The division between graduate students at the University of Kansas is growing in tandem with budget cuts, leaving some grad students struggling to make ends meet. 

In graduate student education, there are three different types of positions grad students can fill. There is the most common type of graduate student, the Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) that teaches classes for the university. Next is the Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) which assists full-time faculty in their research endeavors. Finally, there are Graduate Assistants (GA’s), who work to help the members of their department in whatever ways they may need. But just because there are three types of grad students don’t necessarily mean that all grad students are equal. 

GTA’s at KU are part of a union. The AFT-Kansas Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition advocates for GTA’s on a larger scale. The union has successfully negotiated higher pay and fewer required fees for their members. However, those benefits don’t extend to those who aren’t GTA’s. While GRA’s usually receive some of the same benefits from the department that they work with, GA’s do not. 

“A GTA gets paid about 22.50 for a 20-hour work week. A GA makes, on average, 12.50 to, maybe, 15 dollars an hour. That means that there is about a 10-dollar inequity pay difference per hour. That’s a difference of about 200 dollars a week, which is about a difference of 800 dollars a month,” said Hollie Hall, the Graduate Student Senate Vice President. “That adds up really quickly.”

One influencing factor toward the low pay rates is the amount of money a university has. 

According to the Center on Budget and Priority Policies, tuition rates have steadily risen since the 2008 recession. As the government increasingly cut off funding from universities, students had to supplement the lack of money in their tuition payments. On average nationwide, funding for students was cut by 13%, while the average national published tuition has increased by 37%. Additionally, between 2008-2018, Kansas was ranked 18th worst in the decrease of student funding, with a 22.5% loss per student. 

That means less money for student resources, as compromises have to be made and specific programs and priorities take center stage. Barbara Bichelmeyer, the Provost at KU addressed the implications of this in a recent University Senate Meeting on Feb 3 when discussing the 42-degree programs at KU that were under examination for discontinuation. 

“The programs that were brought forward for discontinues were not in a place where, as they currently exist, it makes sense to keep them in their current structure,” she said. “We need to move forward and discontinue those.”

As programs get cut or downsizes, another issue grad students face is brought to light. Unlike full-time faculty, they have no job security and no guarantee that their field of study will even be available to pursue. This is an even bigger concern when considering that higher education programs have requirements on how their graduate students aid the university. Some programs require their students to be a GTA, but for the other students, they have to figure out which role they can fill. This puts them in compromising positions as not all graduate students want to teach. For those in STEM, research opportunities are vast, but they don’t always get the funding that would ensure the security most students are looking for. And for those left, they become GA’s, a position where the inequalities in graduate student programs become even more apparent. 

For example, Hall was a GA in the humanities department at KU, and when the news was announced that the department would be shutting down, she and about 8 other graduate students were left with two options: change their department or quit their degree. 

“It’s really complex at KU,” Hall said.

The problems extend past job security too. GTA’s are not required to pay tuition to the university, but some GRA’s and all GA’s are. On top of that, the university offers health care for an additional cost. While the service is optional for a domestic student, as an international student, it’s required. That fee, plus tuition payments and regular school books and materials payments mean that the price of college goes up depending on what grad student role you fill. For international students, it’s even higher when you consider that they aren’t able to make money off of campus.

“While the idea of having two full-time jobs isn’t ideal, some students do choose to do that. But as an International student- I can’t, like I can’t go work for Doordash or something, I’m not allowed.” Hall said. “It’s hard to retain students when they’re not paid enough to live.”

Adding to the already extensive list of challenges is the COVID pandemic. Inside Higher Education recently analyzed the 2020 Annual State Higher Education Report conducted by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. The research showed that while enrollments increased after the pandemic hit, so did tuition rates, by at least 3%. 

The good news?

“The Provost [at KU] is well aware of these concerns, and the university is working toward an updated financial plan by the start of 2023,” Hall said. She also talked about how glad she is that the administration is paying more attention to the challenges graduate students face. On the other hand, she respects how much of a challenge the situation is because of the lack of money at the university. 

“Right now KU has a 30 million dollar deficit,” she said. In order to fix the issues, “There has to be a way as well as a will.”

As the Graduate Student Senate Vice President, Hall has a unique perspective on graduate student challenges. In her eyes, graduate students often get overlooked or mistaken for GTA’s despite the huge variety of roles they fill for the university. 

“It does only affect a small proportion of students, but those students still matter,” Hall said.