Graduate Student Council Budget ‘Completely Spent,’ Unable to Meet Student Needs

The Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Student Council budget for the 2023-2024 academic year is completely spent and unable to “meet a majority of student needs,” per a budget report released last week.

The announcement came two weeks before Harvard’s spring break, leaving the GSC without any funding to address unplanned expenses over the remaining seven weeks of the semester.

GSC President Jessica Chen, a GSAS Ph.D. candidate, attributed budget challenges largely to a post-pandemic increase in funding needs for in-person events and activities held by the GSC, as well as an increase in graduate students requesting funds to travel for research conferences.

“Post-COVID world is a lot different from the pre-COVID world,” Chen wrote in a statement last week.

“We did recognize that within the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 terms, there was a substantial fiscal need due to inflation,” she added. “As such, this is the first year in a long time that we felt appropriate to discuss a student fee increase.”

Currently, the GSC requires that all GSAS students pay a $25 annual student fee, which raises about $100,000 for the GSC’s annual budget. This fee has not been raised since 2011 and is currently one of the lowest graduate student fees across the Ivy League.

A large portion of the GSC’s budget goes towards funding professional development opportunities for graduate students, as well as community-building events. However, funding is limited and, as a result, current research awards are highly competitive.

Most grants are made available to just 10 to 25 percent of applicants, according to a GSC presentation about the funding constraints.

The GSC plans to award roughly $42,000 in research grants during the 2023-2024 school year. So far, $11,000 was offered through fall conference grants (with a 13.6 percent acceptance rate for interested students), and $6,000 for the winter term in January.

During the fall quarter of 2023, 17 student groups asked for roughly $42,200, but received only $11,545. Meanwhile, six department groups asked for $7,352 and received just $1,300.

The GSC faced similar constraints during the winter term: 13 student groups asked for $29,463.94 and were awarded only $7,200. Two department groups asked for $1,025 and were given a total of $225.

The GSC is set to vote on a student fee increase at their next open meeting on Wednesday night as part of the council’s goal to raise more funds to meet student demands.

Elected representatives and the GSC executive board will choose between options to not implement a raise, increase the fee to $35 to match inflation rates since 2011, or raise the fee to $75 to meet total student needs.

While some representatives have indicated that they are open to raising the student fee to better meet student demand, it is unclear which ballot measure will pass at the meeting on Wednesday.

—Staff writer Adina R. Lippman can be reached at adina.lippman@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at angelina.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.