The U. at Buffalo campus, which is part of the State U. of New York systemIdawriter, Wikimedia Commons
The University at Buffalo is barring most departments in its College of Arts and Sciences from recruiting funded Ph.D. students next year, unless they qualify for certain scholarships. Buffalo, part of the State University of New York, said the move was necessary for future improvement, but some graduate students called it hostile.
David E. Johnson, associate dean of graduate education at Buffalo, delivered the news in a Thursday email, a screenshot of which was widely shared on Twitter. For the fall of 2020, and with the exception of potential Arthur A. Schomburg Fellows — a scholarship for graduate students in underrepresented groups — only six departments in the College of Arts and Sciences will be allowed to recruit funded Ph.D. students, Johnson wrote. The departments are biological sciences, chemistry, communications, communicative disorders and sciences, geology, and psychology.
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The U. at Buffalo campus, which is part of the State U. of New York systemIdawriter, Wikimedia Commons
The University at Buffalo is barring most departments in its College of Arts and Sciences from recruiting funded Ph.D. students next year, unless they qualify for certain scholarships. Buffalo, part of the State University of New York, said the move was necessary for future improvement, but some graduate students called it hostile.
David E. Johnson, associate dean of graduate education at Buffalo, delivered the news in a Thursday email, a screenshot of which was widely shared on Twitter. For the fall of 2020, and with the exception of potential Arthur A. Schomburg Fellows — a scholarship for graduate students in underrepresented groups — only six departments in the College of Arts and Sciences will be allowed to recruit funded Ph.D. students, Johnson wrote. The departments are biological sciences, chemistry, communications, communicative disorders and sciences, geology, and psychology.
The college has 30 departments in total, John DellaContrada, vice president for university communications, wrote in an email. “Some departments have multiple programs,” he said, and “24 programs have paused” but can still recruit self-funded students and can offer the Schomberg fellowship or a presidential scholarship.
“We recognize that this will be disappointing to nearly everyone, but the reduction of the size of our funded student cohort is the only way to realize the benefits of the Ph.D. Excellence Initiative,” Johnson wrote. As part of that effort, announced in August, university administrators will raise the floor for academic-year stipends to $20,000 for all full-time fully funded Ph.D. students on 10-month appointments as teaching assistants, research assistants, or graduate assistants for the 2019-20 academic year.
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The university enrolls about 2,350 Ph.D. students, about 1,400 of whom receive stipends. About 1,000 will see their stipends increased to the new $20,000 floor, DellaContrada wrote in an email.
What Johnson’s email failed to mention, DellaContrada said, is that this is a “one-year pause” in recruiting Ph.D. students in some programs. The measure is being taken so that current students’ stipends can be raised to the $20,000 floor, which is permanent, he said.
The affected programs are not shutting down, DellaContrada said, and the college is not recruiting unfunded Ph.D. students into the programs.
Damien Keane, an associate professor of English and the department’s director of graduate studies, said the severity of the pause was surprising, but not the decision itself. Keane said his department does not allow unfunded graduate students, and outside grants for English Ph.D. students are few and far between. “You ask how it affects our recruiting effort. We have no recruiting effort for the coming year,” he told The Chronicle.
You ask how it affects our recruiting effort. We have no recruiting effort for the coming year.
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Right now, he said, there’s “a lot of uncertainty” regarding how to move forward.
Macy McDonald, a third-year Ph.D. student in English, told The Chronicle that at first she and her fellow graduate students were excited to hear about the new $20,000 floor. A competitive stipend that covered graduate students’ living expenses is something she and others have sought for years, she said. But when they got the news, she said, they were also “deeply suspicious about the way this was going to be funded.”
Then they learned of the funding freeze. In the humanities, institutional funding is a necessity for Ph.D.s, McDonald said. “When I was applying to schools, I was told that if I was accepted but not funded, that school didn’t really want me.”
McDonald said there are plans to protest what she and other students perceive as punishment for their activism. Graduate students will also be calling on faculty members to act. And other grad-student unions should take notice, she said, because this decision will effectively shrink the size of the bargaining unit at Buffalo.
“So to have a labor movement be met with a punitive measure that then reduces the size of that unit,” she said, “even though it’s not technically illegal, is horribly immoral.”
EmmaPettit is a senior reporter at The Chronicle who covers the ways people within higher ed work and live — whether strange, funny, harmful, or hopeful. She’s also interested in political interference on campus, as well as overlooked crevices of academe, such as a scrappy puppetry program at an R1 university and a charmed football team at a Kansas community college. Follow her on Twitter at @EmmaJanePettit, or email her at emma.pettit@chronicle.com.
