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    Panel Urges Grad Student Aid


    Dean Charles Li
    By 2010, the University of California must boost systemwide graduate student enrollment by at least 11,000, a nearly 50 percent increase, and raise financial support for individual graduate students, a UC commission has concluded.
    California is last among the 15 largest states in growth in graduate enrollments over the past 10 years, the commission said, and is one of only five states in which graduate enrollments declined during this period.
    The Commission on the Growth and Support of Graduate Education, which reported last month to the UC Regents, spent 2001 examining unmet needs for graduate education and for graduate students. The commissioners said that to enroll the numbers of talented graduate students UC needs, funding for students' educational and living costs must increase significantly.
    They concluded that UC would need to fund graduate student support at $215 million annually by 2010, about a 50 percent increase. The bulk of that money is expected from traditional sources, but a $65 million shortfall will still exist.
    At UCSB, financial difficulties are compounded by a severe shortage of affordable housing, said Charles Li, dean of the Graduate Division and a commission member. He noted that this campus, unlike UCLA or Berkeley, is trying to augment its graduate population, which is currently a bit over 2,200 students.
    "Graduate students are an important driving force behind research" as well as bearing part of the teaching load, Li said. "We must have affordable housing--underline that--for them to come here and stay here."
    Building the planned 972-unit San Clemente Graduate Student Housing complex on the south edge of Storke Field will help only if the students can afford the rent. He said that campus teaching and research assistants earn approximately $12,000 a year, and will not be able to afford San Clemente's projected $1,000 monthly rent per unit.
    "Even though the chancellor and the executive vice chancellor are very supportive of graduate education, and in spite of the faculty doing their best to win extramural funds, we have a problem reaching the goal of expanding and improving graduate education," Li said. UCSB could ease this problem, he said, by raising more money for graduate fellowships and endowments, and by "internal reallocation of funds."