GSAS To Increase Financial Aid

Humanities and social science students at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) will receive a significant increase in financial aid, starting with those students entering in the 2005-2006 school year.

The $3 million worth of additional financial aid was generated by a year-long review to increase efficiency among the departments reporting to the University president, provost and vice presidents. University President Lawrence H. Summers launched the review last fall.

The aid will be used to provide dissertation fellowships for humanities and social science students in their final year of study. Although graduate students in their final year receive free tuition, they currently receive no stipend to cover living expenses. The new 12-month fellowships are valued at $18,000 each.

“Graduate student support not only helps our departments make competitive offers at the time of admission, so that we can attract the very best students; it also enables students to make timely progress toward the completion of their degrees, so they can launch their careers,” Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby said through a spokesperson.

The aid increase builds on an effort in GSAS to improve student services.

“This continues the trend of the past five years or so to improve the overall support of our graduate students,” former Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles wrote in an e-mail.

According to Knowles, GSAS Dean Peter T. Ellison introduced the dissertation fellowships at a Faculty meeting last spring.

Johannes A. Haushofer, a doctoral student at the GSAS, wrote in an e-mail that he believes the aid increase was an important step.

“I am grateful for President Summers’ initiative in this area. The increase in financial aid to graduate students was necessary and is to be welcomed,” he wrote.

Haushofer was less enthusiastic about the fact that as a result of the central administration’s reorganization, 60 jobs will be cut from a workforce of 1,000.

“I find it grossly unethical if a university as well-endowed as Harvard finances improvements in the financial support of its graduate students through firing employees, rather than from its large endowment,” he wrote.

According to Kirby, the new financial aid should make the GSAS a more competitive choice for potential students.

“Attracting the highest-caliber students, and ensuring that they have the support they need to flourish during graduate school, which is such a vital stage in their intellectual and professional development, is of the utmost importance to the Graduate School,” Kirby said through a spokesperson.

For future graduate students, such support may include more affordable housing.

“The provision of more Harvard housing for graduate students, rather than leaving them to the mercy of local landlords in the rental market, is something that the president has emphasized, and this is something that is being studied as a part of the Allston planning process,” Knowles wrote.