U. adds health insurance to graduate aid

In a major change to graduate financial aid policy, the University announced yesterday it will fund health insurance for graduate students receiving full financial support. Until this change, graduate students paid for health insurance out of their stipends -- cash provided by the University for living expenses. Penn will provide five years of coverage under the Penn Insurance Plan. The University estimates that this will cost about $1,400 per student. The cost of the insurance will be split between the budget of the central administration and the budget of the individual graduate schools. According to University President Judith Rodin, the decision has come out of years of discussions about how to better assist graduate students. "We've been talking for the last couple of years about quality of life improvements and financial aid improvements for graduate students," Rodin said. And Deputy Provost Peter Conn said the plan was a response, at least in part, to the plans offered by Penn's peer institutions. "In my position as deputy provost, it's my obligation to review financial aid packages offered by our peer institutions," Conn said. "More and more of them were including the health premium." But Rodin said that Penn has always remained competitive against similar schools in attracting graduate students. "We've never been at a competitive disadvantage," Rodin said. "We're holding steady at tens of millions of dollars a year [devoted to graduate financial aid]," she said. Graduate financial aid now consists of three main components -- remission of tuition, or the amount of the tuition that the student does not have to pay, a living stipend and the new health premium. Six of Penn's nine graduate programs will be providing the new package -- the School of Arts and Sciences, the Nursing Graduate Program, the Graduate School of Fine Arts, the School of Social Work, the Graduate School of Education and the Wharton Graduate School. The Biomedical Graduate Group already offers such a plan. The Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Engineering and Applied Science provide stipends that have been deemed large enough to pay for insurance. Kyle Farley, chairman of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, said that graduate students have been concerned about paying for health insurance. However, he added that the issue was far more important for graduate students than professional students. "You kind of have to distinguish between the grad students that are on stipends and the professional students that pay their own way," he said. "There is no universal in this." The new plan comes after several of Penn's peer institutions -- most notably Harvard and Princeton -- have made significant changes in their undergraduate financial aid structure. In January, Princeton, after significantly increasing its endowment over Fiscal Year 2000, announced that it would end all loan requirements for undergraduate financial aid. And just last month, Harvard decided to significantly increase its undergraduate aid packages. Penn has repeatedly said that it just doesn't have the financial capabilities to imitate these decisions. However, Rodin maintained that there is no compromise involved in increasing the scope of its graduate aid. "There's no trade-off at all between undergraduate and graduate students here," Rodin said. Rodin expressed confidence that graduate students would be pleased with the changes. "This was for them a very important issue," she said. "I hope they're delighted." School of Arts and Sciences Dean Samuel Preston also demonstrated enthusiasm for the new packages. "We're very pleased that we're finding the resources to do this," he said.