In an increasingly competitive environment for attracting the best and brightest students, MIT must provide substantial graduate student financial support and maintain excellence in our graduate programs. Graduate student funding, especially fellowship support, is an essential priority. This will require considerable new resources, largely because MIT has fewer internal fellowships (as a percentage of our graduate student size) than many, if not all, of the universities with which we compete.
Our vision for the financial support of graduate students includes:
- Providing each doctoral student with a fellowship (or financial support that is functionally equivalent) in his or her first year of graduate study. This will allow first year students to concentrate on coursework and make well-informed decisions about where and with whom they want to do their research.
- Guaranteeing funding over multiple years to all doctoral students making good academic and research progress, ideally for a period long enough for most students to complete their degrees. This funding may be a combination of fellowships, RAs, and TAs.
- Creating a pool of fellowships for late stage doctoral students that allow students in innovative research areas who might otherwise be unfunded, or required to work as TAs, to focus all their time and energy on completing their dissertations.
- Exploring a forgivable loan program for master’s and doctoral students who enter public service or work in lower paying positions in nonprofit organizations.
- Expanding support for graduate students in areas such as dental insurance and child day care so that all qualified students, regardless of income or family situation, can undertake graduate study without incurring unreasonable levels of debt.
Achieving the $100M goal for graduate fellowships that is part of the Campaign for Students is a fraction of what we need to achieve even part of the above vision. MIT must raise several times that amount over the next 10 years to move towards this funding model.
To close the gap between our current resources and those we need, we should consider whether the historically high number of graduate students we have had in the past five years is in our long term interest. In particular, enrollment in doctoral engineering programs has grown considerably in the past decade. We plan to engage some departments in a discussion as to whether a smaller enrollment of better-supported students might be preferable to the status quo, where large numbers of students are often supported year-to-year, largely as RAs on research grants. A shift to a somewhat smaller, but better supported, graduate student body will make us more competitive for the absolutely best students.
MIT should also review our policies regarding “all but dissertation” tuition as part of reducing the costs of supporting doctoral students over their entire graduate education. Many of our peers charge reduced tuition for late stage doctoral students. While this involves foregoing revenue, it reduces the costs of graduate research assistants to grants and may more accurately reflect the cost of education for the cohort of students who are not taking any courses and who spend almost all of their time on sponsored research.
Goals and objectives to enhance funding opportunities for graduate students in the next one to two years include the following:
Gather information
Provide clear and comprehensive information about existing fellowship opportunities for graduate students.
- Create information repository on the ODGE website for those fellowships that fall outside the rubric of competitive fellowships and outside fellowships managed by the ODGE.
- Analyze how graduate students finance education at MIT by surveying all departments about level and structure of funding.
- Review multi-year funding commitments that support students for the expected duration of their graduate program; determine the extent of need by School/department and the costs/benefits entailed for this level of support.
- Review and update the FOGS report to identify funding recommendations to pursue.
Create and implement new policies
Working with the Committee on Graduate Programs, develop policies that address unique circumstances faced by graduate students.
- Define expected support levels for all admitted students, with different levels for different degree types (e.g., professional and research master’s degrees, and doctoral degrees).
- Provide funding assistance for students who lose support due to unforeseeable external events that cannot reasonably be addressed by their academic departments (for example, cancellation of research program; advisor’s departure).
- Relax the policy on providing funding to students in nonresident doctoral thesis research status to allow them to receive MIT support up to their total nonresident tuition charge.
- Increase the number of dissertation TAs in SAP and SHASS, particularly in departments where there is limited fellowship support.
Expand fellowship opportunities
- Identify specific departments and related numbers of students in research-oriented graduate programs who would benefit from first year fellowships; set realistic goals for increasing the number of fellowships.
- Partner with departments to create additional targeted fellowships, for example, to provide tuition fellowships for underrepresented minority graduate students, or to fund the tuition shortfall for recipients of NSF fellowships.
Strengthen stewardship efforts
Resource Development
- Create effective stewardship strategies for existing fellowships managed by the ODGE.
- Support the fundraising for graduate fellowships developed for the Campaign for Students, particularly focusing on increasing unrestricted fellowships.
Alumni Association/Alumni Fund
- Work with the Alumni Fund on stewardship for the Ike Colbert Fund for Graduate Community.
- Support the goals of the Graduate Student Philanthropy Campaign through marketing and educational efforts and by encouraging participation among targeted graduate constituencies.
- Explore the extent to which international alumni have been identified and/or targeted with communications efforts and invitations to participate in support of current graduate students.
Presidential Fellowships
- Manage program for Fellows, refining as needed.
- Work with senior administration to plan for additional fellowships.
Communications
- Gather firsthand accounts of student experiences describing the impact of a fellowship on their academic and research progress; publish in appropriate venues.
- Prepare print and electronic materials that support resource development for ODGE’s priorities, specifically programs that align with the office’s strategic goals in the areas of diversity, graduate fellowships, and support for graduate community.
- Prepare materials for current graduate students to clarify “where your funding comes from,” with the goal of fostering a culture of philanthropy among the next generation of graduate alumni.
- Collect and publish information on external fellowship opportunities for international students on ODGE’s website.
March 2009
