed, like other Graduate Workers Party members, wants to increase compensation to that of a living wage, one that is high enough to maintain the average standard of living.
The university typically grants stipends to full-time student employees — those who work 15 to 20 hours per week — in order to offset costs such housing, food and transportation.
For the 2015 Fall Semester, the average stipend for full-time graduate assistants at OU is $6,271, according to a recent op-ed by Joseph Shields, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate College. In addition to stipends, some teaching, research and graduate assistants are awarded tuition waivers, which are approximately $4,094 for in-state students and $8,090 for out-of-state students per semester.
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Graduate assistants at Kent State University, in comparison, are awarded a stipend of $11,515 per year, in addition to tuition waivers of varying amounts; at Miami University, the total amounts to $12,931 for the year.
Shields said in the op-ed by supplying graduate workers with both tuition waivers and stipends, a typical student working 20 hours per week will receive an “effective compensation” of $33.65 per hour each semester.
Ahmed, however, remains unconvinced the administration is doing all it can to minimize expenses for graduate students.
Ahmed said in an email his teacher’s assistant contract says he is unable to work more than an additional five hours per week outside of his university employment, making his role as a TA his primary source of income.
Coupled with a general fee of $500 per semester and health care costs adding up to about $800 per semester, Ahmed said in an email the value of the stipend is effectively reduced to an average of $4,700.
“The poverty wage in Athens is about $11,500 per year,” Ahmed said in an email. “That means that over half of the graduate workers here are, effectively, not making enough money to make ends meet.”
In the coming weeks, members of the Graduate Student Senate will be meeting again to discuss potential measures that can be taken to assist graduate student workers.
“I think they’re doing a good job in voicing up,” Yong Wang, a professor of strategic marketing said of graduate student activists. “I can understand that graduate students need to have a decent living. You need to give them money for them to at least have a decent living.”
Liudmila Pestun, vice president of finance and administration of Graduate Student Senate, said in an email that the body is discussing possible solutions.
“As of now we are talking about improving benefit package, step by step, beginning with addressing general fee issue and increasing stipend,” Pestun said in an email. “We’ve proposed several solutions for general fee question — all of them were rejected by the President without proper justification. We are ready to discuss possible solutions but university administration doesn’t seem to be.”
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