Letter: Graduate student stipends are too low

To the editor:

The administration at UNC-Chapel Hill is working tirelessly to manage the current pandemic. I can scarcely imagine all that is going into their day-to-day work, but I have no doubt that the job is massive. Thanks are due to Chancellor Guskiewicz: every single communication that has come from his office has been informative, level-headed, compassionate and on point. He is proving himself to be the sort of leader we need in a crisis.

I therefore do not relish being put in the position of registering complaint. But as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, I feel that I must. I am joined by colleagues and graduate students, who add their signatures below as a show of support.

On March 12, the following message was sent to graduate students from the Dean of the UNC Graduate School, Suzanne Barbour: “Although no academic instruction will be offered during the extended spring break, you should be on campus if you are a graduate assistant or hold a service appointment (e.g. an RA or TA). You are an important part of the team that will develop strategies to ensure that our teaching, research, and service missions continue uninterrupted.” 

Since this missive, graduate students have received subsequent messages clarifying that they should stay off campus. But the email was sent well after local officials and infectious disease specialists across the globe had been recommending social distancing. 

It might not be immediately clear how this email sounds to graduate students and their mentors, and so I will try to explain.

Graduate students in our program are funded by teaching fellowships, which we offer in exchange for teaching undergraduates. Up until last year, the yearly income for graduate students was $15,700, of which roughly $2,000 was subtracted for student fees. After fees, graduate students were thus living on about $13,700 per year. 

According to the Living Wage Calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, residents of Orange County, North Carolina, need roughly $26,790 per year (calculated at $12.88 per hour, working full-time, or 2,080 hours per year), or twice what we have been paying our graduate students, to cover expenses. The poverty wage in Orange County is $12,480, calculated at $6 per hour. The current federal poverty level is $12,760 for a household of one. Until last year, then, we were paying our graduate students about $1,000 per year above the poverty level.

Things are a little better now. The Graduate School managed to remove student fees in 2019, and from within our department, the chair exhausted all possible funding sources to raise the minimum stipend per course by another $300. So now graduate students are living on $16,000 per year. 

If that sounds like enough, this real-life scenario should help clarify why it’s not. I emailed a few graduate students to ask them what their paychecks look like in relation to their expenses. I heard back that they receive $1,653 each month. But Sean DiLeonardi, a graduate student whose dissertation I am directing, noted that teaching fellows are not paid in the summer, so the $1,653 only comes from August to May. 

“The summer is especially difficult,” he said, “since the dry spell lasts from June 1 to the last day of August, at which point we receive a check for $825 (and in the days of student fees, that was before taking out the fees!)” 

Sean has a family. Calculating with allowances for his two children, Olive and Rocco, Sean’s living wage is thus right at poverty level. His wife Lizzie brings in some money, which is a good thing, because their rent is $1,200 per month. Of housing costs, he notes, “The only place we've lived cheaper than this was … almost uninhabitable.” Graduate students living on their own or with roommates are paying around $700 per month on average, or more than half of what we pay them from August to May. 

To put this in perspective another way, to qualify for a visa, international students must show that they will make $21,000 per year. This amounts to an acknowledgment from the University that $16,000 does not cover the cost of living in Chapel Hill. We already know this, because our students regularly take second and third jobs on top of teaching our undergraduates. 

Dean Barbour’s message acknowledges the importance of graduate students to the University’s mission to serve undergraduates in our state when she notes that graduate students are an “important part of the team.” It should follow from this that paying graduate students stipends that force them to take on other jobs affects undergraduate education.

In addition to the effects on Carolina undergraduates, taking on extra hours at second and third jobs also slows graduate students down as they pursue their Ph.Ds, thus raising the cost to the University of funding them. Paying low stipends, that is, is bad business, since it costs UNC money over the long run. 

And with each passing year, the Graduate School’s minimum stipend makes recruitment impossible — not to mention embarrassing. With the promise of near-poverty living conditions, moreover, we do not have a remote chance of recruiting graduate students of color. With all of the hires currently being funded by the University in critical race studies, African American literature and history, slavery studies and other fields focused on race and intended to diversify our faculty, we are creating a strangely lopsided campus, with new faculty working in areas related to race in which there will soon be no students of color to teach.  

