IMAGINE if your expenses for books went up 63 percent in two years -- what would you do? Relax, this isn't happening. The cost of health care premiums for QualChoice, the University HMO, however, has risen by 63 percent over two years. This generally doesn't affect undergraduates, since most are covered by parents' health insurance. For graduate students, however, who usually have no alternative but QualChoice, this is a major issue. While the University doesn't offer health benefits for teaching assistants, many universities do. Unless the University finds a way to help meet health care costs for graduate students, it will lose its best students.
Health insurance stands out as a major problem. In a survey administered by the Graduate Council and paid for by Robert Huskey, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, 53 percent of respondents named an insurance premium subsidy as their greatest financial need, compared with 25 percent wanting a pay increase. This probably comes from the fact, confirmed by Huskey, that the targeted pay increase for next year averages 2.5 percent. Yet the Office of Financial Aid estimates that the overall cost of living will rise 7 percent this year.
The students proposing that the University subsidize health premiums aren't socialist hacks: Competing institutions do this too. According to Council member Todd Price, many competing institutions, including Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Penn State and Texas A&M, provide health insurance subsidies. This list includes large public universities with funding concerns similar to ours, as well as private universities. Huskey admits that the question is not whether the University will need to subsidize in the future, but how soon and where it will find the money. If it doesn't, the University will lose its competitive advantage.
The University needs to make health insurance for graduate students a priority. When the University decides on a priority, it has many avenues open, including matching funds from private donors or tapping money not specifically earmarked. Huskey also admits that some departments, such as biology and the medical sciences, manage to subsidize health premiums. This seems more a question of equalizing departments than anything else.
Many people at the University blame the General Assembly for not allotting money to pay graduate students more. Graduate students may not be the first people on the minds of the General Assembly, most of whom probably have J.D.s and M.B.A.s, not Ph.D.s, but the University doesn't rely on public funding for much anyway. What the University does get from Richmond comes from the administration's lobbying, not that of individual students.
While the University is working on the funding, they could help graduate students out with QualChoice. The Council has tried for two years to get QualChoice to address student concerns, but to no avail. For example, many students would prefer to buy only catastrophic coverage. This would allow students who rarely use health care to save money while preparing for emergencies. Another popular request is to allow students to pay their premiums on a monthly basis instead of a lump sum. This would avoid the problem of needing to come up with money before they have been paid.
Student Council should make reforms a precondition of endorsing Qualchoice. The growth in the use of teaching assistants means undergraduates lose if the best graduate students -- who constitute our core of teaching assistants -- go elsewhere.
The graduate students have demonstrated a need for assistance in the area of health care. If we don't provide it, other schools will. President John T. Casteen III and Chief Operating Officer Leonard Sandridge need to explain to the General Assembly that reimbursing graduate students for health care is far cheaper than hiring adjunct professors.
If that doesn't work, then the Board of Visitors needs to find money from the Capital Campaign. The Board won't do this unless the administration goes to bat for graduate students. Huskey points out that much of the money floating around is earmarked for something, but people like Sandridge know how to manipulate categories, or get the money from private sources. Professors don't get all their compensation from the Commonwealth -- teaching assistants shouldn't either.
The administration needs to get this on the Board of Visitors' agenda and support it at the meeting. Where there's a will, there's a way. The quality of our education depends on that will.
(Elizabeth Managan is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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