After months of negotiations between SUNY and the Graduate Student Employees Union, Binghamton University will increase stipends for graduate students starting next year.

Through pressure from graduate student workers, new campus-based raises are expected starting January 2026. The University announced last week that the base stipend given to all doctoral students in fully funded teaching or graduate assistant programs will increase to $25,000 per academic year. Since the increase will start in the middle of the academic year, current students will receive $12,500 paid over 10 periods during the spring semester.

“A huge proportion of the work that makes institutions like BU able to function is performed by graduate students,” said Camille Gagnier, then-president of BU’s GSEU chapter and a sixth-year Ph.D. student in the Translation Research and Instruction Program, in a November 2024 statement to Pipe Dream. “And that is even more and more true over the years because as a cost-cutting measure, administrations tend to reallocate work that used to be done by tenured professors who demand higher pay. They’re moving that work and giving it instead to more precarious workers who have less power to demand fair pay.”

The new base stipend represents a $4,000 increase compared to the $21,000 base the University offered some doctoral students back in February. This will apply to both STEM and non-STEM programs, eliminating pay disparities based on field of work. Graduate and teaching assistants who are not in a doctoral program will receive a minimum of $18,000 for a full-time assistantship, beginning July 2026.

This increased baseline payment still falls short of the minimum living wage needed in Broome County, estimated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be around $40,000 annually.

Since their previous agreement with SUNY and New York state expired in July 2023, GSEU members have met with representatives and held rallies to raise awareness of their new contract demands. In June 2025, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the ratification of an updated three-year contract that will run until July 1, 2026.

Part of the Communications Workers of America Local 1104, the GSEU is a union that has represented and negotiated wages, benefits and working conditions for graduate and teaching assistants across SUNY campuses since 1977. The new contract includes guaranteed raises for SUNY graduate workers, including a 3 percent raise for October 2023 and 2024, and an additional $1,500 signing bonus in October 2025.

Since the duration of the contract runs from July 2023 to July 2026, members who worked in the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years will receive retroactive back pay for those years worked. All workers will receive the additional raise this October.

Other wins for the GSEU in the contract include expanded professional development funding and 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave. International students who must leave and renew their visas during the academic year are also guaranteed job protection for up to one semester.

“While we wanted a longer contract, we were able to trade the length of the contract for victories today,” GSEU Binghamton wrote in an email to its members back in May. “We will build on these victories in the next round of negotiations.”