Announcing the Annual GSA Stipend Report for AY18-19

It’s no secret that graduate students often live fairly frugal lives. Doctoral students typically receive a stipend to cover their expenses during graduate school. But is it enough to cover their cost of living? How does it stack up against other universities? Do you still have to pay mandatory fees out of this stipend?

Some other institutions publish this data on their website so prospective students know what to expect when looking at schools to apply to. CMU, however, doesn’t have a graduate school to collect, standardize, and publish this information. In our strategic plan, we recommended that the University start publishing the stipend amounts from each department or program, but we’ve taken on that role in the meantime.

Every year, we ask our GSA reps from each department to report on the typical stipend received by doctoral students in their department. We also gather information about months of support, mandatory fees covered, and if the health insurance is paid by the department. The latest edition of the stipend report, reflecting the 2018-2019 academic year, is now available. You can view previous years on our Campus Advocacy page.

We publish these reports to empower GSA representatives and all graduate students to advocate for stipend increases, health insurance and fee coverage, and 12 months of support. Additionally, this information helps GSA model the effects of campus and external policies on our doctoral students, such as the increasing costs of health insurance premiums or changes to the federal tax code.

We hope that you will find these stipend reports useful in your own advocacy efforts in your department or college. We will be continuing to develop advocacy tools for students and advocating for greater financial security for our graduate students!