Guest column: UI graduate students risk falling further behind peers in pay

We are rhetoric instructors at the University of Iowa. Almost every undergraduate student at theuniversity passes through our classrooms. Business students, mathematicians, future nurses,and historians — we guide them as they grapple with big ideas about the world, decide who theywant to be, what they want to say, and how to listen to each other. We impart the core values ofhigher education.

The university promises our classes, a requirement for all freshmen, “develop speaking, writing,listening, and critical reading skills and build competence in research, analysis, andargumentation.” In practical terms, students tell us these skills help them succeed in STEM andbusiness as well as the humanities, ace job interviews, give wedding toasts, and remain open todifferent viewpoints.

We are also graduate students. For the work of preparing future leaders of Iowa, graduate TAsare paid a base stipend of less than $21,000 a year. This is scarcely enough to live on asindividuals in Iowa City, let alone for those of us who support families. Some of our colleaguesuse food banks, especially as food prices rise. 93% of graduate assistants at Iowa qualify as“rent burdened,” given that average rent prices in the area exceed 30% of an assistant’s salary.

While we are grateful for the opportunity to study and research at a world-class institution, webelieve our pay reflects poorly on the university and the state.

This month our union, COGS, begins negotiating with the Board of Regents for our next contract.Because of a 2017 Iowa law that restricted annual wage increases and severely constrainedwhat issues were subject to collective bargaining, public employees have little recourse. Duringour last negotiations in 2021, the Board of Regents suggested a raise of 1.3%. With tirelesslobbying from our union, we attained a raise of 2%. This might sound like a fair gain until youfactor that last year inflation increased in Iowa by 8.5%. While tuition and administrator salariesrise, graduate instructors are being forced to take a pay cut.

How do raises at the University of Iowa compare with peers in the Big Ten Conference? Last fall,UW-Madison increased its minimum graduate assistant stipend by 10% for the following year. Inthe last two years, Ohio State University has increased its minimum graduate assistantship by over20%. And thanks to the graduate union’s efforts at the University of Indiana, graduate studentsthere saw a 46% increase to their minimum stipend last year.

There’s a ripple effect to unsustainable wages at the University of Iowa — we’ve seen it firsthand.Without competitive salaries, the university will struggle to attract the highest level talent amonggraduate students, which will in turn weaken undergraduate education. We don’t want this. Asinstructors, we care deeply about our students’ success, especially as a student body enterscollege having missed years of in-person learning during the pandemic. Regardless of subject,in every seminar room, lecture hall, and office hour, students at Iowa should be confident thatthe quality of their instruction is not being jeopardized by their instructor’s noncompetitive — andunlivable — wage.

We chose the University of Iowa because we respect it as a vital institution of higher learning.We ask that the university respect us in turn.

Thomas Mira y Lopez is a TA in the Rhetoric Department at the University of Iowa and a second-year student in the MFA in Literary Translation. Jenny Singer is a TA in the Rhetoric Department at the University of Iowa and a first-year student in the Creative Nonfiction MFA program.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Opinion: UI graduate students risk falling further behind peers in pay