Graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) are requesting administrators for an increase in their salaries citing financial difficulties, per a report from Austin NBC affiliate KXAN.
KXAN reported that a campus advocacy group called Underpaid@UT delivered a letter calling for the bump to UT Provost Sharon Wood’s office.
One student told KXAN that they’re struggling to pay rent aside from having to deal with inflation.
“My rent going up from last year to this year, the cost of a bunch of other things are going up,” Jonathan Rojas, who’s pursuing their master’s degree matriculating at UT’s Institution of Latin American Studies, said in the report. “That wiggle room is gone.”
Austin’s reputation as an expensive city to live in isn’t lost on Rojas and fellow grad student Deepesh Verma, who asserted UT doesn’t understand “the situation graduate students are in.”
“We are making below a living wage in Austin,” Verma said, KXAN reported.
UT doctoral and terminal master’s students who work teaching assistant and assistant instructor positions that clock 20 hours per week for nine months make a salary of a shade below $20,000.
Per KXAN, at least 40% of the university’s graduate students hold benefits-eligible employment.
Verma divulged to the station that some work as many as two jobs to supplement their graduate research assistant (GRA) income.
Underpaid@UT representatives wrote Wood that graduate workers’ concerns “are only growing in number and intensity,” citing the rising cost of living in the rapidly growing state capital.
“We hope that you will follow through on your promise to look into these issues with the respect and urgency that they deserve,” the letter said. “Our demands have not changed: We are asking that UT take meaningful steps toward raising the base stipend for all graduate workers to a living wage, conduct an audit of our current health care coverage, pause all increases to the rents of university-owned graduate student housing and provide yearly cost-of-living adjustments to all.”
