Stanford is leaving grad students in even more precarious positions mid-pandemic by leaving funding up to departments. Not guaranteeing summer funding across the board was always a problem. With Covid-19, it is more critical than ever for Stanford to take action.
[THREAD]

Some depts say “the department’s budget is always quite close to the bone, and they rarely have excess in the amount that would be needed to give you all summer funding. If there were a school or university program to help support it, things might be different. We shall see.” 2/

Other depts’ summer funding (if offered at all) is <53% of academic year funding, but students must still pay university same monthly rent. Many grad students must supplement with side gigs like dog sitting or freelance (even harder if not impossible to get now) to get by.

For context, in 2019-2020, the average PhD student paid >36% of their academic year salary to “subsidized” university housing. For 2020-2021, this number will increase to almost 40%. This doesn’t include the more expensive housing dedicated to MBA/JD students.

$1200 federal stimulus check (pre-taxes) will not even cover 1 month of rent for average grad student living in Stanford “subsidized” housing. And that’s if they’re eligible- international students get 0. On average students pay $1345/month this year, will pay ~$1560 next year.

Should summer funding be up to depts? No. The danger of not having uni-level guidelines on grad student funding through this crisis is that funding disparities that are already apparent between different programs can give way to dangerous levels of inequity.

If Stanford doesn’t mitigate this, STEM might be ok, for Humanities and others, it’s gonna be an economic train wreck.

Stanford grad students ~ whether affected or not, PLEASE add your name to this petition (in your inbox?). If you didn’t get it, I can fwd the Google form to you for you to sign!