OPINION & EDITORIAL
Fee structure hurts TAA
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by Letters to the Editor
Friday, September 22, 2006
To The Editor:
On Jan. 1, 2007, the University Administration intends to implement a new fee structure for departments and faculty employing graduate Project Assistants (PAs) and Research Assistants (RAs) that will likely result in at least 300 to 700 graduate employee job cuts. The results of this drastic, and ill-conceived policy will affect not only hard working graduate employees, but will also affect the ability of the UW to retain and recruit top-notch faculty — leading to an erosion of the quality of research and undergraduate and graduate education at the UW.
The problem the administration is attempting to solve with this short-sighted new fee structure is directly tied to the continued defunding of the UW system by the State Legislature. In implementing the new fee structure, the administration intends to solve a budget shortfall by shifting the financial burden to professors and departments employing PAs and RAs. Chancellor Wiley appointed a Tuition Remission Task Force (TRTF) to find a solution to the increasing cost of graduate student education and the diminishing returns of the current fee assessment policy.
Faced with an overwhelming financial burden in comparison to other leading research Universities, Professors will continue to leave the UW System, as they have already done due to the lack of domestic partnership benefits. Chancellor Wiley and the UW administration must be stopped from implementing the recommendations of the TRTF as they will not only lead to job losses for hundreds of deserving graduate students, but will also result in the eventual loss of leading researchers, their grant money, and the undergraduates and graduate students who are attracted to this University for its sterling reputation.
The recommendations of the TRTF, to be implemented on Jan. 1, were to impose a flat fee of $8000 on each employing Professor or department for each PA or RA receiving a tuition waiver. This amounts to basically doubling the amount that employers pay under the current fee structure for a graduate employee at a 50 percent appointment level (average appointment level for PAs is 40 percent). For departments relying on small grants and money from foundations and for researchers with many PAs and RAs, the effects of this new fee policy will be catastrophic.
Assuming an overall increase in appointment level for PAs from 40 percent to 60 percent and maintaining the same number of hours of employee work (Full Time Equivalency — FTE), the University-wide costs to departments will be $2.7 Million per year. The shift from 40 percent to 60 percent appointment level will also result in 300 PA job losses — or about 1/3 of all current PA positions if FTE is maintained. The more likely scenario of departments attempting to maintain current payroll expenditures instead of FTE may result in the loss of 700 PA positions from the UW.
The Teaching Assistants' Association (TAA) and a coalition of faculty and undergraduates are fighting to halt the implementation of the TRTF's recommendations to ensure the health of the UW is maintained. To get involved, individuals can contact the TAA at taa@taa-madison.org.
Mark Supanich TAA Political Education Committee Chair TAA Committee on Affordable Public Education Member Graduate Student in Department of Medical Physics
Anonymous (September 22, 2006 @ 7:16am):
Don't blame this on the legislature. The UW just cannot figure out how to allocate money in a fiscally responsible manner. I don't hold it against them, nearly all public schools have the same problem. When you rely on the tax payers money, you tend to throw it at things that don't need it. Then when it tighens, you whine you can't have more.
Anonymous (September 22, 2006 @ 5:14pm):
Absolutely blame this on the legislature! UW gets about 20% of its funding from the state. That's pathetic for a state university. And considering how expensive it is to fund faculty salaries and benefits, the exploding costs of utilities, and the poverty wages of graduate assistants, there isn't much fat to cut. Without greater funding from the university, large tuition increases are necessary, and none of us want more large tuition increases.
Anonymous (September 23, 2006 @ 10:34am):
Fat to cut like union dues to the TAA, or the overhead payed to people who sit at desks for the university and do little, if anything? Nope, none of that around here.
Anonymous (September 23, 2006 @ 3:18pm):
The fact is, the "do-nothing" PAships alluded to in the previous comment are just one more sign of how unwilling this legislature and university are to fund their grad students. Considering that the other institutions with which the UW is currently competing - private schools, most of all - can offer their students fellowships with no requirements, while we struggle to find any funding at all, whether TA, PA, or RAships, says a great deal about the status quo. Yes, there are some cushy PAships out there - even those aren't helping us to attract top-quality students. What there isn't much of is money of any kind, and taking away what little there is clearly isn't the answer. This was a very insightful article that will hopefully alert this administration to the long-term consequences of a very short-sighted decision.
