It's unclear whether graduate assistants at the College of Pharmacy are receiving a raw deal with their tuition supplements. There has been no official word from the College of Pharmacy, and the few students who will talk about the issue don't want to have their names printed.
What is certain is that graduate assistants were notified through an e-mail about a week and a half before school started that their tuition supplement had been reduced, forcing some students to scramble to secure finances to pay for their tuition.
We understand budget cuts, and we understand that sometimes it is necessary to reduce student tuition supplements for graduate students. But we take issue with the manner and the timeliness of the notification.
The college should have done better.
Because students were notified so close to the start of school, they were not able to apply for various financial aid packages since the deadlines had already passed. Granted, there is a possibility the College of Pharmacy didn't find out about the reduction until the last minute, but we find this unlikely. The e-mail sent to faculty members at the college from Dr. Joseph W. Kosh, director of graduate studies for the college, said tuition supplements would be eliminated by fall 2005. If this knowledge was available that far in advance, the college should have had some warning about the reductions for this year.
An e-mail was a cold and impersonal way to break the news. The college could have held a meeting for graduate assistants and told them in person, explaining in detail why the cuts were being made and allowing students to ask questions. We hope other colleges will be sensitive to students' needs when dealing with tuition, something every student, graduate or undergraduate, can lose sleep over.
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