UT-Austin Faculty & Staff Solidarity with Graduate Student Workers

Respectfully, I support graduate students in solidarity. Higher education does not need to be inherently exploitative. We can support their valuable work that supports so many others in our communities.

I support a living wage for all UT employees, including graduate and undergraduate student workers. The work they do for this institution is of utmost importance and they deserve to be compensated adequately.

In addition to not providing a living wage for graduate students, UT is not competitive with similar R-1 universities in graduate student funding.

As a recent graduate of a California graduate program, I respectfully empathize and support the UT student workers.

Graduate students are a key part of our community at UT and I believe support should enable a living wage.

I support a living wage for all staff at UT, including graduate students. The COL in Austin has continued to outpace wages at UT by miles. In order for UT to achieve its missions laid out in the Strategic Plan, it is going to have to have a serious reckoning with how it compensates the workers across campus that are essential to the universities success.

With Austin having such a high cost of living, the only way we recruit and retain academically competitive students is by offering incentives to draw them here. The Cockrell School of Engineering is working to make up for years of neglecting GRA salaries, and I hope the rest of the university follows suit (especially in assisting departments with fewer resources).

I support a living wage for our graduate student workers. This city's COL has risen, and we have to be realistic about the inequity that results from limiting important employment opportunities to those students with enough personal wealth to accept low wages.

Living wages are sorely underfunded. All workers have value. Stop paying poverty wages to your workers, UT.

With the rise of anti-tenure and DEI legislation proposed (and UT's silence on the issue) livable wages are one of the only tools UT will have to recruit and retain graduate students. NO ONE WILL COME HERE if you continue to pay graduate students wildly different wages. I tell people not to attend UT if they have a better offer. It's not worth it.

Respectfully, I support the Graduate Student Workers letter.

As a geezer slacker who flourished in Texas decades ago when Austin a cheap place to live, I can't fathom how grad students-- some of the people who keep UT interesting AND functioning, can afford to live here. A pay raise would benefit not just them but the university as an institution, and not just now but into the future. If what starts here is to continue to change the world, then we need to be able to attract the best people, including grad students. Don't allow talent to go elsewhere simply because they can't afford to live in the new Austin!

There should be parity across the university for graduate student compensation. Although this will require considerable work and substantial financial input, the long-term result will be the ability to recruit and keep the brightest minds in any field that UT covers.

A living wage and support for our graduate students is in-and-of-itself a moral obligation for the university. It is also in our enlightened self interest if we are to remain a top research institution.

Grad students deserve a living wage

Our students should be making a living wage by Austin's standards. We simply cannot compare our wages to similarly ranked programs in cheaper areas of the country. Let's do the right thing!

Graduate students are workers at UT Austin and deserve a living wage!

The high cost of living in Austin simple does not match with the current graduate student wage. Graduate students deserve a living wage!

Graduate students form the backbone of our institution and we must do everything we can to support them! That begins with a fair living wage.

UT is the 2nd most endowed university in America behind Harvard, it is time they started acting like it. If they actually spent the endowment they might not have this claim to fame but let us ask the Board of Regents if a stat or its students make a university work?