Binghamton University doctoral students are victorious in the fight for waiving broad-based fees.
On Jan. 3, BU President Harvey Stenger and Donald Nieman, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, announced in an open letter that full-time, fully tuition-funded doctoral students will have their broad-based fees covered starting this spring semester. The fees, which are non-tuition costs like technology and transportation fees, will be covered in a new scholarship which will be awarded to around 700 qualified doctoral students according to the letter.
In the letter, Stenger praised the University’s doctoral students for their research and teaching missions, and addressed the importance of financial support to assist them.
“[BU] is committed to helping our Ph.D. students progress to their degree,” Stenger wrote. “Each year, the University awards around 150 Ph.D.s; it is in all our interests to see that number increase and to reduce the amount of time it takes for students to achieve their terminal degree. Clearly, increased financial support can play an important part in helping us achieve this goal.”
The announcement comes after a series of demonstrations by members of the Graduate Student Employees Union (GSEU) during last semester. In September, members handed out informational flyers regarding problems with graduate student broad-based fees during family weekend. In November, GSEU members rallied at the Couper Administration Building to personally present a petition with signatures from 700 people demanding the removal of graduate student teaching assistant (TA) broad-based fees. In a video taken of the demonstration, Stenger said the fees would be paid by the University in the near future.
In an email, Ryan Yarosh, senior director of media and public relations, wrote that the University initially could not guarantee the fees would be waived when it was first requested, but sought to find a solution.
“We always listen to members of the campus community and consider their requests, even when they are challenging to meet,” Yarosh wrote. “Our funded Ph.D. students are critical to the success of the University and we have devoted greater resources to support them in the past decade. Sometimes, however, it takes a while to figure out a way to accomplish something you want to do. That was true in this case. We did not want to promise something we couldn’t deliver. Instead, we analyzed the problem and after extensive discussions, found a way to provide fee scholarships.”
However, the fee scholarship may be met with new budget constraints. According to Yarosh, the University estimates the cost of the new scholarship to be approximately $750,000 per year. In the letter, Stenger pointed out that covering the fees will be a “significant cost” to the University and will result in redirecting funds from other sections in the budget.
While not specifically mentioning from where the new funds will be reapportioned, Yarosh wrote the University is confident it will find more revenue streams and maintain flexibility in their future budgets.
“At this point, we are using savings that accrue from a variety of areas and University reserves to absorb the cost,” Yarosh wrote. “Our intention is that we will be successful in generating additional revenue, largely through graduate student growth to support this and other initiatives. Budgets and needs do not remain fixed, so we are constantly seeking to grow revenue to maintain the strength and competitiveness of the University.”
Andrey Darovskikh, a member of GSEU and a doctoral candidate in philosophy, said he is grateful for the University’s decision to cover the fees.
“Overall, as a Ph.D. student and GSEU organizer, I warmly welcome the news that BU will provide Ph.D. students with a scholarship that covers broad-based fees,” Darovskikh wrote in an email. “It’s a right decision that had been awaited by all Ph.D. students for a long time. It was confirmed basically by everyone that conceptually it does not make sense to pay salaries to employees and then ask them to pay part of the wages back in the form of fees.”
However, both Darovskikh and Emily Blakley, a union representative for the GSEU and a doctoral student in cognitive and behavioral science, said the scholarship is only targeted toward doctoral students, not other graduate students.
“We are happy with the progress the University has made, but our campaign to eliminate the financial burden of fees was for all grad workers, not just those with a specific degree,” Blakley wrote in an email. “We are absolutely hopeful that the University will realize how important M.A. and M.S. students who TA are to the University, as they are often paid less than Ph.D. students within the same department for the same hours of work. We even asked Stenger if grad workers going toward a M.S. or M.A. degree would be included and his initial answer was yes, so we were very upset to see these union members left behind.”