Graduate assistantships appointed at 33.3% or higher (>13 hours/week) provide multiple benefits:
- monthly stipend;
- remission of both resident and non-resident tuition (students will still need to pay segregated fees, roughly $630/semester); and
- eligibility for health insurance (health insurance options for a reasonable premium are among the country’s best group health insurance plans).
Skill development
Students also gain valuable skills through assistantship roles. This work may apply directly to their career goals or build broad, transferable skills in areas like communication, teamwork, and leadership.
“Through this position, I have developed a broad understanding of higher education issues… and continued to strengthen my applied analytical and technical skills.”
-Project Assistant
Minimum stipend levels
The campus stipend rates for 50% graduate assistantship appointments for 2019-20 are:
Research assistantship
Annual: $24,816 | Academic: $20,304
Teaching assistantship
Academic: $20,000
Project assistantship
Annual: $22,427 | Academic: $18,350
PA grader/reader
Hourly rate: $21.57
The Graduate School does not set Lecturer (SA) rates, which are available from the Office of Human Resources.
Assistantship stipends by program
A new policy allows graduate programs to adjust stipend amounts above the campus minimum to remain competitive in attracting top students. The Graduate School reviews, approves, and posts program rates annually.
Teaching Assistantships:
Instructional positions that include such duties as lecturing, grading papers, supervising laboratories, leading discussion sections, or developing course curriculum
Project Assistantships:
Project-related assignments such as coordinating programs, organizing events, analyzing data, or supporting student services
Research Assistantships:
Research under the guidance of a faculty member
Finding and Applying for Graduate Assistantships
The vast majority of graduate assistantship positions are not posted publicly or available to all graduate students. Instead, they are “owned” by particular graduate programs and are reserved for students in those programs. Programs use their own internal processes to award assistantships to students. To find out how your program awards assistantships, you should contact your program.
A smaller number of graduate assistant positions are not reserved for students in particular programs, and any graduate student can apply for those positions. Those positions are usually listed as they become available on the website of the Student Job Center. Generally, the positions are posted relatively close to the time they will start, so positions that start in the fall semester will usually be posted in July or August.
Graduate Assistant Policies and Procedures
In spring 2017, campus leadership charged a workgroup to transition policy from the former Teaching Assistants Association contract to a Graduate Assistant Policies and Procedures (GAPP) document. The GAPP document was released in spring 2019 after a collaborative process involving graduate students, faculty, staff, and administration, formally documenting employment practices for teaching assistants and project assistants.