To the Editor:
In response to graduate students' complaints about the lack of support for the cost of health care for families ("GET-UP seeks more health care," DP, 3/22/05), Interim Provost Peter Conn says that "no university in the United States has yet [solved] this problem."
While the rising cost of health care is indeed a national concern, other universities across the country have been much quicker to react and have been doing much more for their graduate students than Penn has. It should come as no surprise to Conn that some of the best packages for graduate parents are available at universities with strong graduate employee unions. At both the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan, graduate teachers have the option of choosing health plans paid for in full by their employer.
Meanwhile graduate students at the Penn are required to pay the full $6,135 a year -- nearly half the average stipend -- to insure their families.
As for child-care subsidies, public universities with graduate employee unions again dwarf Penn's provisions. At Wisconsin-Madison, the University sets aside a child-care fund of at least $148,500 over two years to be awarded to TAs according to their need. A fund of this kind would make an enormous difference for graduate parents at Penn, who are currently asked to pay as much as $1,200 a month.
While graduate parents will be upset that Conn's heart is "breaking" over the cost of their health insurance premiums, they would no doubt have greater sympathy for his pain if they had not had to wait so long for his administration to do something about it. Now that Penn is finally ready to act, we hope to see it setting a new standard, instead of falling well below as has so far been the case.
Joe Drury
The author is co-chairman of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania
