PhD Health Insurance Coverage

On November 18th, Provost Garrett announced an exciting new program regarding health insurance costs for PhD students on the CMU Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP). Thanks to generous financial support and significant effort from Provost Garrett and the Deans of the Colleges, PhD students on the CMU SHIP will now have 50% of their annual, individual health insurance costs covered. This is a significant change and will go into effect for the 2020-2021 Academic Year. We want to highlight a few major points and answer a few questions about the rollout of this program:

• The quality of the SHIP will be maintained, with a priority on low or zero copays, strong mental health coverage, and low deductibles.
  • SHIP will still have coverage options for dependents and spouses, but the 50% coverage of insurance costs from CMU will extend only to the individual PhD student on the plan.
  • Students adding vision and dental insurance will continue to pay the full cost for these.
• The monthly payment plan through the Tuition Management System (TMS) will still be available to students. 
• Stipend levels will not decrease for any PhD students. 
  • The approximately 15% of PhD students whose departments already cover their health insurance partially or in full should talk to their department program coordinators to see how these changes will affect them next fall, as mentioned in the letter from Provost Garrett.
  • PhD students not on the CMU SHIP should also not see a decrease in their stipend level, but again should talk to their department program coordinators.
• PhD students can expect 50% of the SHIP to be covered moving forward. The program will be evaluated in future years, but is expected to continue.
  • This coverage is pegged to expected increases in costs of health insurance coverage (i.e., the coverage is not a fixed amount but will increase as insurance costs do).

This change is a big step in addressing a substantial concern for the PhD student population and making CMU more competitive with peer institutions. Helping students with rising healthcare costs has been a part of GSA’s advocacy since before our Strategic Plan was created in 2015, and we have had ongoing conversations with university leadership about the importance of this kind of support. We want to extend our sincerest thanks to the college Deans, Provost Jim Garrett, Vice Provost for Education Amy Burkert, and many other university leaders for listening to and collaboratively working with students towards substantive change to improve the student experience. We also want to highlight that every student voice that raised this concern at department meetings, town halls, and when interacting with higher level CMU administration was an essential part of getting to this moment. This outcome is a prime example of administration and students working together to achieve a significant improvement for our campus community, and of the power of students voicing their concerns.

We want to highlight that while this is a victory for our community, there is still work to be done. In particular, this change does not address cost concerns for the Masters student community at CMU. In the GSA, we have recently renewed focus on Masters student concerns, particularly with our creation of the VP of Academic Affairs. We recognize that financial accessibility is among a range of concerns for Masters students, and we will continue our work to fill in the gaps of our advocacy efforts. In that light, and to follow up with our Masters students survey at the end of the past academic year, we are starting a listening tour for Masters students. We have already scheduled the first town hall in the School of Drama, and will be scheduling the rest through the GSA department reps in the Spring semester. Be on the lookout for an upcoming email from your department reps and come and make your voice heard! In the meantime, you can share your story with us.

Lastly, we would like to reiterate that none of this would have been possible without the efforts put in by many graduate students themselves. We continue to look to expand the scope of our advocacy on issues affecting graduate students. If you would like to be more involved in our efforts, and work towards a better campus for all graduate students, we invite you to join a GSA committee. You can also reach out to us at gsa@cmu.edu.