Changes in Agriculture Deptartment assistantships hurts grad students

Here's the problem: Declining enrollment equals a drop in state funding.

What's the answer? University administrators are responding with higher tuition rates and a move to require more credit hours from graduate students.

A better answer would be to lure more valuable students here with assistantships and fellowships.

The University of Arizona should consider an incentive used at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana while I was a graduate student there in the early 1990s.

All the faculty members in my department - forestry - were entitled to one half-time graduate assistantship, complete with a full tuition waiver, to give to a student of their choice.

Now that would have a positive impact on enrollment here. It's win-win.

At this time I can think of several dedicated graduate students, including myself, who are unsure whether they'll be able to continue in the fall because of a lack of available assistantships.

It's understandable that there's a temptation afoot to bump up credit hours to make up for lost students. It's starting with the Ag College's sudden demand - supposedly effective July 1 unless administrators have second thoughts - that assistantship holders enroll in 12 credit hours rather than the usual six. Many of us at the wondered where we could all find the hours in a day to fulfill 12 credit hours every semester while working on an assistantship and, often, on our own research as well.

The Board of Regents decided last week that Arizona students should absorb another tuition increase, even though the state Legislature has agreed to provide an additional $47 million in funding to the university system this year.

Graduate students this spring already were paying 20 percent more for tuition and fees than their counterparts did a mere four years ago - it cost grads $795 in tuition and fees for seven hours or more during the 1992-93 academic year.

Many departments still ask grad students to cover their in-state tuition costs, even if they are receiving a teaching or research assistantship. And generally money for research assistants comes from an outside grant, with the odds 2-to-1 that it's federal money.

Federal research dollars are expected to continue on a downward slide that began when the Cold War ended. Graduate enrollment may follow suit unless the university finds a more innovative way to support graduate students.

A new policy to allow faculty to award university-sponsored assistantships and/or provide competitive fellowships could go a long way toward attracting - and keeping - top students.

By Melanie Lenart
Arizona Daily Wildcat
May 7, 1997