Impacts of the Current Graduate Assistant Fee
The immediate impact of the implementation of the $8000 fee was a
loss of approximately 160 Project Assistant positions after the first semester of its implementation in Spring 2007. The number of
Research Assistant positions lost is currently unknown.
The loss of 160 Project Assistant positions was significant. This
represents a decline of approximately 16% since the year before, and of 12.5%
relative to the 2000-2006 average. Moreover, since the costs of the fee
are being phased in over next two years, additional losses can be expected
each year. Significantly fewer Project Assistantships
are available to fund graduate students and as a result, more graduate
students are now competing for the same number of Teaching
Assistantships.
However, the loss of graduate student jobs has not been the only impact
of the fee. Reducing the number of Research and Project Assistants is
making UW faculty recruitment and retention suffer. Several professors from UW-Madison's top programs have left in recent years, partially due to the lack of funding available for graduate students.
Faculty rely on their graduate student employees for vital research and
teaching work. The continues loss of faculty to other schools will not only diminish
UW-Madison's academic quality, but will also deprive the university of
much-needed revenue from the grants these faculty obtain. The
$8000/year fee was designed to alleviate UW-Madison's budgetary
problems, but it can be expected instead to hurt the university's
teaching and research missions and to exacerbate its financial
situation.
Moreover, universities nation-wide are currently being ranked. Three of
the most significant factors used for ranking are the size of the
graduate population, the ratio of graduate students to faculty and the
amount of funding available to graduate students. The $8000 Graduate
Assistant fee will impact all three of these factors and have a serious
effect on UW-Madison academic ranking for years to come.
Once UW-Madison's reputation for academic excellence slips, it will
prove very hard to regain. Increased focus on addressing UW-Madison's
graduate funding crisis now can reverse the current trend.
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