I have been requesting meetings with deans every year over the 10 years I have been at Carolina, urging them to figure out a way to raise graduate student stipends for all of these reasons. And in meeting after meeting, shoulders are shrugged. I understand that raising graduate student stipends would be expensive. But year after year, we watch as the administration finds money for countless other initiatives, including, ironically, the creation of senior positions to manage the diversity low stipends make impossible.

To say it rings hollow when the Dean of the Graduate School urges graduate students to come to campus in this moment because they are “an important part of the team” understates the appalling insensitivity of the message. What Dean Barbour conveyed, with crystal clarity, is that the graduate students are only an “important part of the team” when the University needs them.

I am reminded of the 1874 children’s story, "The Little Red Hen." If the graduate students make the University’s bread with so little help, why should they share it? After so many years of shoulder shrugging, how can their administrators possibly expect to partake?

Would now be an appropriate time to show our graduate students how much they matter to us? Could this crisis be the occasion for making good on the claim that they are an “important part of the team?” Surely, if we are willing to ask them to come to campus during a global pandemic to help us out, we can commit to figuring out how to raise their minimum stipends.

Sincerely yours,

Florence Dore, Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature and Director of Graduate Studies

The signatories below wish to affirm this message:

Adrienne Hall, Ph.D. Student in Geography

Amanda Al-Raba'a, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and Translation, KIMEP University (Ph.D. graduate of the Department of English & Comparative Literature at UNC-CH)

Andrew Adair, Teaching Assistant, Department of Mathematics

Andrew Murray (Graduate Student)

Anna Broadwell-Gulde, PhD Student, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Ashley Mariconti, DNP, RN, UNC Health

Banu Gokariksel, Professor, Department of Geography

Benjamin Bechtold, Graduate Student, Mathematics Department

Bert Clere, English Graduate Student, NCCU

Beverly Taylor, Professor of English

Bradley Hicks

Bridget Donnelly, Ph.D. Candidate and Teaching Fellow

Casey Miller, UNC MSW Candidate ‘20

Che Sokol, Ph.D. student of Comparative Literature

Chloe Hamer, Ph.D. student

Chris Johns, Ph.D., Digital Communications Specialist @ Coastal Resilience Center 

Colin Dekeersgieter, Graduate Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature

Courtney Blackington

Courtney Rivard, Teaching Associate Professor

Craig Mariconti, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Cyrus Sinai, Geography Ph.D. student

Danielle Christmas, Assistant Professor

David E. Whisnant, Professor Emeritus

Deanna Corin, graduate student worker, Department of Geography 

Dmitro Golovanich, Teaching Assistant, Mathematics Department

Doug Stark, Graduate Teaching Fellow, English

Dylan Thompson, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Elisa Faison, Teaching Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate

Eliza Richards, Professor

Elizabeth Shand, Graduate Student

Emil’ Keme, Associate Professor of Spanish 

Emily Baragwanath, Associate Professor of Classics and Director of Graduate Studies 

Emily Sferra, Graduate Student and Teaching Fellow

Eric Bontempo, Graduate Teaching Fellow

Eric Downing, Professor and Chair of German, Professor of English & Comparative Literature

Eric Meckley, Ph.D. Candidate and Teaching Fellow

Erik Gellman, Associate Professor of History

Erik Maloney, Teaching Fellow and Doctoral Student, English & Comparative Literature

Erika Lindemann, Professor Emerita, English and Comparative Literature

Geovani Ramírez, Ph.D. Candidate, English & Comparative Literature

Grant Glass, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English & Comparative Literature

Guillermo Rodriguez-Romaguera, Teaching Assistant Professor, Department of English & Comparative Literature

Hampton Smith, alumnus

Helen Cushman, Assistant Professor

Hunter Dinkins, third year Ph.D. Student, Mathematics

Ian Sawyer, Research Assistant

Isaac Mehlhaff, Ph.D. Student

Isabel Laterzo, Ph.D. Student, UNC Political Science 

Jane Danielewicz, Professor Emeritus, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Jane F. Thrailkill, Bank of America Honors Distinguished Term Associate Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Jeanne Moskal, Professor, Department of English & Comparative Literature

