Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania is embarking on a new battle -- improving health care options for graduate students.
Last Monday, the would-be graduate student union sent a letter to University President Amy Gutmann expressing the group's desire for better health care and child-care initiatives for graduate students who teach, do research or perform administrative duties.
The group is attempting to get fully paid health insurance premiums, as well as affordable health insurance for dependents and access to affordable child care, according to the press release sent to Gutmann.
However, some University officials remain skeptical about the feasibility of its plan.
Currently, not all graduate students have full health care provided by the University, and the cost of having a child in the Penn day-care system can be up to $1,200 per month, even after the faculty discount.
"The primary goal of a university of Penn's stature should not be to push students out with pieces of paper and part-time teaching positions, but to prepare them for lifelong careers and tenure-track jobs," GET-UP co-Chairman Joe Drury said in the press release. "We believe that if you are working for the University, you should have the right to paid health insurance."
GET-UP co-Chairwoman Sayumi Takahashi said that one particular graduate student had to spend 50 percent of his stipend on health insurance for his family.
"It is prohibitively expensive for graduate students who are not young and single to come to Penn," Takahashi added.
Since January, the group has held a series of round-table meetings, open to all graduate students, to discuss issues facing the graduate community.
Takahashi said it became clear that the issue of health care, especially for advanced dissertation students, was important.
"We tried to figure out what graduate students were concerned about," Takahashi said. "We are always trying to improve on the quality of life for graduate students."
One such meeting produced the letter to Gutmann, which was sent last week.
Interim Provost Peter Conn said that the University is currently paying full insurance premiums for over 1,900 students, amounting to over $4 million per year.
"We offer competitive stipends as well as paying full tuition and the general fee," Conn said. "This is because we have a commitment to attracting high-quality graduate students to Penn."
On the subject of insurance for dependents, Conn said that "I would be the first to acknowledge that premiums are heartbreakingly high" while noting that students without dependents already pay more to compensate for those with dependents.
Conn said that the University is currently working on improving the child-care program, but he added that it is an expensive and complicated process.
"No university in the United States has yet [solved] this problem," he said, "but we offer some programs, and we will be offering more."
Conn added that both the health-premium payment and the child care programs are comparable to those of Penn's peer institutions.
While GET-UP considers these issues to be paramount, graduate students in general seem to be mixed on the issue.
"From my aspect, the insurance program has been great," Chemistry graduate student Michael Kerrigan said.
However, Political Science graduate student Sarah Salwen does not fully agree.
"I think overall it is all right, but the deductible is really high," she said. "It's a large expense for people with relatively small incomes."
