Colleagues,

I am writing about our TA stipends. Last Spring Yanir and Jim did a study on our TA stipends and found that our present stipends are several thousand dollars below the stipends of a comparison group of schools. This shortfall did not even take cost of living into account. This summer with the help of the Dean’s Office a comparison was done to the neighboring departments in the College.  This study showed that our stipends are presently $2K below the College mean exclusive of our Department.  We have slightly over one hundred TAs – the shortfall comes out to a little over $200K per year.   This is a payment of $200K each year.   A simple comparison is to an annuity – a 20 year annuity at 5% paying $200K per year has a present value of about $4M.  

The level of our TA stipends directly affects our ability to recruit graduate students, directly affects the daily lives of our TAs and impacts the need of our graduate students to teach in the summer, pulling them away from research.

I have been discussing this matter with Jayanth since the onset of my term. The Department and College have joined together to fund the increase of our stipends by $2K beginning next Fall. This of course would not have happened without very significant contributions from the College. Cooperation and partnerships make an enormous positive difference.

Of course the new rate carries over to RAs. Campus budgets are tight – we are being helped in a most important way by campus.

Best,