The Graduate School Funding Handbook

By April Vahle Hamel and Jennifer S. Furlong

For more than fifteen years The Graduate School Funding Handbook has been an invaluable resource for students applying to graduate school in the United States or abroad, at the master's, doctoral, and postdoctoral levels. Illuminating the competitive world of graduate education funding in the arts, humanities, sciences, and engineering, the book offers general and specific information in an intelligent, comprehensive, and straightforward manner so that readers can save time and make winning grant and fellowship applications.

The authors include detailed descriptions of the types of funding offered graduate students, ranging from tuition scholarships to assistantships, work-study opportunities, and university loan programs. In addition, the handbook thoroughly covers the availability of nationally prominent grants and fellowships through the federal government and private organizations. This revised third edition provides a wealth of additional information and advice and details a number of new grant opportunities including several aimed at women, minorities, and other underrepresented student groups. Covering fellowships and grants for individual training, study abroad, research, dissertations, and postdoctoral work, the book includes useful addresses, deadlines, number of available awards, number of applicants, purpose of grants and restrictions, duration of awards, applicant eligibility, and application requirements. The information is comprehensive, detailed, and current, based on data from funding agencies through interviews, review of application packets, web site information, and the authors' many years of experience in the field.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Release date: Feb 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9780812207071

Book preview

Preface to the Third Edition

This third edition of The Graduate School Funding Handbook contains new and updated information. All the grants, fellowships, and scholarships offered by the government and private institutions have been thoroughly researched, revised, and brought up to date. Some funding opportunities listed in the first and second editions have been removed because they are no longer offered, while others have been reviewed and rewritten. Information on new awards has been added.

Chapter 1

Graduate Degrees and Institutional Financial Aid

Types of Graduate Degrees

In 2009, more than 1.75 million students were enrolled in graduate certificate, education specialist, master’s, and doctoral programs in the arts and sciences within the United States. In addition, another 190,000 students were in M.B.A. and other related business programs; 65,000 were in medical school; and 150,000 were busy pursuing law-school degrees. Of currently enrolled students, 90 percent can be found in traditional, on-campus programs at established master’s and doctoral degree-granting universities, while the rest participate in some form of distance learning over the Internet or by mail.

Graduate programs have been classified into general categories described below.

Master’s Degrees

Applied/Professional Master’s Programs

Applied/professional master’s programs require one to three years of course work and are meant to prepare people for careers in such professions as business (M.B.A.), teaching (M.A.T.), and social work (M.S.W.).

Many professional master’s programs require an internship or other hands-on experience as part of the curriculum. Experience after college and before graduate school is highly desirable, which means scholars in these disciplines may be older, returning students.

Research Master’s Programs

Research master’s programs require one to two years of course work and are designed to enhance research experience begun in undergraduate school. Some programs require a long research paper called a thesis, and most expect successful completion of written or oral examinations. Most research master’s programs (M.A., M.S.) in the arts and sciences fall into this category.

Creative Master’s Programs

Creative master’s programs last two to three years and are intended to expand on creative work started in undergraduate school or through experience. Painters, musicians, poets, and artists of all sorts are attracted to programs in fine arts (M.F.A.), music (M.M.), writing and poetry (M.F.A.W.), and others. Creative master’s programs usually require a special project, such as a book of poetry, a recital, or an exhibition, as part of the curriculum.

Doctoral Degrees

Applied/Professional Doctoral Programs

Applied/professional doctoral programs, such as those found in business (D.B.A.), medicine (M.D., O.D.), law (J.D.), and education (Ed.D.), like their master’s counterparts, are designed to develop a corps of new professionals who apply their skills in a hands-on style. While some may teach or do research in college or university settings, most intend to practice outside an academic setting. The length of study ranges from three to five years and usually requires postdoctoral experience or passing a national or state licensing examination, or both.

Research Doctoral Programs

Research doctoral programs culminate in the awarding of the Ph.D. or Sc.D. degree. Most research doctoral degrees are awarded in arts and sciences and in engineering, but they are also available in business, social work, and other professional areas. Students enrolled in these programs usually intend to do research in higher education, industry, or government, or they aim to teach and do research at the college or university level.

Combined Degree Programs

Combining an applied with a research degree program is common. A medical student may also pursue a Ph.D. in a biomedical area or a law student a master’s in an arts and sciences field. Usually, applications are submitted to both programs simultaneously, and the applicant must be accepted to both.

