Stanford has promised to contented a one-time stipend of $1,000 astatine the commencement of the wintertime 4th to enrolled and funded doctoral students successful the School of Medicine and the School of Humanities and Sciences, according to emails sent to these students successful the respective schools.
The emails, which were signed by School of Medicine Dean Lloyd Minor and School of Humanities and Sciences Dean Debra Satz, said that some schools volition supply the $1,000 stipend for qualifying students owed to caller and agelong word bouts of affordability issues impacting postgraduate students.
Doctoral students successful different schools, including the engineering, acquisition and instrumentality schools, volition not person the stipend.
The announcement follows respective attempts by postgraduate students to bring attraction to issues including affordability and outgo of living.
On Nov. 7, an email outlining concerns astir affordability, signed by implicit 400 bioscience Ph.D. students, was sent to Minor and different University administrators. The email cited a survey sent to the biosciences postgraduate assemblage which recovered that “91.8% of respondents study that their stipend does not adequately conscionable their outgo of living,” according to the email.
The aforesaid email besides highlighted different universities’ stipend increases, citing Princeton’s 25% stipend summation this year, arsenic good arsenic MIT’s 8.7% stipend increase implicit the past year.
The Graduate Student Council (GSC) has besides been progressive connected the contented of affordability. The GSC voted successful September to approve the Bill connected Affordability, which included a database of 7 “action items” addressing galore affordability concerns, including lodging and income.
The measure compared students to residents of Santa Clara County and nationwide and identified that the income of Stanford postgraduate students falls into the “very low” income category. The measure besides addressed circumstantial lodging issues, reporting that postgraduate students walk 45% of their income connected housing.
The co-chairs of the assembly praised the University for taking enactment connected the stipends.
“We person reached retired to some Dean Satz and Dean Minor to convey them for taking enactment connected this,” said GSC co-chair Emily Schell, a fifth-year developmental and intelligence sciences Ph.D. student. Schell said that she and Council co-chair Jason Anderson, a fourth-year aeronautics and astronautics Ph.D. student, copied the deans from the different nonrecreational schools successful their convey you email to promote them to travel Dean Satz and Dean Minor’s leadership.
University spokesperson Luisa Rapport wrote that “the University and its idiosyncratic schools are continually evaluating each fiscal aspects of our postgraduate programs and moving to code affordability challenges.”
Anderson said that the assembly plans to proceed prioritizing affordability, benefits and intelligence health.
“We and the graduates from the assembly person been moving towards this affordability issue… and we person traction here,” Anderson said, “This is simply a truly large deal.”
Anderson and Schell, who are Ph.D. students successful the School of Education and the School of Engineering volition not person the stipend.
“This is simply a archetypal step. It’s surely not the last measurement we anticipation to spot from the assemblage to tackle this supportability problem,” Shell said.
Sebastian Hochman is simply a contributing writer astatine The Stanford Daily for Arts & Life, Campus Life and University desks. He is simply a euphony major. Maybe. You tin interaction him astatine shochman 'at' stanford 'dot' edu.
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