Northwestern University has “significantly curtailed” a major source of funding for late-program graduate student workers, potentially forcing some to drop out of their programs or, in the case of international students, leave the country entirely, according to representatives of the Northwestern University Graduate Workers union.
Doctoral candidates in The Graduate School at NU are guaranteed stipend funding for five years of study, meaning “advanced” students in their sixth year and later must find alternate funding sources to complete their dissertations. For those enrolled in a Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences program, one significant source is Advanced Student Quarters, stipend extensions allocated to departments individually to support sixth- and seventh-year students “with no other source of funding,” according to Weinberg policy.
But NUGW union President Emma Kennedy told the RoundTable that around the end of April and beginning of May, the union began hearing from its advanced members that the Advanced Student Quarters funding would be “way more limited” than in previous years.
“It was sort of always the expectation that folks would get funded for another year, because specifically in humanities and social sciences [fields], it takes more time than the usual five years [to finish],” Kennedy said. “And programs know that, so they give out this money, but with the cuts to the available money so many workers just don’t have funding.”
Risk to international students
Kennedy said some advanced student workers are now left vulnerable because of the “really late” notification. In particular, she said advanced international students could face visa expiration and be forced to leave the country without funding, as they are required to demonstrate they can pay for all expenses in order to extend their visas past the standard five years. She said some are facing expirations within the next three weeks.
One such advanced international student, who asked to remain anonymous because of their uncertain visa status, told the RoundTable that they were assured they’d receive Advanced Student Quarters funds for their next year of work but was asked to justify their funding request in mid-May, something that hadn’t been asked in years prior.
They said this came well past the application deadlines for most other funding options, and at time of writing, they still haven’t received a firm yes or no answer despite months of waiting.
“If I knew earlier, I would have also applied to other options,” they said.
Without university funding, the student worker said they’d need a bank statement showing they currently have $45,000 in savings, equal to a four quarters of stipends in the 2024-25 school year, to renew their visa for another year. They said their current visa will expire “very soon,” and beyond the legal risk, they’re worried about potentially running out of money to pay for basic necessities.
“Like, how am I going to pay my rent? … How am I going to pay [for] groceries?” the student worker said. “It’s a very immediate problem.”
Grievance denied by dean
NUGW posted a news alert about the funding cut on May 17 and later – in a march on NU’s administrative offices and in an open letter published by The Daily Northwestern – demanded the university provide secure advanced funding.
The union also submitted a grievance under the international employee rights and non-discrimination provisions of its collective bargaining agreement, which members ratified in March after months of negotiations with university leadership.
That grievance was escalated all the way to TGS Dean Kelly Mayo, who officially denied it on July 23. In a statement to union members and other TGS program contacts, Mayo wrote that ASQs are not covered by the CBA and are “one means of flexible support” for advanced student workers among others like graduate assistantships and external funding.
“The mechanisms described above are in place to help address the unique needs of advanced PhD students, including those from our international population,” Mayo wrote. “We do not want our students to drop out because of funding issues. But at the same time, resources are limited and unlimited funding cannot be guaranteed.”
Northwestern spokesperson Eliza Larson provided the RoundTable a copy of Mayo’s letter in response to a request for comment for this story but did not provide further comment or answer questions concerning changes to the ASQ budget or resources for advanced student workers affected by funding cuts.
NUGW issued a news release Thursday disagreeing with Mayo’s decision but also expressing hope that “an agreeable solution” of other funding for advanced international students can be reached “as soon as possible” to allow them to remain in the country. The union conducted a phone call campaign Friday toward Mayo, Provost Kathleen Hagerty and President Michael Schill to continue the demand for such a solution.
Kennedy said that past the immediate insecurity student workers face, limiting advanced funding will hurt the competitiveness of Northwestern’s doctoral programs in the long run. She said limiting candidates to five years would create an “existential crisis” in her own field of art history, as program requirements take up the first three years and would leave only the final two years to write “less well-researched, less thorough” dissertations.
“I really don’t think it’s feasible without radically re-shifting how university programs run,” Kennedy said, “which would make Northwestern’s humanities departments less competitive, because if other universities are getting six or seven years of funding, they’ll have better dissertations.”
NU graduate union sounding alarm on funding cuts for advanced student workers is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.