TA & TF Living Wage
What are TFs TAs and RAs and why should I care?
TFs (teaching fellows) are graduate students who teach their own undergraduate classes. TAs are teaching assistants, and RAs (not to be confused with Resident Advisors) are Research Assistants. All of them were underpaid. There are only around 100-200 of them, so it would not cost much to raise their salaries. USS and GFSS have been working on this problem for several years, and in March 2009 rises were announced.
Fair wages for grad students
The President and Provost announced 3/23/09 that grad TA/TF/RA salaries would rise. Our TAs/TFs/RAs were paid in the bottom 10% of salaries nationally. Now TF salaries (Teaching Fellows–students who teach) will rise from $3000 to $5000 per course, and TA (teaching assistant) salaries will rise to $25 per hour. RA (Research, not Resident Assistant) rises aren’t yet set. GFSS Speaker Jonathan Cogliano, praising the TF rise, said the TA rise was vague and sought clarificaton about RA salary raises. GFSS reps will meet administrators in April 2009 to discuss.
Joint Resolution of USS & GFSS on Graduate Compensation
Resolved April 2008: The Graduate Faculty Student Senate, with support from all departments of NSSR and the University Student Senate, demand better wages for Research Assistants, Teaching Assistants, and Teaching Fellows at The New School.
The New School employs students as Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants, and Teaching Fellows to assist professors at the graduate level, and to teach undergraduate courses. These positions have the dual benefits of easing faculty’s teaching and administrative burdens as well as providing students with a means of supplementing their income to defray the costs of attending school and living in New York.
A Teaching Assistantship or a Teaching Fellowship currently pays US $3000 a semester. The overwhelming majority of the PhD students receive at most one Teaching Assistantship a year1. A Research Assistant at the New School draws $4000 a year, which amounts to $2000 per semester and less than $400 a month.
We resolve that the New School raise the wages to at least:
$4000 per semester for Research Assistants,
$5000 per semester for Teaching Assistants, and
$6000 per semester for Teaching Fellows.
Other private universities in the US consider these salaries part of providing students with a living stipend to allow them to fully dedicate themselves to graduate study. We understand that the New School, being a unique institution with a distinct identity that draws students and faculty here, also suffers from greater financial constraints than most. Therefore, we are not even asking that these salaries cover the entire cost of living. However, the university should not see these salaries as an extra benefit, but as a stipend and a necessary part of subsistence living, with the understanding that being a student is, in and of itself, a full-time job.
The 2004 national average of assistantship stipends for full¬time students at private not¬for¬profit graduate educational institutions in the US was $4,750 per semester at the MA level, and $8,200 per semester at the PhD level. These numbers – unlike The New School’s – have definitely increased in the past four year [note 2].
For the purposes of comparison with other universities in the US, here are some statistics taken from The Chronicle of Higher Education from 2004 – now four years ago [note 3]:
• A Research Assistantship in the Department of English at the University of Memphis paid $4,250 per semester.
• A Teaching Assistantship at the University of Kentucky for a student of English Literature paid $5,500 per semester.
• The University of Southern Mississippi paid TAs $4,000 per semester. Both these salaries were on the lower end of the pay scale for RAs and TAs, given that, for example:
• An Economics student at MIT earned, on average, $14,500 per semester as an RA, and
• The basic RA/TA stipend at U Penn was $8,000 per semester
• The same stipend at Columbia University was a minimum of $8,500 per semester. One should also consider that the probability a student gets a TA or RA position in these institutions or the average U.S. University is considerably higher than at The New School.
The salaries currently assigned to these positions at The New School have not been raisedinovertenyears. Meanwhile, living expenses, in particular the costs of housing, in New York have skyrocketed. Our tuition increases every year, faster than inflation, to cope with the increasing costs of running a university.
Most of The New School students in these positions take them in addition to a full course load out of severe financial necessity.
Given that other jobs in New York requiring a similar skill set would be more lucrative, filling these positions involves personal sacrifice and/or limited alternative options.
We were not able to get official data from the university on the number of TAs, RAs and TFs, or their financial circumstances, but feedback from various divisional and departmental student unions/associations would indicate that most of these students are on some form of financial aid, many of them in debt from student loans. Most of them are also full¬time students. Many reported that they have a second or even, in some cases, a third job (not counting being a student) in order to just scrape by. For some – international students in particular – working off campus, or even Federal Work Study, is not a legal option.
Given that RAs, TAs and TFs at The New School work full¬time, study full¬time, and choose to attend school here rather than pursue more lucrative options on the job market or even at other US universities, Given that their salaries at The New School cover less than half what the US government considers a bare minimum living wage, Given that these wages at other comparable universities four years ago were at least twice as high as they are at The New School, and Given that these stipends have not been raised in more than ten years, We demand that The New School honor its commitment to maintaining serious, high¬quality graduate study by raising the pay of Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants and Teaching Fellows.
GRADUATE FACULTY STUDENT SENATE
For more information contact:
Jonathan Cogliano, Speaker of the GFSS
F O O T N O T E S
[1] Even if one is lucky enough to get one of these jobs for both semesters in a year, this pays $6000, which is little more than half the income needed for one person to fall above the current official poverty line (which is $10,400 a year for one¬person family units, and $14,000 a year for 2 people sharing resources).
[2] Student Financing of Graduate and First¬Professional Education: 2003¬04. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education. Available online: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006185.pdf
[3] For more information, see Scott Smallwood, ‘The Stipend Gap’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 Oct. 2004, Vol. 51, Issue 8,
p. A.8.