Certificates

Certificates may be required to satisfy state or other agency requirements. Teachers in public education need certificates to teach, do counseling, and administrate. Other certificates may not lead to licensing or a degree but may be a university’s way of recognizing the acquisition of a skill set or information in a particular area.

Degree Program Enrollment, Time to Degree, Career Status, Cost

Everyone interested in enrolling in a graduate program should investigate four areas. The first is degree program enrollment. The number of openings in graduate-school programs rises and falls from year to year and decade to decade. In 2008, the American Association of Medical Colleges projected that the available slots in medical schools will increase 21 percent by 2012. That is an increase of 3,400 students per year. Since the passage of the 2010 federal health-care bill, it would not be surprising to see that percentage go even higher. This increase means that the chances of getting into medical school currently and in the near future have improved over previous years.

The second important consideration in looking at graduate programs is time to degree. How long will it take to get a degree? While most professional programs have standard lengths of time that almost all students adhere to, such as three years of law school and four of medical school, time to degree in other programs is not so clearly defined. A 2010 article in the New York Times Education section reported the following: The median age of a recipient of a humanities doctorate is 35, with an average education-related debt of $23,315.

Source: Patricia Cohen, The Long-Haul Degree, New York Times, Education Life, April 18, 2010, 28–29.

Taking a long time to get a doctoral degree is understandable in certain fields. Anthropology students usually spend years in foreign countries doing research, while education students tend to get their degrees while attending school part-time. But how do you explain nine years or more to finish a doctoral degree in English? Make sure to check the time to degree in your chosen field. Ask how long it takes people to graduate in specific programs at specific universities. Then ask yourself whether it makes sense for you.

The third consideration for prospective graduate students is career status. How many jobs are out there in your chosen profession? Can you expect employment as soon as you graduate? Will you have to secure a postdoctoral position before entry into a permanent position? While we can predict more positions for doctors in family practice based on current data and the passage of health-care reform, other fields do not have such a rosy outlook. Humanities is one such area. The Modern Language Association (2010), a professional organization, projects that next year there will be fewer jobs for those with doctorates in English or foreign language than in any of the past thirty-five years. Full-time academic jobs in English have been hard to find before this prediction.

Cost is the last ingredient. The next section goes into detail about financial aid, stipends, loans, and other ways of paying for graduate school. When analyzed along with time to degree and career status, cost should predict the amount of loans accrued over the length of the degree, how quickly a job can be gotten, and what the loan payment schedule will be.

You do the math. Graduate school requires a significant investment of time and money. No matter how committed you may be to a field, be informed and be realistic about whether it makes sense for you.

Institutional Financial Aid

Money offered to graduate students from the universities they attend is allocated based on merit, need, or a combination of the two. In general, most graduate students qualify according to need because they normally do not own property, are emancipated from (no longer dependents of) their parents, and have low or nonexistent incomes.

Professional schools like law, medicine, and business offer financial aid based on need usually in the form of loans. Some merit-based fellowship money is given to the top recruits.

Arts and sciences master’s and doctoral programs offer merit- and need-based fellowships and loans. Master’s and doctoral students can expect tuition waivers and fellowship stipends, with a greater share of the support going to doctoral students.

Within a university, it is not unusual for programs to have different tuition costs and a variety of funding programs. At Washington University in St. Louis in 2010–11, for example, tuition is $43,420 in the law school, $31,440 in social work, and $39,400 in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Be sure to carefully investigate the financial-aid programs of all schools before applying, after offers have been made, and before accepting admission. In general, state universities have lower tuition costs, while private universities have higher tuition costs. When coming to a public school from outside the state, second-year tuition is usually lower than the first year because residency has been established. Tuition cost at Harvard in 2010–11 is $34,976; at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2010–11 first-year nonresident tuition and fees are $14,025 more than resident tuition and fees. Cost of living, like tuition, can vary from town to town. Harvard and the University of California, for example, give a clear picture of what the total expenses are in Cambridge and Berkeley, respectively, including food, housing, books, health insurance, and miscellaneous. If a program does not make those figures readily available, a call should be made to the dean’s office. No one should go to graduate school without a solid idea of complete expenses over the total course of a degree program.

An idea of total costs of a degree program should be weighed against passion for a subject area, ability to afford school in terms of both time and money, pursuing a field of study, and the potential contribution the degree will make to career goals. For most people, graduate school is a ticket to a desired employment path. The career destination must be thoroughly investigated for financial feasibility and personal satisfaction before enrollment.

Types of University Financial Aid

Tuition Waivers

Tuition waivers (tuition remission or tuition scholarships) reduce the amount of tuition a student has to pay. No money changes hands, and there is no payback expected. Be sure to inquire about tuition waivers in all programs and all fields.

