Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter is proposing a major new investment in graduate student education.

A white paper from Budget and Institutional Analysis spells out the provost’s plan: Starting in 2014-15, the central campus would put about $2 million toward Ph.D. students’ nonresident supplemental tuition, or NRST, for those international doctoral students who are in their second and third years of study and who have not advanced to candidacy.

The UC-wide NRST is $15,102 a year; the central campus already pays 25 percent of this for graduate student researchers paid from extramural grants. But that still leaves the GSRs with 75 percent of their NRST to pay, and other Ph.D. students with 100 percent of it to pay.

In some cases, research grants cover the NRST, and in other cases the money comes from departments and graduate groups. Now the campus is proposing to cover what the departments and graduate groups are paying.

Thus, the departments and graduate programs would save about $2 million. “Each graduate program would decide how to use these funds for graduate student support,” the white paper declares. “The allocations may be used as fellowships to bolster support for existing students or to support growth in graduate enrollments.”

The proposal calls for the central campus to cover NRST — the portion that is not covered by grant funds — for international Ph.D. students (U.S. graduate students normally obtain California residency by the end of their first years — so, for them, the nonresident supplemental tuition goes away).

The NRST proposal is part of a proposed incentive-based budget model for graduate tuition allocation, as outlined in the white paper. The budget office is seeking comments through Friday, Jan. 24. Send comments by email to Jason Stewart.

$135.5 million in overall support

NRST remission is but one element of graduate student support at UC Davis, totaling about $135.5 million a year in the broadest sense:

• Fellowships — $37.2 million
• Earnings and fee remission for TAs and other teaching positions — $24.2 million and $20.2 million, respectively
• Earnings and fee remission for graduate student researchers — $18.9 million and $22.4 million, respectively
• Student loans — $10.6 million
• Work study earnings — $1.1 million
• Other employee benefits — $1 million

The sources of this support include graduate tuition revenue, unrestricted state funding; extramural research funding (direct charges and indirect cost recovery); and endowments, gifts and grants.

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