The task force report found that graduate student stipends at Indiana University's College of Arts and Sciences are inadequate and non-competitive. The typical stipend of $13,580 is over $7,000 less than the university's own estimated cost of living. Stipends are among the lowest of Indiana University's Big Ten peers and have not increased despite rising tuition and costs. The report recommends increasing the minimum stipend to $18,735, though the university has only committed to one recommendation so far. The graduate workers' statement argues this is a campus-wide problem and that no IU employee should earn less than a living wage.

1. Continueson back
Indiana Graduate Workers Statement on
College of Arts and Sciences Task Force on Graduate Student Funding Final Report
The College of Arts and Sciences (COAS) commissioned a task force on Graduate Student Funding
in 2019 in the context of “current threats to the viability of our graduate programs” (p. 1). After
multiple refusals from COAS administration, we were finally able to acquire a copy of their final
report from May 2019 through an open records request.
The report brings together previously hard-to-obtain or inaccessible information on graduate
funding at COAS. It paints a deeply concerning picture of the contemporary state of graduate
employment within COAS and by extension the rest of IUB, as the situation is known to be as bad if
not worse in other schools on the Bloomington campus.1 The report clearly lays out IU’s failure to
keep stipends adequate to the basic financial needs of graduate employees or competitive with other
universities within the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA). The task force was similarly blunt about
the negative effects this is having on the College of Arts and Sciences with poor recruitment and
overstretched teaching.
The report does make recommendations but they are non-binding. So far IUB, after much pressure
from the Graduate Workers’ Coalition and faculty allies, has only committed to one of them and is
not providing further resources to aid COAS with increasing salaries. Any planned stipend increases
within COAS are coming at the cost of Student Academic Appointments (SAA) lines, fellowships,
and scholarships. Below, we highlight the most striking findings and provide a summary of our
thoughts on the recommendations of the taskforce.
1 Notably, effective AI salaries at Jacobs School of Music reach as low as $4,238.

2. Salaries and Cost-of-Living
● The report identifies the cost-of-living estimate by MIT in Monroe County is $24,731, and IU’s
own estimate is $20,008. (pp. 9-10)2
● The most typical—and lowest—annual salary in COAS is effectively $13,580 after fees.
International students and non-resident students pay additional fees. (p. 7)
● This salary falls $7,257 short of the IU’s own calculated cost-of-living. (p. 9)
● The report proposes $18,735 as the salary floor, chosen not based on the cost-of-living, but
because it is 150% of the poverty line for a single adult
Financial Pressure
● Many graduate employees' effective salaries are just barely over the 2019 poverty line of
$12,490. For a household with two adults and a child, the poverty line is $21,330, which is
above even the best-paid SAAs. (p. 10)
● Tuition has increased by 6% each year since 2013, and the stipends have not changed. (p. 7)
● In 2018-19, 1,320 COAS graduate students had to supplement their IU funding with loans. Most
of these students have SAA positions. (p. 6)
● Graduate students are known to sell biofluids, [plasma], in order to make ends meet.3 (p. 6)
● Stipends fall below Medicaid eligibility. (p. 7)
International and Underrepresented Grad Workers
● The report recommends that during the 2019-2020 academic year, the university should
allocate fellowships to cover the $400-$700 annual international fees. As of yet, no such plan
has been announced.
● The bicentennial fundraiser brought in 46 million dollars for “graduate fellowships”, so it
should be no issue to cover the international fees for all graduate employees, which would cost
well under 1 million dollars annually, by our estimation. (p. 8)
● The current federal administration has changed policies to make it harder for international
students to work extra hours. (p. 8)
● “Despite a judgement from the IU General Counsel’s office that DACA students are eligible to
hold SAAs, University offices continue to attempt to refuse appointments to [DACA] students.”
2 IU’s cost of living taken from Table 2 from page 9, including just room and board, transportation, and personal
expenses
3 This is classified by the report as “entrepreneurial activity”

3. ● “Low stipends are particularly consequential for recruitment of underrepresented minority
(URM) students.” (p. 8)
Comparison with Big Ten Academic Alliance
● “Students in many of our humanities programs have higher teaching loads than students at
other institutions.” (p. 10)
● “COAS offers fewer years of fellowship support than many other institutions.” (p. 9)
● “Several of our programs offer fewer years of guaranteed support than other BTAA
institutions.” (p. 10)
● Compared to stipends of the same disciplines in other schools of the Big Ten Academic
Alliance, “almost without exception, IU stipends fall at or near the bottom.” (pp. 9–10)
● Even Natural and Mathematical Sciences programs—generally the highest paid SAAs in
COAS—are not competitive with competitors because “stipends are lower” and “offers rely
more heavily on instructional SAAs.” This is particularly true for Biochemistry and molecular
programs within Biology. (p. 11)
Shrinking Workforce, Increasing Undergraduate Population
● 26.6% of lower-level courses and 13.5% upper-level courses in COAS were taught by graduate
students as instructors of record. Many others serve as course assistants. (p. 2)
● The number of graduate applicants to COAS programs has declined from 5,066 in 2014 to 3,679
in 2018, a decrease of 27.3% in the last 5 years. (p. 8)
● The number of doctoral students in COAS reduced from 2,344 in 2013 to 1,907 in 2018, a
reduction of 19%. (p. 2)
● The number of SAA has dropped from 2,482 in 2013 to 2,183 in 2017. (2) Meanwhile, IU touts
that 2019 saw the biggest undergraduate class in history, therefore the SAA to student ratio has
gone down.4
● Further, analysis of the Indiana State Compensation Database shows that the number of AIs
decreased from 2077 to 1752 in the last five years.
4 https://www.idsnews.com/article/2019/09/bicentennial-year-brings-ius-largest-and-most-diverse-class

4. Final Thoughts
We are a campus-wide organization, and the problems with graduate salaries are campus wide.
Many other IUB schools have salaries equal to or below those in College of Arts and Sciences. While
we appreciate the intentions of this report and its recommendations, it is obvious that graduate
workers in other schools face the same cost of living, the same fees—and thus the same financial
precarity—as those in COAS. Indiana University should take immediate action to remedy this
situation across campus, and we will continue fighting for campus-wide solutions: no employee at
Indiana University Bloomington should be making less than a living wage and getting rid of the fees
is a first step towards that goal.
We have not been able to comment on every aspect of the report that merits it. We encourage our
members and the public to read the report for themselves, since it contains so much information
about the financial situation of graduate teachers and researchers at Indiana University.
To access the report online, go to: www.indianagradworkers.org