Number of TA positions slashed due to cuts

Ryan Burk was a teaching assistant for eight semesters before the University’s economics department announced his position would be cut.

All sixth-year graduate teaching assistants in the economics department, including Burk, were forced to find funding for their tuition elsewhere.

While Burk received a fellowship through the University to help cover his tuition, other TAs haven’t been as lucky.

“Everyone has been scrambling to do whatever they can,” Burk said. “People are taking out loans and doing extra tutoring — doing whatever they can to make it through the year.”

As budget cuts for the UNC system continue, graduate students are beginning to feel the crunch. The teaching assistantship program, which allows graduate students to pay off their tuition and receive an annual stipend, has been squeezed due to the cuts, administrators across the system said.

Tammy McHale, UNC-CH senior associate dean of finance and planning, said TAs receive a minimum $14,700 stipend, along with health insurance and the cost of their tuition.

State funding that gives graduate students the opportunity to take on a paid research or teaching fellowship has decreased during the past couple of years.

Dee Reid, director of communications for the College of Arts and Sciences, said research by Karen Gil, dean of the college, shows that state funds for the college’s instructional budgets — which support graduate students — have dropped from $15.4 million in 2008-09 to $12.8 million this year.

Steve Matson, dean of the University’s graduate school, said budget cuts have been steadily affecting graduate students.

“We were forced to reduce the number of first-year merit fellowships we provide to incoming students,” he said in an email.

“This did not affect any student already on campus, but did have an impact on our ability to recruit new students to our graduate programs.”

Reid said the reduction in graduate students could affect the number of TAs available to support undergraduate classes, which could hurt undergraduate education, especially with class sizes increasing.

“From 2008-09 to 2010-11, the number of College of Arts and Sciences seminars and classes with fewer than 20 students decreased 18.2 percent, while classes with 100 to 299 students increased nearly 17 percent,” she said.

Scott Krause, a Ph.D. candidate in history who has been a TA for three semesters at the University, said the history department increased the cap for the number of students assigned to a TA to 55.

“You’ve got 55 students, an exam with two essays — all of a sudden you have a stack of 110 essays to grade within 72 hours,” Krause said. “And there’s a dirty secret involved in how you do that.”

Other universities have worked to keep the teaching assistantship program afloat.

Jeffery Braden, dean of N.C. State University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said his college faced more than a $2 million cut in its budget.

“We did not eliminate a single teaching assistantship this year,” he said.

Almost 99 percent of the budget goes toward faculty and staff, Braden said.

He said he decided to cut supporting staff that didn’t directly impact students instead.

Krause said the increasing workload is taking its toll on UNC-CH teaching assistants.

“People become a little cynical about stuff,” he said. “The spring semester was a certain low point in morale.”

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