University graduate students are concerned about health insurance and research fees, according to their responses to a recent survey conducted by the Graduate Student Council.
The Council presented the findings from its Graduate Student Survey yesterday. The survey was the first of its kind conducted in the University graduate community.
Graduate students at the University are fragmented along the lines of their various schools, Council President Tom Bryan said.
"This gives us a sort of big picture of what graduate students are like," Bryan said.
The survey was conducted with the support of the University administration and included questions from the Council and the administration.
Bryan and Council Vice President Brandi Cantarel presented findings on a range of topics from research fees and health care to child care and housing.
According to findings presented by Cantarel, the University student health insurance provider, Chickering, received a 6.3 quality rating out of 10 on average from the students surveyed.
"There's some degree of satisfaction, but it's not overwhelming," said Jonathan Schyner, assistant director and assessment coordinator of the Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies.
However, the survey did pick up on some student discontent concerning Chickering.
In comments included in the survey responses, students complained about the Chickering customer service, which some students said was "unfriendly," "unresponsive," and "inconsistent."
Students also complained about the speed of processing, the level of coverage and the price of the insurance, Cantarel said.
Despite the complaints, the Council emphasized that alternatives remain open.
There are other resources students at the University can use to get help and make handling their insurance needs easier -- including resources at Student Health and a Chickering 1-800 number that deals specifically with U.Va. cases, Cantarel said.
Another Council concern is making graduate students aware of those resources already available to them.
"It seems to be that people had a lot of complaints because of a lack of information," Cantarel said.
To combat the lack of information available, Cantarel suggested a resource book or directory to help students.
Research fees for graduate students were another main point of the Council's presentation.
The University charges students who have finished classes but still use University resources for research or their dissertation. The fees are approximately $1,300 per semester.
"We're getting to a point where paying this fee is like paying tuition for many students," Bryan said.
Some departments pay for their students' fees, Bryan said, by providing teaching assistant positions or grants.
The English department guarantees funding to all its graduate students for five years.
"There are a much larger number of people than I would have thought receiving money for research fees, and that's a very good thing," Bryan said.
Bryan said, however, that he remains concerned about the students who are burdened by the research fees.
The survey was created and compiled by the Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies and distributed in October 2004.
Two thousand of the 6,500 graduate students at the University were contacted by mail and asked to go to a Web site and fill out the survey. The response rate for the survey was nearly 80 percent.
"From a methodological standpoint, the survey went very well," Schyner said.
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