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University of Iowa grad student workers demand end to their student fees
‘Graduate student workers should not have to pay to work’
Vanessa Miller
Mar. 27, 2024 9:53 am, Updated: Mar. 27, 2024 3:35 pm
IOWA CITY — After earlier this month delivering a petition signed by more than 1,000 to University of Iowa President Barbara Wilson’s office demanding an end to graduate student worker fees, the student union behind the petition recently received a UI response denying the demands — citing “financial and budgetary constraints.”
“Because mandatory student fees are assessed based on an enrollee’s student status, they are not eligible for waiver,” according to the university’s March 20 reply to the UI chapter of Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, or COGS.
Referencing tuition and fee scholarships the UI already offers graduate student workers who have quarter-time or greater jobs on campus — shaving off half their mandatory fees and covering “most or all” their tuition — the university “respectfully declines your request to adjust its mandatory fee scholarship.”
“Providing a 50-percent mandatory student fee scholarship acknowledges the significant contributions of graduate assistants to our academic and research missions, while recognizing the financial and budgetary constraints of the employing colleges,” according to the letter, explaining the specific colleges that employ the graduate assistants pay for the fee scholarships.
“These fees support a variety of services and programs available to all students, including, but not limited to, library access, athletic facilities, and student health services.”
‘This is unacceptable’
Still, COGS is crying foul on the fees — which have continued to swell since the union negotiated the half-off scholarship years ago. Union members held a news conference saying as much Wednesday on the UI Pentacrest — at the same time as a university “One Day for Iowa” fundraising event.
“The University of Iowa is trying to fool us,” doctoral student Cary Stough said during the COGS event, attended by about 50 workers from at least 18 UI departments.
“They refuse to acknowledge that high fees and low pay is causing all this financial burden in the first place,” he said. “The arsonists are pretending to be the firefighters.”
According to the petition, still being circulated, graduate teaching assistants and research assistants “have footed the bill for basic services that the University of Iowa should provide to the employees who make this university work.”
Total mandatory fees assessed to UI students for things like mental health services, technology, student activities and Iowa Memorial Union upgrades, for example, increased in the current academic year from $1,642 to $1,948 — or nearly 19 percent. Most individual colleges, additionally, upped their separate fees about 5 percent — like a UI College of Business bump from $734 to $772.
Those fees tack onto base tuition rates, which rose 3.5 percent this year to $9,016 for UI resident undergraduates and to $11,256 for UI resident grad students.
Given variations at the graduate-worker level and the 50-percent scholarship, a graduate employee taking at least nine semester credit hours pays $687.50 in fees this year, with international and first-year grad students paying more.
“These fees amount to thousands of dollars throughout a graduate school education, keeping workers in poverty and debt,” according to the petition.
COGS reported the university’s base wage for graduate workers is 25 percent less than the cost of living for a single adult in Johnson County, and UI grad workers make “some of the lowest salaries compared to the rest of the Big Ten.”
‘We are highly competitive’
In response to questions from The Gazette, UI officials said the fees are tied to the graduate students’ role as students, not employees. And, on top of the half-off-fees scholarship most receive, the graduate workers’ full tuition coverage amounts to at least $11,256 “annually for a full-time, in-state student.”
Plus, the UI said, grad assistants are paid a minimum of $21,329 for a nine-month, part-time appointment. That, they said, is $31.74 an hour — or $66,019 a year.
“Data collected by the Big Ten Academic Alliance and other sources consistently indicate our graduate assistant stipends are close to the middle of the pack,” UI officials said. “When cost of living measures are factored in, we are highly competitive with other Big Ten institutions in the Midwest.”
COGS slammed the UI assertion that grad worker wages amount to an annual salary of $66,019 if they worked full time — calling it “disingenuous and a bad-faith response” because they can’t work full time while in graduate school.
“No one is paid $66,019,” UI doctoral student and COGS spokesperson Hannah Zadeh said, adding, “Graduate workers are almost always barred from taking paid positions over 20 hours per week.”
Of COGS’ 1,960 workers in its bargaining unit last year, eight had appointments over half time, she said. “The point is that graduate students are expected to live on this salary while in graduate school, and this is nearly impossible for anyone who does not have existing wealth to draw on or who is supporting one or more dependents,” she said.
At Wednesday’s event, COGS accused the university of having resources to finance the “basic maintenance and operations of the campus without charging graduate workers” — asserting it has a hefty endowment.
UI officials, however, said 99 percent of its $1.46 billion endowment is restricted — meaning the money can be used only for specific things.
Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.
Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com