Forum Post
It seems that Graduate Programs will likely have to accommodate the newly negotiated salary increases for Graduate/Teaching/Research Assistants within the existing resources. In my department, we are currently not permitted to offer scholarships to graduate applicants. The effect will be detrimental to our graduate programs as our reputation and introductory graduate class offerings will be negatively impacted. The negative effect will indeed propagate to the whole graduate program and to the undergraduate classes due to the substantial loss of teaching assistants. At the very least, one would expect that the university develops a plan to mitigate the problem by spreading its effect over a period of a few years. ~Michael Tsatsomeros, Mathematics and Statistics Faculty
Response
The Faculty Senate Executive Officers have been notified of this forum post and will respond back once more information becomes available.
Comments
Dear Professor Tsatsomeros, Thank you for voicing this concern. I assume that you mean that your department is not offering state funds to incoming graduate students. Many scholarships are funded through philanthropic gifts, so those should still be available. But to the bigger question about state availability of funding, I am pasting below an excerpt of a memo that Leslie Brunelli, Daryll DeWald and I sent to Deans, Chancellors, and Vice Presidents last week. I hope this is helpful:
“As budget development for FY25 begins, we are assessing the impact of the academic student employee (ASE) bargaining contract, persistent enrollment declines, FAFSA delays, inflationary demands, compliance requirements and other variables on our core budget. Following years of across-the-board reductions, we are no longer able to make budget decisions without considering the strategic impact of further painful cuts. Our funding must be used to support the academic and research mission of the University and consider the long-term financial sustainability of the OneWSU System. Following the budget hearings this spring and once we have clarity on both the state supplemental budget (including potential ASE funding) and tuition forecasting, we will be able ot provide definitive unit budgets for the next fiscal year. Until then, you’ve al been asked to project planning parameters for a 1%, 3%, and 5% budget reduction from current budget levels. All units are encouraged to plan conservatively by assuming a 5% budget reduction. We also encourage you to be conservative in accepting new graduate students with offers of funding, but we also want to ensure that we don’t undermine our teaching capacity, since that will in turn affect enrollment.”
The issue is one of timing. (I am speaking especially here for our STEM departments, although it may very well be true for others.) The best graduate applicants are currently considering offers that have already been made to them from around the country. By the time budget hearings are held and we decide what cuts to make where, the opportunity to attract these students, even if it is determined that funds are available, will be long gone. Moreover, the conservative number of new TAs that we are currently being permitted to offer for new students in the fall is far below what will be required to staff our large-lecture laboratory courses, which bring in a significant amount of tuition money.
Brian and Michael have pointed to the University’s simple existential problem that will play out in STEM and other departments that both support the University’s mission and resource it through tuition revenue. Reducing instructional budgets and the number of graduate student TAs will lead to dramatically reduced course offerings and consequently reduced enrollment and tuition. With the current budget projections, this tuition loss from these STEM courses alone is anticipated to be in the millions of dollars this coming year.