JACOB KRAMER

Advocate readers will be familiar with the Adjunct Fellowships that the GC administration has announced will pay the tuition of many new students. However, recent events show that the details of the plan still haven’t been ironed out.

According to an August 7, 2003, memorandum from Graduate Center Provost and Senior Vice President William P. Kelly, about 830 five-year tuition scholarships will be created over the next five years. These will include about 430 existing Science Fellows, Graduate Teaching Fellows, and Gilleece Fellows, plus the 400 newly instituted Graduate Adjunct Fellows. Because of the way the packages are given out, in yearly sets of 300, roughly 1,500 students will hold one of these plans by the end of the five year phase-in.

According to Rita Rodin, University Director for Public Information, approximately 1,500 Graduate Center students teach within the CUNY system. So far so good: 1,500 adjuncts and 1,500 packages the numbers seem to add up. In addition, Kelly’s memo states that the new program will be worth $5.2 million per year when fully phased in, and according to Associate Provost Linda Edwards the tuition paid by all graduate students who give service of all kinds teaching, lab work, and research coincidentally adds up to about $5 million.

It would appear, however, that these are not the same 1,500 students, or $5 million. The Science and Gilleece Fellows, after all, are not required to teach, and the GTFs and GAFs are required to teach only in the second through fourth years of their packages. According to Edwards, 200 GTFs and GAFs will be granted each year, which means that only about 600 will be required to teach in any one year when the program is fully phased in. As you can see, that doesn’t add up.

What about the remaining adjuncts? Assuming the fellowship students don’t teach in their first year, the plan leaves between 300 and 900 adjunct positions without one of the new fellowships, depending on how many students choose to teach beyond the requirements. This calculation assumes a constant number of adjuncts, but Rodin has said that the goal is to reduce the proportion of courses throughout CUNY taught by adjuncts from 40 to 30 percent largely by hiring more full-time faculty. The numbers will also fluctuate depending on enrollment.

The position of the Graduate Center administration has been to acknowledge that these adjuncts may not receive tuition remission. At the September 19, Doctoral Students’ Council plenary, Kelly explained that adjuncts who did not receive one of these packages would not categorically receive tuition remission, a position Graduate Center President Frances Degen Horowitz reiterated at the November 17 plenary and that Edwards confirmed for this article.

However, the CUNY central administration recently stated that by the end of the phase-in period, all graduate student adjuncts would receive tuition remission for teaching. Doctoral Students’ Council Co-Chair for Student Affairs Carolyn Fisher said that she called attention to the unfunded student adjuncts at an October 28 meeting of the University Student Senate for the CUNY Board of Trustees at the Hunter College School of Social Work. According to Fisher, members of the CUNY central administration argued that by the end of the phase-in period, all Graduate Center students who teach will receive tuition remission. According to Rodin, Eventually, all those who teach will benefit at one level or another.

A possible explanation for the apparent discrepancy may be the redistribution of existing funds freed up by the new money. According to Kelly at the September 19, plenary, the money for the new packages is incremental, and leaves the existing financial aid budget available to entering and continuing students. According to Edwards, the doctoral departments will continue to allocate the existing aid money, however, and may or may not use it for tuition remission. Kelly’s memo, for instance, encourages departments to grant additional support to GTF and GAF fellowship students in their first year.

Administrators at both the GC and central administration levels have indicated that they will work together to arrive at a commonly-understood plan by the end of the year.