630 16 AUGUST 2019 • VOL 365 ISSUE 6454 sciencemag.org SCIENCECREDITS: (GRAPHIC) K. LANGIN/SCIENCE; (DATA) STATE HIGHER EDUCATION EXECUTIVE OFFICERS ASSOCIATIONT
o help offset declines in state funding,
many U.S. public universities are bill-
ing their graduate students for thou-
sands of dollars of university fees.
The charges, many of them new or
recently increased, frequently come
as a shock to master’s and Ph.D. students in
science, technology, engineering, and math
fields who expect their years of training to
be financially feasible because they do not
pay tuition and receive modest stipends for
their research and teaching work.
At Louisiana State University (LSU) in
Baton Rouge, for example, grad students
are charged $4900 per year in
student fees—a sum that has more
than doubled in 5 years. “We are
not here to be rich,” but grad stu-
dents who work for the university
expect to be able to make ends
meet, says Luis Santiago-Rosario,
a biology Ph.D. student at LSU
who—like many in his situation—
wasn’t aware of the fees until he
started his program. He’s had to
take out $6000 in federal student
loans each of the 2 years he’s been
in grad school because his teach-
ing stipend—roughly $22,000—
isn’t enough to cover the fees as
well as living expenses. “[Our pay]
is not enough; it’s absolutely not
enough after the fees.”
“It’s really hard to be a student
here,” adds Erin Good, a physics
Ph.D. student at the university
who points out that LSU policy
bars graduate assistants from seeking
outside employment to supplement their
income. “I know a ton of people who are
relying on food banks; ... it’s really getting
untenable.” LSU isn’t alone in issuing hefty
bills. Many other institutions across the
country—including private ones—charge
fees ranging from less than $100 to a few
thousand dollars. But LSU’s fees are espe-
cially steep.
An LSU spokesperson wrote that the
university is aware of the squeeze on its
grad students. “We continue to evaluate
resources to further support our graduate
students, as we work within the constraints
of the university’s operating budget,” the
statement said. On other campuses, stu-dents and faculty are also demanding ac-
tion through strikes and petitions.
Cutbacks in public funding at a time
when student numbers are growing and
the cost of education is rising have left
universities looking for new revenue.
“Higher education is being shoved out of
state budgets,” says David Feldman, a pro-
fessor of economics at the College of Wil-
liam & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. In
response, many public universities have
raised tuition. But some states limit tu-
ition hikes. “Fees have been used as this
wiggle room way to increase funding if
you can’t increase tuition,” says Sophia
Laderman, a senior policy analyst at theState Higher Education Executive Offi-
cers Association, a nonprofit organization
based in Boulder, Colorado.
At LSU, for example, the university insti-
tuted a “student excellence fee” in 2016—
saying the money would be used to hire
instructors and teaching assistants, among
other things. At first, grad students were
charged roughly $500 per year, but this
year the bill is more than $2200, making
it the highest of the university’s current
fees. The fact that grad students seem to
be charged for a service they themselves
provide—teaching—is bewildering, says
Good, who has advocated for fee changes
on behalf of LSU’s grad students.
There are some hopeful signs for gradstudents who are struggling. At the Uni-
versity of Illinois in Chicago, the graduate
student union initiated a strike largely to
protest fees, says Sagen Cocklin, a physics
Ph.D. student who pays $1200 per year in
student fees and serves as co-president of
the union’s steering committee. Two weeks
into the strike, which led to the cancella-
tion of hundreds of classes, the university
agreed to cut the international student
fee—$260 per year—in half and increase
stipend levels to offset other fees.
Elsewhere, grad students are hoping for
similar progress. At the University of Colo-
rado in Boulder, for instance, more than
1600 people—including grad students, fac-
ulty members, and state and federal
legislators—signed a petition call-
ing for $1700 in annual fees to be
waived for graduate teaching and
research assistants. At the Georgia
Institute of Technology (Georgia
Tech) in Atlanta, the most con-
troversial fee—the $1000 per year
“special institutional fee”—is set
by the state, not the university, so
waivers are less feasible. Instead,
grad students, who face fees total-
ing $2800 per year, are proposing
steps to offset the burden, such as
reducing the cost of on-campus
housing and making it easier for
professors to raise stipend levels.
“We are trying to seek creative so-
lutions,” says Narayan Shirolker,
a materials science and engineer-
ing Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech
who serves as president of the
grad student association.
Georgia Tech professor Joshua Weitz,
who directs the quantitative biosciences
graduate program, has gathered infor-
mation about fees at 67 universities. In
March he wrote an op-ed for The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution arguing that the fees
create financial stress for existing stu-
dents and make it challenging for faculty
to recruit new students, particularly those
with limited financial resources. “Graduate
students are benefiting the institute in a
fundamental way,” Weitz says. “I think it
will take some time, but we should aim in
the direction of eliminating [their] fees.”
But Feldman, the economist, notes that
given the budget pressures on universities,
that may not be easy. jBy Katie LanginWORKFORCEGrad students struggle with rising fees
Hefty bills at some U.S. public universities strain STEM students’ finances
’98 ’00 ’02 ’04 ’06’08 ’10 ’12 ’14 ’16 ’02468$10 ThousandState funding per student Tuition and fee revenue per studentGrowing student burden
Over the past 20 years, costs for students—including undergraduate,
graduate, and professional students—at U.S. public universities and
colleges have grown as state funding has generally decreased, with
some fluctuations in response to economic trends. (Numbers are
adjusted for inflation.)NEWS | IN DEPTH