After news of pay increase, teaching assistants propose next steps

Many graduate students at UW-Madison are not only pursuing higher degrees, but are also employed by the university as teaching and research assistants. With a recent decision restructuring graduate student pay rates, the university now need to adopt a new set of payment methods this July.

Following last week’s announcement of a pay increase, graduate student assistants met to discuss proposals for restructuring their stipend rates Thursday night, during a teach-in panel discussion organized by Teaching Assistants’ Association.

The university established a 3.5 percent increase for standard teaching assistants and program/project assistants, the two types of graduate assistants who are currently paid the least.

The decision also set minimum pay rates for all graduate student assistants for the fiscal year 2018, and instructed departments to establish their own rates at or above those thresholds.

“[This policy] allows for flexibility to accommodate different market factors while maintaining the principle that graduate students will not get a stipend cut from the previous year,” a university memorandum stated.

Alexi Brooks, recording secretary of TAA and computer sciences doctoral student, said some departments had already laid out plans to adapt to the new policy. The Department of Physics, for example, said they would raise the pay rate for all graduate assistants by 2 percent. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering created a “two-tier” pay rate mechanism.

On the other hand, some humanities departments like History, French and Italian, Spanish and Portuguese have yet to offer a change in pay rate.

Professor Chad Allen Goldberg, the president of United Faculty and Academic Staff, contrasted the new pay system with comparable worth policy, which prevents gendered payment disparities between fields that involve comparable responsibility and worth. He said he believes the new decision will potentially result in better payment for students working in disciplines dominated by men than those in fields dominated by women, creating gender inequity.

He also said he thinks the policy poses a potential risk for humanities and social science departments because they could be in danger of losing their funding to STEM departments.

According to Goldberg, the decision signaled “a systematic reorientation of the university away from its historical mission, away from its Wisconsin Idea.”

TAA co-Presidents Adria Brooks and Dylan Kaufman-Obstler said they hope the Graduate School will be proactive about communicating with and educating students about issues related to the pay increase.