Grad students seeking a pay raise

Penn graduate students are finding it difficult to ignore the 20 percent raise that their Yale counterparts will receive next year. The raise will increase the stipends of Yale's humanities and social sciences doctoral candidates from $11,500 to $13,700, with health care included. And Penn's Ph.D. candidates -- who make a minimum of $11,800 per year without health insurance -- are taking notice, and may soon ask the University for similar increases. At a meeting on Tuesday, the Graduate Student Associations Council created a committee to assess the cost of living in Philadelphia, in preparation for discussions with the University about the possibility of a pay increase. Yale Graduate School Dean Susan Hockman said in a letter to Yale students that the boost was driven by a "desire to remain competitive with other leading institutions that have substantially increased financial aid for doctoral study in the past two years." But negotiations at Yale have been somewhat hostile, according to GSAC President Eric Eisenstein. Eisenstein said he expects the issue at Penn to be handled much more amicably. "Unlike Yale, where the TAs were really sort of exploited, at Penn the relationship that we have with the administration is much better," Eisenstein said. Yale Ph.D. students are represented by the Graduate Employees and Students Organization. Although graduate students have historically been denied the right to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board granted this right to students at New York University. On November 1, 2000, the Board mandated that teaching and research assistants now be regarded as "statutory employees." At Yale, the Board's decision was an answer to GESO's longtime effort to gain a voice in the administration. In December 1995, the organization initiated a teaching assistant "grade strike." In the strike, teaching assistants essentially held undergraduates' grades hostage to gain negotiating power. However, there is little evidence of a move to unionize among Penn graduate students. "I don't think there is any real push at the moment for anyone forming a union," Eisenstein said. "Part of the push at Yale is that there's a lot more acrimonious relationships between the students and the administration on every issue. Penn graduate students have the best relationships [with the administration], and that translates to a lot of tangible results." Penn has already planned for an 8 percent increase in stipends for graduate teaching assistants, said Joe Farrell, director of graduate studies at the School of Arts and Sciences. The projected increase will raise pay to $12,700 for next year. The administration will also triple the number of multi-year recruiting packages, which means more security for students who enroll. "There is pressure from the cost of living, and there is also competition from the best graduate programs for the best students," Farrell said. "We want to create a situation that is a living for graduate students, and that will prevent them from having to take other [secondary] jobs." GESO estimated the living wage in New Haven to be $17,000. GSAC expects to find the cost of living to be rising in Philadelphia as well. "The cost of living in Philadelphia has gone up in the past couple years," Eisenstein said. "Philadelphia has become a more attractive place to live."