The February 2 issue of The Polytechnic cited a lack of teaching assistants in upper level math courses. The faculty that were interviewed for the article laid the cause of this shortage on the Graduate Tuition and Student Support Policy which was adopted in the spring of 2002. The Poly article does correctly point out that there are more teaching assistants at the Institute today than there were prior to the inception of the tuition policy, and that the same holds true for the math department itself.
Additionally, Dr. Don Drew, the Chair of Mathematics, correctly points out in The Poly’sarticle that inexpensive TAs from other departments, who were admitted to graduate school without funding, are no longer available to be used as cheap labor. Still, the TA resources for the math department today are greater than they were in toto prior to the policy even with cross-departmental hiring. Thus, the problem of the shortage of TAs alluded to in the article can not rest with the tuition policy. Understanding the shortage must come through an examination of the resource allocation within the math department.
The graduate tuition and student support policy has transformed our graduate program. Prior to this policy a prime concern with respect to the graduate program was to keep a supply of TAs and researchers available to departments and faculty at a low price. Many students who taught courses were paid minimally. Many were pressed into service as both TAs and research assistants, were expected to perform both jobs fully, yet were paid substandard wages. A large number of students were languishing in the program under the insidious degree completion policy. This policy incentivised departments and professors to retain more senior graduate students in their classrooms and laboratories as research and teaching assistants rather than encouraging the students to graduate. Under degree completion, senior graduate students were less expensive to the department or faculty researcher than were their younger counterparts, while at the same time being more experienced.
Today we have a student-focused, selective, high-quality program in which only the best students are admitted, and those chosen for funding are fully supported. Students are encouraged to focus on their research and the completion of their degrees. Since the inception of the policy, the number of Ph.D.-seeking students has risen remarkably and the input quality of the student body, as measured by all available metrics, has increased.
Removal of ‘degree completion’ has allowed hundreds of students to complete their degrees, resulting in a record number of masters and Ph.D. degrees being granted by the Institute in the last two years. The number of graduate students supported by external research funds, which had not been rising at the rate equal to the increase in external funding, took a step-function increase upon implementation of the tuition policy.
Thus, far more graduate students are working on their dissertations, free of the time-consuming burdens of excessive teaching, while still having more than adequate opportunities to obtain the teaching skills they may need during their graduate career. Graduate students supported on external research grants are working with faculty whose ideas and track record have allowed them to secure external research funding under the peer-review system. This is perhaps the greatest benefit of the new policy—the encouragement of students to work in the laboratories at Rensselaer that are at the forefront of their field.
Tom Apple
Vice Provost
Dean of Graduate Education
