The Department provides significant financial support for all students in the Ph.D. program and some financial support to some students in the M.A. program.
Funding for Ph.D. Students
Typically, Ph.D. students serve as Teaching Assistants (TAs) for their first three years in the program. For the 2023-24 academic year, TAs earned an annual stipend of $25,135. Starting in their fourth year, Ph.D. students typically start teaching their own courses with full responsibility, becoming Graduate Part-Time Instructors (GPTIs) and earning (in 2023-24) $29,051. All students on a TA or GPTI appointment also receive full tuition waivers and coverage of about 90% of the cost of health insurance. The Department has no control over any of these figures; they are set centrally by the University.
Support is guaranteed for five years, conditional upon satisfactory progress in the program. Some Philosophy Ph.D. students take longer than that to finish a Ph.D program, however; indeed our median time to graduation is about six years. Although funding into the sixth year is not officially guaranteed, we have almost always been able to provide such funding. We have even usually been able to offer funding into the 7th year; our current policy for 7th-year funding is to offer half-TA-ships (again this is not officially guaranteed).
TAs typically lead recitation sections, hold office hours, grade papers, exams, and quizzes, and assist the professor in the administration of the course (some TA-ships don't involve recitation sections).
GPTIs teach their own introductory-level philosophy courses, in which they are fully responsible for all teaching and grading for the course. Teaching one's own course is time-consuming, but also rewarding, and is important preparation for a career of teaching. As indicated above, GPTIs earn more than TAs; moreover, when students Advance to Candidacy (typically in their fourth year), their fees decrease as well.
PhD students receive a one-semester Research-Assistantship (RA-ship), typically taken in the 4th or 5th year, which frees students up from teaching in order to focus on the dissertation. The stipend for the RA-ship is the same as for a TA-ship. In addition, the Department awards a small number of Departmental Dissertation Fellowships (DDFs) each year, which pay the same stipend as a GPTI-ship and come with no teaching duties. The Grad Resources page contains a document that explains the selection criteria for DDFs.
The Department offers Summer RA-ships to a limited number of students each year. Students are invited to apply in the fall semester for the following summer; should combine this RA-ship with work-study funding; and, if awarded a Summer RA-ship, will work with a faculty member who will typically assign them a research project of interest to both parties. Summer RA-ships usually pay about $1,000 without work-study and about $2,500 with work-study. They do not come with any kind of tuition waiver.
Students are encouraged more generally to apply for work-study eligibility. Work-study students are then eligible to be hired into various positions: as paid research assistants for faculty members, as graduate student assistants in the Center for Values and Social Policy, or as graders for courses on an hourly basis.
In addition to internal Department funding for Ph.D. students, there are University-wide (and beyond) sources of funding available to incoming and current Ph.D. students. These fellowships are awarded through an open, campus-wide competition; some provide significantly more money than internal Department funding sources. Our Ph.D. students have often been successful in winning these fellowships. Visit the following pages for more information: Center for Humanities & the Arts (CHA) Dissertation Fellowships; Graduate School Awards and Grants; National Fellowship Opportunities. Also see some of the links provided below.
Funding a humanities Ph.D. with student loans should be approached with serious caution, but the Office of Financial Aid has information about this.
Finally, funds are available both within the Department and from the University for travel to present papers at conferences. See the "Graduate student travel reimbursement policy" document on the Grad Resources page.
Funding for M.A. students
While there is no guaranteed funding for M.A. students, some of our M.A. students receive some support in the form of TA-ships. These TA-ships are awarded on a semester-by-semester basis. M.A. students may also wish to look into some of the other funding sources described above.