Fellowships

Fellowships are actual dollars paid to students in addition to tuition waivers. They are given to support housing, food, books, and supplies, and are often called stipends. There is no payback requirement, nor is there a work requirement. Most fellowships come from within the university but may also be awarded through individual student application to an outside agency, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF). These external fellowships are portable and may be used at most universities in the United States (see Chapter 2).

Many graduate schools give fellowships for the first year of study and, for doctoral students, the first and last or dissertation year. After the first year, students are supported through assistantships that require work within the university setting. Fellowships stipends are not standardized and vary from university to university. At the University of California, Berkeley, fellowships for 2010–11 ranged from $18,600 to $26,000 for the academic year.

Assistantships

Assistantships require some performance of duties in exchange for a stipend. The stipend is usually larger than would ordinarily be paid for the type of work done.

There are three forms of assistantships: teaching, research, and graduate. They are found in the greatest numbers in engineering and arts and sciences programs but exist in other fields as well. Depending on the department and discipline, both master’s and doctoral students may be eligible for this funding.

Teaching Assistantships

Teaching assistantships (TAs) are usually offered after the completion of the first year of graduate study. Depending on the program, a student may work from five to twenty hours a week assisting a professor with classes or independently teaching a course or course section. The former is more common than the latter. TAs supervise undergraduate laboratory sections, run discussion groups, assign and grade assignments, proctor and grade examinations, drill language students, tutor, and lecture. In many public and some private universities, TAs handle a great deal of the instructional load, especially in large public institutions with serious financial constraints. The use of large numbers of TAs has been the object of intense criticism, and charges of overworking and exploiting graduate students are common.

What Is the Purpose of the TA Experience?

In the best programs, students receive valuable teacher training and experience, essential skills for those heading toward a career in education. In the worst scenarios, little instruction is offered, not much about teaching is learned, and the TA is simply a grunt for the department.

How Much Time Is Spent Being a TA?

This is a question every potential graduate student should ask if that is the educational trajectory. The answer is not simple and is highly programmatic. In many areas, some of the sciences, for example, the TA experience is fleeting, involving perhaps a semester or a year, five to seven hours a week. In the humanities and social sciences, the years and hours per week spent as a TA tend to be much higher. English, history, and foreign-language students may put in twelve to twenty hours a week as teaching assistants for two or three years. Talking to current TAs while interviewing for admission to a graduate program is very important.

TAs: Employees, Union Members, or Students?

In some state and private universities, TAs are considered employees first and students second and may be unionized. In the 1960s and early 1970s, efforts to unionize graduate-student assistants first happened at public universities in the eastern United States. The movement spread to other, primarily public, universities throughout the country. After a National Labor Relations Board ruling in the 1970s, few unions were formed until the 1990s. In the late 1990s, the TAs in the University of California system unionized, with the last group of graduate TAs joining in 2006 at the University of California, Merced, campus. When TAs see themselves as overworked, underpaid lackeys without benefits, they may unionize, strike, or demonstrate for improved working conditions, better teacher training, benefits, and respect.

It is important to know how TAs are viewed when applying to graduate school. Every prospective student should check to see whether there is serious TA unrest before accepting an offer of admission. These can be distracting issues that poison an atmosphere and discourage collegiality.

TA Training

Not so long ago, TAs were untrained and at the mercy of their faculty leaders. Happily, serious TA training has become the rule rather than the exception at reputable universities. Training programs vary and can include pre-registration orientations and workshops, ongoing seminars, videotaped practice lecturing, handbooks, and much more. Departments have also devised programs to improve TA capabilities. This is another important area to investigate when applying to graduate programs.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Being a TA?

Many observers believe that the TA experience is a beneficial, intellectual segment that adds important socialization and skill-building components to graduate-student life. TAs can feel more integrated into the department, more comfortable with faculty, and more respected by undergraduates. In addition, a well-trained TA is potentially a better future professor.

However, when TAs are overworked, bullied, and disrespected, the time to degree can be longer. Unrelenting teaching duties year in and year out can result in several detrimental outcomes. First, balancing study with teaching obligations can be difficult. Second, tired, discouraged students can do poor work or no work toward their degree. Third, they can become angry with the department or administration and distracted from their personal, educational goals.

The ideal situation for a doctoral student is a work-free fellowship the first year, a reasonable teaching assistantship the next two years, and a work-free dissertation fellowship to degree completion.

Research Assistantships

Research assistantships are found primarily