Officials announced new compensation policies for graduate assistants last month, but some graduate assistants say the new changes do not go far enough to address compensation issues within the program, like cost of living.
The Office of Graduate Student Assistantships and Fellowships released new job titles and pay rates for graduate assistantships, specifying the roles and responsibilities of different types of graduate assistants and varying compensation rates depending on the new position title. Current graduate assistants say the pay increases are helpful, but the policies fall short in paying graduate assistants a livable wage in D.C., properly compensating overtime work and addressing a lack of communication with graduate workers.
Suresh Subramaniam, the vice provost for graduate and postdoctoral affairs, said OGSAF created the new policies, which will take effect during the 2024-25 academic year, to raise and “standardize” the minimum compensation for assistantship roles to improve standard of living for graduate assistants and remain competitive with other research institutions.
The new policies separate the current graduate teaching assistant role into three separate roles — graduate instructional assistants, graduate teaching assistants and graduate student lecturers. The graduate instructional assistant consists of master’s students and some doctoral students, while graduate teaching assistants consists of solely doctoral students, with both roles grading assignments, leading labs and discussions and holding office hours.
Subramaniam said the “general” responsibilities of graduate instructional assistants and graduate teaching assistants are identical and are compensated the same, despite graduate teaching assistants wages being higher, according to the new policies. He said the new policies now create a minimum standard for stipends and tuition awards for the graduate teaching assistant role, while the graduate instructional assistant role can receive additional financial support at the discretion of their department.
Under the new policies, graduate instructional assistants make $9,500 per academic year, while graduate teaching assistants make $26,100 per academic year. Graduate assistants, who have a fully funded aid package, working hours cannot exceed 20 hours per week, according to guidelines from OGSAF.
Other DMV area universities like Georgetown University pay doctoral graduate assistants $19,000 per semester while others like George Mason University pay all graduate assistants about $9,000 per semester.
Liz Foshe, a doctoral student and graduate teaching assistant in the American Studies department, said she was excited to be a graduate assistant at GW because she would earn $10,000 more than her wage as a master’s graduate assistant at the University of Alabama, but she said she did not realize the higher cost of living in D.C.
“I very quickly learned that I wasn’t going to be making as much money as I thought I would be making,” Foshe said. “I’m really thankful that I have a partner who, also, like a dual income. If I was on my own, I can’t imagine what it would be like moving here and only making $30,000 or less according to the bare minimum package.”
The cost of living for an individual with no children in the Washington, D.C., Arlington and Alexandria area is $56,125 before taxes, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. The highest salary under the new guidelines is $26,100 per academic year for doctoral graduate teaching assistants, per OGSAF policies.
Foshe said she currently makes $32,270 between her base salary and additional funding she gets from her department before the new policies are implemented. Foshe also said she is “worried” that with the new policies, she might lose additional funding she receives from her department.
“I’m actually worried because they’re framing this as a new policy, that some of us might actually be reduced down to this $26,100 minimum,” Foshe said.
A master’s graduate teaching assistant in the Geography Department, who asked to stay anonymous out of fear of retribution, said the new policies will raise their wage by 6.5 percent which they are “excited” about. They said they will now be considered a graduate instructional assistant after the new policies reserved the title and higher compensation of the graduate teaching assistant role to doctoral students, after it was previously the title for all teaching assistant positions.
“The GIAs and the GTAs from this new system will both grade assignments, lead labs, recite discussion sessions and hold office hours,” the graduate assistant said. “It seems like the same work for like, vastly different compensation amounts.”
Seth Gagnon, a doctoral graduate teaching assistant in the Physics Department, said despite the department and STEM graduate assistants being some of the “highest paid” at the University, their compensation is still not high enough to afford living in D.C.
“They pay you just barely enough to cover rent and groceries and all the essentials,” Gagnon said. “You’ll be able to make it, but it’s not going to be easy, and that’s my experience being in one of the highest paid departments at the school, so I can’t even imagine what other students who make less how they’re making it, to be honest.”
Another master’s graduate assistant from the Geography Department, who requested to stay anonymous due to fear of retribution, said they don’t feel the new policies help them as a master’s graduate assistant since doctoral graduate teaching assistants get paid more for the same responsibilities.
They said once they became a graduate assistant, they felt that their time wasn’t valuable to faculty they worked with due to the extra amounts of work they have to do as a graduate assistant with little compensation.
“Coming from a job where every hour I worked was so valuable, and charged so highly to our customers and then coming to be a TA here, where my time was just so not valuable at all, it was a pretty harsh reality when I actually started,” the graduate assistant said.
They said they have previously talked to their graduate adviser about often working more hours than 20 hours a week, but the adviser said that this was common and did not seem concerned, which the graduate assistant said was “pretty discouraging.” Georgetown, George Mason and American universities all have a 20 hours per week cap on their graduate assistant program.
Maddie House-Tuck, a doctoral graduate teaching assistant in the American Studies Department said she feels the announcement of the new policies felt “covert” and “swept under the rug” due to the lack of communication by officials about the policies. She said she hopes officials are more transparent and talk to graduate assistants when reforming or implementing new policies.
“I feel like some of these decisions are made without actually incorporating the opinions of graduate workers and like what would actually benefit us,” House-Tuck said.
