Indiana University’s College of Arts and Sciences has reversed a decision to cut benefits for masters students working as student academic appointees (SAA).
Masters students in the math and science departments received emails last week notifying them that SAA positions would no longer be eligible for healthcare, stipends or full fee remissions starting in the Fall 2023 semester.
Instead, the email said that these positions would be reclassified as “hourly workers with partial fee remissions.”
The letter from the College of Arts and Sciences said that the cuts were a “financial necessity.”
However, following negative reaction from faculty and students, College of Arts and Sciences Executive Dean Rick Van Kooten shared a message Saturday saying, “Drawing on this feedback, please know that I am committed to ensuring there are no changes that would negatively impact compensation or benefits of current graduate students.”
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The decision to reduce these jobs to hourly wage comes after a 46% increase to the minimum stipend for graduate students over the summer. The increase brought the minimum stipend to $22,000 which moves Indiana University from the bottom of Big Ten universities in average graduate stipends to the top half according to a press release.
IGWE-UE Rights Officer and Philosophy department Ph.D. candidate Joshua Paschal says that masters students are worried about coming cuts to graduate job funding. He says, “presently the master students are justified in thinking they have no job security now.”
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Around 50 graduate students gathered earlier today on IU Bloomington’s campus to demand the university find the money to support these job benefits that they say was on the line—even calling for administration to forgo their bonuses.
Students carried signs reading “A living wage is possible,” and “Cut admin bouses, not grad funding.”