Graduate assistants, integral part of teaching force, petition for higher pay

DANIEL DASSOW Editor-in-Chief

On April 25, over 75 staff, faculty and students rallied in McClung Plaza in support of a petition from United Campus Workers that calls for an increase to base stipends and cost of living adjustments for graduate teaching assistants and associates, students who often serve as primary instructors for 100 and 200-level courses.

According to data from UT’s Office of Institutional Research and Strategic Analysis, the median pay for the university’s 1,154 graduate teaching assistants is $18,000. While this figure represents a 4% increase in median pay since 2019, the Knoxville Area Association of Realtors estimates that rents have increased around 47% in that same time. In 2022, rent growth in Knoxville outpaced every other city in the U.S. with a 9.6% growth rate.

At the rally, students shared stories about rent payments higher than their minimum monthly stipends of $1,200 a month, or $14,400 a year. Students reported the difficulties of getting medical care or childcare in addition to their stress over increasing housing costs and decreasing housing availability, as

In their petition, which has received over 1,000 signatures, graduate students and organizers call for Chancellor Donde Plowman to raise the base stipend for graduate assistantships to $24,000 a year and to factor annual cost of living increases into stipend adjustments.

Ryan Ackett, a doctoral student in soil science and co-chair of the Graduate Committee of United Campus Workers, said he had heard many stories like these while working on the campaign.

“I’ve heard from fellow graduate students who don’t know how they are going to afford rent next year, who have been pushed out of their apartments, who are drowning in thousands of dollars of credit card debt, who are on food stamps or get all their groceries from food pantries,” Ackett said.

Around 40% of the 6,766 graduate and professional students enrolled at UT hold assistantships for research and teaching. Last May, the university announced that its budget for the 2022-23 academic year would eliminate mandatory fees for graduate assistants, a major victory for United Campus Workers and the Graduate Student Senate that saves students around $2,000 annually.

The students, faculty and staff who took the petition to Chancellor Donde Plowman’s office following the rally said that the eliminated fees do not account for their increased teaching and research loads, as well as cost of living.

“We do the research, we teach the classes, we grade the papers that bring this university millions of dollar,” Ackett said. “The university can make this change for us.”

As the undergraduate student population grows, graduate students are assigned to fill instructional gaps in related fields. Elisha Brooks, a graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Mathematics, was told he would teach two sections of a statistics course this semester, though he has never taken a statistics class himself.

At the rally, Brooks shared some numbers he’d run relating to his contribution as instructor for the two sections, which include around 65 students and close to 200 assignments to grade each week. Though he estimates his courses bring in over $147,000 in tuition in one year, his base stipend is $20,800 a year, or around 14% of the tuition yield.

“Without us, this school wouldn’t function,” Brooks said. “Thousands of undergrads are being taught and brining money into this school. That’s labor that we’re performing for this school. We need to be paid fairly for the labor that we do. Otherwise, that’s just theft, I don’t know how else to call it.”

At a time in higher education when more courses are being taught by graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty while administrative salaries and budgets increase, Brooks said that graduate students need to continue to petition for increased pay.

“We need to demand what is ours, demand what is fair, and keep the pressure on them,” Brooks said. “They’re not gonna care if we don’t make them care.”