The Graduate Tuition and Student Support Policy was created after RPI hired consultants from Arts and Sciences Limited to evaluate the strength of the graduate program. The consultants strongly advised a policy like the GTSSP be formed if RPI wanted to compete with schools like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Caltech.

RPI graduate students were averaging around 7 years to get a Ph.D. instead of 5 years, since most of them were teaching assistants rather than research assistants or fellows. “Students were TA-ing their entire time here,” said Tom Apple, vice provost and dean of graduate education. “We wanted to shorten the time it takes to get a Ph.D. while supporting graduate students. We wanted to do this not only by giving them stipends but by paying their way. ”

Following the advice provided by the consultants, a new goal of the graduate school became fostering the faculty to expand research assistant positions, and decreasing the number of students working up to 300 hours per semester as a TA for as little as $3000. “There was initially no structure in how the graduate students were compensated, particularly TAs,” Peterson said. In 2002, 218 research grants were given out. That number immediately increased to 294 the following year, and is at 360 now.

Apple said, “We didn’t want to cut TA resources, just expand research assistantships. We wanted to get students the best possible circumstances in which to do their research. There was a tremendous inequity across campus.” He continued, “The graduate program wasn’t as strong as the undergraduate program; now it is.” This policy “…has dramatically improved the life of graduate students,” Peterson added.

As a result of the policy, graduate TAs now receive a stipend of at least $12,000 and full tuition to teach 20 hours a week with no student being required to teach more than two years, ensuring they will still be able to complete their degree within a five-year time frame. Ten million dollars was allotted from “strategic budgeting,” to hire new faculty and start new research, due in part to The Rensselaer Plan. The positions of 550 half-time TAs were turned into full-time positions with the $10 million budget. Consequently, the overall number of TAs increased in several departments since 2002, including the math department. There were 27 TAs in 2002, 37 in 2003, and 41 in 2004 in the department. Physics also saw an increase from 22 TAs in 2002 to 35 in 2004. Biology increased its total TAs from 9 in 2002 to 15 in 2003, but has since decreased to 11.

“There are more TAs now than there ever were,” Apple pointed out. He also noted there has been no significant increase in the number of students taking classes, or in the number of classes offered that would account for people thinking there’s a shortage of TAs. According to Peterson, the total number of hours TAs are working hasn’t changed since 2002.

What Apple and Peterson are particularly pleased with is the number of students enrolling in the Ph.D. program at Rensselaer and the increasing number of graduates. “A combination of dramatic increase in research and change in the Graduate Tuition and Student Support Policy has resulted in growth in the number of Ph.D.s,”

Peterson said. Doctorate enrollment went up from 740 in 2002 to 854 in 2004, a 15.4% increase. The number of doctoral students graduating since 2002 has also seen an increase from 105 in 2002 to 182 in 2004. In many cases, the time in which it took a student to complete a Ph.D. or Masters was halved. “It makes me proud,” Apple said, and Peterson agreed.

There are some downsides to the policy, according to Apple. “Some departments have admitted more students than they can handle.” In some cases, they’re still determining what to do with the “extra” students, although Apple doesn’t see it being as large a problem as having graduate TAs working 600 hours a year for seven or eight years just to complete their graduate degree. “It’s a student-friendly policy,” Apple continued. “But it puts the onus on the faculty.”

Donald A. Drew, chair of the Department of Mathematical Sciences, feels that while numbers of full-time TAs have gone up, there is still a shortage of teaching assistants in the math department, resulting from the graduate tuition policy. “The department hired non-math majors to teach math recitations in 2002 (and before). These students were admitted by other departments but were not given financial support. It was relatively cheap for us to hire these students to teach for us. However, after the implementation of the graduate tuition policy, there were none of these students available to us,” Drew said. “Consequently, we admitted a fairly large number of new students to try to make up the numbers in order to keep the undergraduate education program as close to ‘on-track’ as possible.”

President Shirley Ann Jackson said that the provost is working with the department to look into hiring people outside of the math department to teach the recitation sessions, as was done in previous years.

“We only had 2 hours of recitation/lab in Introduction to Differential Equations in 2002, so changing back was judged to be prudent in the face of the impending restrictions on TAs caused by the graduate tuition policy, and causing the least hardship to undergraduates,” Drew said. “I don’t yet know how all this will play out in 2005-2006…The projected number of math TAs for 2005-2006 is 24. Unless I can find TAs from other majors, or undergraduates who can do a good job as TAs, or more faculty, the impact of this change will be severe.”