In an effort to stay competitive with its peer institutions, the University, led by Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Adam Falk, is hoping to increase the amount it pays its graduate students.
Graduate students at Hopkins currently receive lower stipends than those at colleges and universities with which it is on par academically, a situation Falk fears could lead prospective students elsewhere.
"Our stipend levels have certainly kept up with inflation since the days that I was in graduate school 15 years ago," he said. "But they have not kept up with the competitive environment in a way that I think is completely satisfactory, and what we've found is that it's become more and more difficult to compete for the best graduate
students without offering highly competitive stipends."
While he believes that it's not an issue of "starving graduate students," Falk does believe that higher stipends could help attract more talented students to Hopkins.
"It's really an issue of competition," he added, "and that's a challenge for us, so we've been working very hard to raise graduate stipends. We're focusing on that as one of our priorities in the remainder of the capital campaign, Knowledge for the World, and I'm looking for ways to redirect resources." Graduate students presently receive about five years of funding, with stipends ranging from $12,000 to $22,000.
Hopkins Graduate Representative Organization (GRO) chair Chris Long agreed that the stipends graduate students currently receive are "lower" than those offered by peer institutions. "First, most graduate stipends here are lower than at peer institutions, which can act as a strike against Hopkins in the competition for top graduate students," Long explained. "Second, some stipends in the humanities and social sciences are so low that graduate students take on extra jobs in order to be able to pay their bills. Extra work takes time away from research and can prolong the time needed to earn a degree."
The GRO has been pushing the University to raise stipends for some time, including bringing the issue "to the attention of the deans."
"The GRO has repeatedly brought graduate student concerns about stipend levels to the attention of the deans," Long said. "We also organized several forums this year at which graduate students on the GRO General Council and from the larger graduate community were able to ask the deans directly about stipends."
When choosing a graduate school, students also feel more valued when they're offered significantly larger stipends, according to Falk."Their eye is caught by very large differences in stipend levels," he said. "I think people in all walks of life confuse the amount of money they're going to be given with the value that is being placed on them. That's human nature."
To address the issue, Falk plans to increase funding in the future through fundraising and, possibly, through the sale of the Villa Spelman in Italy, which could save the School of Arts and Sciences about $600,000 a year in operating costs alone.
Despite this, the effort is still long-term, and next year's stipends won't be significantly higher. "Next year, I think, they will not be transformatively higher," said Falk. "Some of the programs for the fall have been canceled, but there aren't transformative savings yet from the Villa ... and fundraising is a [long-term] project, so when I say we're hoping to raise the stipends -- we hope to raise them quite a bit -- that's really over a five year period."
Falk cautioned that even though stipends won't be at the ideal level next year, graduate students can still expect to some kind of increase in the amount they get paid. "This coming year, we're going to do better than inflation," he said. "But we're not going to be able to fix the problem in the next year."
Each department at the University is allocated a block of funding for graduate stipends, and can choose to spend it however they want. "Some departments give all the graduate students a little bit more every year as we give inflation increases to the departments. and [others] will give that same inflation increase to everyone," said Falk. "Whichever way a department does it, the net amount that each student gets over a career is the same ... because what every students gets is, on the average, going to be the same."
Still, Long is concerned that some students might take next year's increase -- which is set to be minor but exceeding inflation -- and not pass it on to current students. "In past years some departments may have chosen to use cost-of-living increases to create room in their budgets for additional graduate student positions rather than giving those increases to the graduate students already enrolled in their programs," she said.
And while the cost of living in Baltimore is low, some graduate stipends are even lower, according to Long. "The cost of living in Baltimore is generally lower than it would be in New York City or Washington, D.C.," she said, "but some graduate stipends are so low that they do not even keep up with local costs."
