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Good News - Economy/Grad Schools

Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:40 am
by naseermk
"The funding is not a big factor right now, even in the tight budget climate, because when we have to have so many TAs to teach so many sections, we have to have them. Ultimately, the limiting factor has been how many students can find research advisors. So as long as there are so many faculty members, the number graduate students we can absorb is unchanged."

[Director of Grad. Studies at a Top 25].

Re: Good News - Economy/Grad Schools

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 6:15 am
by babazula
Here is a post from thegradcafe

Letter dated 2/2/09. "Many universities are currently affected by the economic crisis, and USC is no exception. Support for graduate fellowship packages will be diminished this year. We are making do with less and moving a little later than usual. I will be emailing you soon to talk to you about this process."

well... what do you have to say abobut that?

Re: Good News - Economy/Grad Schools

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 6:40 am
by Helio
In an email send out by Madison 02/10/2009

Thank you for your patience with that as we determine the number of guaranteed funding offers that can be made during this troublesome economy.

Re: Good News - Economy/Grad Schools

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 8:13 pm
by naseermk
babazula wrote:Here is a post from thegradcafe

Letter dated 2/2/09. "Many universities are currently affected by the economic crisis, and USC is no exception. Support for graduate fellowship packages will be diminished this year. We are making do with less and moving a little later than usual. I will be emailing you soon to talk to you about this process."

well... what do you have to say abobut that?
Fellowship is a different matter. I am talking about TA ships - they'll be needed as long as undergrad students enroll.

Re: Good News - Economy/Grad Schools

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 8:26 pm
by Helio
naseermk wrote:
babazula wrote:Here is a post from thegradcafe

Letter dated 2/2/09. "Many universities are currently affected by the economic crisis, and USC is no exception. Support for graduate fellowship packages will be diminished this year. We are making do with less and moving a little later than usual. I will be emailing you soon to talk to you about this process."

well... what do you have to say abobut that?
Fellowship is a different matter. I am talking about TA ships - they'll be needed as long as undergrad students enroll.
and that is the question, if undergrads can still afford to go to school

Re: Good News - Economy/Grad Schools

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 8:40 pm
by dlenmn
At Madison, TAship == guaranteed funding. I overheard two profs talking the other day, and it sounded like they weren't able to give out as many guaranteed TAships as they wanted to.

Re: Good News - Economy/Grad Schools

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 8:43 pm
by Helio
dlenmn wrote:At Madison, TAship == guaranteed funding. I overheard two profs talking the other day, and it sounded like they weren't able to give out as many guaranteed TAships as they wanted to.
i will get the confirmation of that in the mail hopefully by the end of the week. I just hope i am getting at least something, so my decision is not being made for me.

Re: Good News - Economy/Grad Schools

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 12:00 am
by dlenmn
Again, I only heard parts of the conversation, but it I think the deal is that all the PhD grad students they accept will still get guaranteed 5 year TA funding. It's just that they were sending out fewer offers (at least initially). Or maybe I have it completely wrong. I was trying to answer student questions at the time...

If this is the case, I'm guessing that it's to let the budget remain flexible. They already hire many TAs from outside the department. So if their TA budget remains the same, they'll just hire more. But they wouldn't want to get caught in the situation where their budget gets cut and they have too many guaranteed TAs. Again, this last paragraph wasn't information I overheard, it's just speculation on my part that might explain what I think I heard.

Or perhaps every year they want to admit more students than they have funding for (would not surprising -- they'd probably admit many more people if they could), and one of the profs was new to the process and commenting on it. Who knows.

Re: Good News - Economy/Grad Schools

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 12:52 pm
by murs
I go to a public undergrad and we are getting hit hard by the economy. Our physics department had to have a 5% budget cut for next year, so they accomodated that by making undergrads TA (nice job for me, but at $9 an hour I am considerably cheaper than a grad student). My school only lets in about 6 grad students a year, but they may have to drop that down as low as 4.

Re: Good News - Economy/Grad Schools

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 1:38 pm
by PoincareSection