issuenetrevenue
Issue: Net Revenue Generated by Graduate (Teaching and Research) Assistantships
Taskforce(s): Tuition and Scholarships
Contact Person(s): Bruce Rafert; Dave Fleming (data); Frankie Felder
Situation: There exists an incorrect perception that the expenses associated with a graduate assistant exceed the revenues they provide to the university. The opposite is actually the case, if all sources of expenditures and all sources of revenues are properly tabulated. The Faculty Senate is performing a study following the methodology utilized by Michigan Tech (Rafert, 2004), although that study is not yet completed for Clemson. The MTU study found, for virtually any parametric categorization of faculty effort
Suggestions for discussion, and/or action:
COMMENTS
I think it's unproductive to cast the discussion in terms of revenue vs expenses for grad assistants. For better or worse, Clemson has the same business model as most other research universities; undergrads pay tuition in larger amounts than grad students, and grad students are associated with research (often funded research) and in many cases are also usually expected to help with undergraduate instruction by working as teaching assistants. In my dept graduate students teach lab sections and if we did not have grad students to teach these lab sections then we could not offer the labs; bottom line. In other departments grad students are used differently, but I think in nearly all cases there is a tight integration both academically and fiscally of grad and undergrad programs, and this is a good thing.
I think that if we move very far away from this model then we would dramatically impact both grad and undergrad programs, for the negative in both cases. Graduate programs would become much more narrow and much less relevant to real life if there was little contact of undergraduates with graduate students. Undergrad instruction at Clemson would be very different and I think not better, and probably more expensive, if it was devoid of graduate teaching assistants such that all instruction was covered by regular faculty. And of course, cutting grad students eventually means cutting grad programs, which compromises Clemson's vision to become a top-20 university. Eventually such actions would also compromise our ability to hire faculty with an expectation that they would be active as both teachers and scholars.
The integrated model of graduate and undergraduate programs has been a hallmark of US higher education for decades and despite recent lapses here and improvements abroad, our universities are still the envy of the world. To be sure these are hard times and they will require sacrifices. But please, let's try not to cast the dicussion in terms of whether grad programs support undergrad or vice versa. Both are true, which is good, and we should try to keep things that way.
Just my two cents....
