The unstated reason for this move is that BU had recognized a union, the Boston University Graduate Workers Union (BUGWU), and bargained over wages and other benefits with them. Those negotiations reached an impasse, resulting in a seven month strike. In October, BU settled the strike by agreeing to a minimum Ph.D. annual stipend rate of $45,000, and the minimum hourly wage of $20 per hour. There will be an annual salary adjustment of 3% in each year of the three-year contract. The BU Provost’s Office agreed to cover the increased expenses for this fiscal year, but funding for 2025-26 and beyond is up to the individual departments in the BU College of Arts and Sciences.
Essentially, these humanities and social science departments are putting a freeze on new hiring of graduate students until additional funds can be located. According to BU, the admissions pause applies “for all non-grant-funded doctoral programs” over the next academic year and will reduce “cohort sizes of grant-funded programs.” These actions, they believe, “will ensure that we have the financial resources available to honor the five-year funding commitments we have made to our currently enrolled doctoral students.”
Many students had already begun to apply to the Ph.D. programs of those departments. According to Reddit, those applicants received an email which read:
The Cornell Context
Cornell must negotiate with the Cornell Graduate Students United (CGSU) for a first-time collective bargaining agreement. However, the CGSU has not reached the stage of negotiating economic issues such as hourly wages. Unlike BU where the union represents a broad set of graduate students, the CGSU does not represent non-Ph.D. graduate students or students receiving fellowships.
At Cornell, most graduate students in STEM fields receive fellowships. For example, the Chemistry Department has sufficient endowment to give fellowships to all graduate students for their first three years. After that, the Chemistry Ph.D. candidates are typically funded through professors’ research grants.
Due to the number of workers who are not covered by the CGSU bargaining unit, it would be very difficult for CGSU to hold a meaningful strike at Cornell.
The CGSU wishes to change this and to include fellowship holders within its bargaining unit as well as to make Cornell a union shop that forces new graduate students to join the union.
However, the funding structure of Cornell is similar to Boston University in that most undergraduate tuition goes to the individual colleges who then in turn use it to hire teaching assistants and research assistants. The Cornell Graduate School has very little money in its budget, and academic departments are funded by their colleges. Because most of the financial resources are in STEM-related fields, humanities and social sciences are particularly vulnerable to budget pressures caused by a union settlement..
For 2024-25, Cornell’s undergraduate tuition in the endowed colleges is $68,380 per year, while its Ph.D program tuition is $20,800. Tuition for BU Ph.D. students is $66,670 per year. Members of the BUGWU pay1.5% of their compensation as union dues, and the CGSU has not yet set its dues.
Cornell has not announced any response to the BU freeze. However, one comment on Reddit reported that the Cornell Government department was not accepting new applications for Ph.D. candidates. The Cornell Review was unable to confirm this rumor.