Jennifer Larson, Teaching Associate Professor, English & Comparative Literature

Jessica Ginocchio, grad student and teaching fellow, English & Comparative Literature

Jo Klevdal, Graduate Student English & Comparative Literature

Joseph Compton, Teaching Assistant, Department of Mathematics with a second job

Joshua Smith, Ph.D. Candidate

Karah Mitchell, Graduate Teaching Fellow, English & Comparative Literature

Karen Auerbach, Associate Professor of History

Katharine Landers, Teaching Fellow, English & Comparative Literature

Katherine Slyman, Teaching Assistant, Mathematics Department

Katya Gorecki

Kelli Holt, Teaching Fellow English & Comparative Literature

Kenneth Lota, Ph.D. Candidate & Teaching Fellow, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Kevin Pyon, Ph.D. Candidate & Teaching Fellow, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Khristian Smith, Ph.D. Candidate & Teaching Fellow, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Kristjan Hannesson, Graduate Student

Krysten Voelkner, Graduate Student & Teaching Fellow

Kylan Rice, Ph.D. Candidate & Teaching Fellow, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Kyle Chan, Ph.D. student, Department of Political Science

Lanier Walker, Ph.D. Student & Teaching Fellow, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Laurence Cantwell, Teaching Assistant, Mathematics Department

Leo Collins, Teaching Fellow and Ph.D. student, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Leslie Rowen, Graduate Teaching Fellow, DOECL

Lisa Lindsay, Professor of History

Liz Gualtieri-Reed Teaching Assistant Professor

Louise McReynolds, Professor of History

Malinda Maynor Lowery, Department of History and Center for the Study of the American South

Manny Hernandez, Ph.D. Candidate

Mary Floyd-Wilson, Professor and Chair, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Matthew A. Taylor, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Admissions, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Maxim Tsarev, Teaching Fellow and Ph.D. student Department of English and Comparative Literature

Michael Keenan Gutierrez, Teaching Associate Professor

Miranda Elston 

Morgan Souza, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Nicole Berland, Doctoral Candidate and Teaching Fellow

Nikki Roulo, Ph.D. Candidate and Teaching Fellow, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Olivia Chandrasekhar, Teaching and Research Assistant, Mathematics Department

Patrick ONeill, Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Paul Blom, Ph.D. Student and Teaching Fellow, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Peter Delgobbo, Ph.D. student, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Philip Gura, Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Rachel Warner, Ph.D. Student and Teaching Fellow, Candidate, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Reed Hubbard Teaching Assistant, Department of Mathematics

Sam Bubnovich, Graduate Student, Mathematics

Samuel Schmitt, Teaching Assistant, Ph.D. student

Sara Smith, Associate Professor, Department of Geography

Savannah Foreman, Graduate Teaching Fellow 

Scott Kirsch, Professor of Geography

Sean DiLeonardi, Teaching Fellow and Ph.D. candidate, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Sergio Chavez, Teaching Assistant, Department of Mathematics, UNC

Sharon P. Holland, Townsend Ludington Distinguished Professor 

Shayne Legassie, Associate Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Sherick Hughes, Professor

Steven Saroka, Graduate TA

Susan O'Rourke, Teaching Fellow and Ph.D. candidate

Taras Mikhailiuk, Ph.D. Candidate and Teaching Fellow

Taylor Cowdery, Assistant Professor of English

Taylor Rhoads, Teaching Assistant, Mathematics Department

Thomas Simonson, Teaching Fellow and Ph.D. candidate, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Tom Reinert, Associate Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature 

Travis Alexander, Teaching Fellow and Ph.D candidate, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Tyler Bunzey, Teaching Fellow and Ph.D candidate, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Tyler Ditmore, Teaching Assistant/Graduate Student (Political Science)

Wil Heflin, former graduate student & spouse of current Ph.D. candidate

William Sturkey, Assistant Professor, History