Approximately 70 doctoral students in their sixth year at Brown will receive funding for the 2007-2008 academic year once a new structure for doctoral support - which guarantees only five years of support - is put in place this fall.
That figure was included in a list of frequently asked questions on the Graduate School Web site, following up on questions raised at a packed Feb. 28 meeting, during which graduate students discussed the new plan with Dean of the Graduate School Sheila Bonde and other officials.
Bonde wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that the meeting at the end of February and the posting of the FAQ were intended to help clear some of the confusion surrounding the stipend plan, as were meetings with Graduate Student Council representatives.
The FAQ is meant to be "interactive," she wrote, meaning that as students continue to send in questions, they will be posted with answers.
"The uneasiness seems to be about change, which is often hard, and misinformation - and there the way to assuage anxiety is through real information, hence the FAQ and fora," she wrote.
Grad students told The Herald that the forum and FAQ are good steps toward improving communication, but that more is needed.
Joseph Bush GS, the president of the GSC, said the forum and FAQ were effective ways of addressing student concerns, but he added that more information is still needed.
"I think that the forum was a valuable tool for the administration to develop an understanding of the concerns graduate students are facing. The FAQ was a start," he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. "I feel that there still needs to be more formal notification to the graduate community as a whole regarding the pay structure changes as well as for incoming classes."
Paige Meltzer GS - who, along with other grad students in the history department, questioned the plan for doctoral support in a Feb. 7 letter to the editor in The Herald - wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that the FAQ has answered "a lot of specifics about certain aspects of the policy."
Meltzer added, however, that some issues have yet to be resolved. She expressed concern that students have no way to judge their chances of receiving funding after their fifth year because students are ranked within their departments but not within the whole Grad School.
The FAQ and forum addressed questions about support for grad students in the context of the new stipend program, set to go into effect next academic year. The plan has stirred controversy among grad students worried about a possible lack of funding for studies continuing beyond the five years guaranteed by the new program.
But the 70 sixth-year doctoral candidates set to receive University funding next year are "the same number of same-stage students who are being supported this year and were supported last year. This number is also based on our meetings with departments and programs and meets, we think, the total outstanding need," the FAQ states.
The FAQ said, since 2004, the average time to a Ph.D. at Brown has been 6.67 years - longer than the five years guaranteed in the new funding plan. But it noted that, "In reality, students have been supported for longer than five years in the past and will, we expect, continue to be supported past five years in the future."
However, the FAQ said the University cannot make open-ended funding commitments - "Brown cannot simply declare that doctoral students will be funded for as long as it takes them to complete their degrees," it reads.
The plan for doctoral support will guarantee five years of tuition remission and healthcare coverage to all doctoral students in good standing as well as a stipend of $18,000 to students who become teaching assistants or research assistants or who enter into fellowships. All of Brown's peer institutions offer five years of guaranteed support to doctoral candidates.
In addition to concerns about the availability of funding beyond the fifth year of studies, grad students have also expressed concerns that the quality of work for doctoral candidates at the University will decrease and the number of TAs will fall. Bonde has told The Herald in the past that the quality of applicants will increase with the new plan and the number of TAs will not be affected.
The Grad School will still allow students to accept funding from outside fellowships, Bonde wrote. But students who receive external funding in years one through five will not automatically receive university funding beyond their fifth year. Bonde said in a previous interview that these students would be "the very top of the list" if they applied for funding after their fifth year.
The FAQ stated that the Grad School will also set up "administrative procedures" to "more effectively manage the five-year guarantee and the expectations of students who are beyond the guaranteed period." These procedures involved departments sending updated reports on the status of students to Grad School officials, Bonde said.
The FAQ also stated that the Grad School will release its decisions on who will receive sixth year funding in "late March." Administrators had originally planned to delay the release of the decisions until April 15, when the admission season concludes.
