Graduate workers at the UNC-Chapel Hill, who are critical to the university’s teaching and research mission, and whose pay does not cover basic necessities, held a rally on Friday, January 31st to demand an increase to the PhD stipend to a minimum of $40,000 per academic year and periodic “meet and confer” sessions between UNC-Chapel Hill administrators and worker representatives through The Workers Union at UNC [1].
The Workers Union at UNC, which is affiliated with UE Local 150, gathered 2,000 signatures for a petition requesting that the university increase graduate stipends and delivered the petition electronically to Chancellor Lee Roberts. They received no response from him or his office, so they held a rally to restate their demands and re-delivered the petition to his office in person.
“Every year I teach two 40-student classes,” said Jorge Mancilla, a graduate instructor and UE 150 member. “Each one of my students pays over $2,500 to be in my class. You can do the math. How is it possible that my classes generate over $100,000 in revenue for the university, and I can’t afford to pay my rent or buy groceries? They are flat out stealing from us pretending they don’t have the money, but they do have it because they make it from us. We won’t take this anymore.”
“Most of us here took a pay cut to come to UNC, but we did it because we are committed to teaching and research,” said Simone Sparks, another graduate instructor and UE 150 member. “And now, when we are asking to get paid just enough to afford basic necessities, the administration insults us by telling us we should be grateful to be here. No, they are the ones who should be grateful we are still showing up to work. Most people would not work under these conditions.”
The graduate workers' demands stem from years of low pay and constant overwork [2]. According to UNC’s website, the minimum PhD stipend is $20,000 for a full academic year. The MIT Living Wage Calculator estimates that the annual cost of basic necessities in Orange County is around $51,000 [3]. Graduate workers are demanding $40,000 a year, which would be closer to stipends paid by comparable universities. Currently, the minimum PhD stipend at UNC is lower than the minimum stipend offered by other UNC considers “peer institutions”, such as Duke University ($40,000), the University of Texas ($32,000) and the University of California-Berkeley ($40,000) [4, 5]. UNC not only forces workers to undergo economic hardship in exchange for obtaining their degree, it also jeopardizes its ability to attract the talent needed to maintain its stature among the country’s top universities.
Robert Ward, a graduate instructor and member of UE 150 said, “Poverty interferes with our research work, affects the quality of our teaching and increases the time it takes for us to finish our dissertation. If the UNC administration is serious about maintaining the quality of the university and preventing decline, they will pay us a living stipend now. This is the time to act.”
Graduate workers will continue fighting for their demands along with The Workers Union at UNC. We hope to hold the university accountable for taking graduate workers for granted for too long.
Work Cited
Herrera, Caleb. “‘Undervaluing Research and Education’: Grad Students Want Stipend Increase.” The Daily Tar Heel, 19 Jan. 2025, www.dailytarheel.com/article/2025/01/university-graduate-student-stipends.
Kern, Jillian. “A History of UNC Graduate Stipends.” ArcGIS StoryMaps, 29 Dec. 2022, https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/3ca1a8705ac64093bcbdb622b7784892.
"Orange County, North Carolina." MIT Living Wage Calculator, https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/37135.
“Graduate Worker Stipend State of Emergency at UNC Chapel Hill.” Triangle Blog Blog, 11 Nov. 2024, https://triangleblogblog.com/2024/11/11/graduate-worker-stipend-state-of-emergency-at-unc-chapel-hill.
"UNC System-Defined Peer Group." UNC System Office and OIRA. 10 May 2018, https://oira.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/297/2018/05/UNC-System-Defined-Peer-Group_20180522.pdf.
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