The University’s Office of the Provost decided to retract its recommendation to increase the minimum tuition generating appointment, or the amount of time graduates have to work per week, from 25 percent to 33 percent Friday, according to the Provost’s Web site.

“We received a valid argument from the Fine and Applied Arts program,” said Richard Wheeler, vice provost for the University. “These programs are so demanding, and there just isn’t room to add more hours of work.”

Wheeler said some programs are very performance-based and require a large amount of graduates’ time.

This retraction came in response to weeks of talks between the University, the colleges that enroll graduate students and the graduate students themselves, Wheeler said.

Another provision enabling some graduate programs to become “tuition-supported” programs, which would be outside the tuition waiver policy, was retracted as well.

“We’re trying to be as consultant as possible,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler said he had been in contact with graduate students throughout the semester, although plans for making changes to the program have been in consideration since the last academic year.

“I gave them fundamentally the same presentation as I have been giving to all others,” he added, in reference to his talks with officers from the Graduate Employees’ Organization.

Meanwhile, the recommendation limiting the number of tuition-generating appointments in graduate programs has not been removed from the proposal.

This issue and others still bring alarm to graduate students.

“We appreciate them for taking the public into account,” said John Gergely, co-president of the GEO. “But we’re still concerned about this.”

Gergely said the 33 percent increase was not a bad plan – the bigger concern was how everything was going to work. Graduate students still need financial support for their education, he added.

“To have to pay tuition out of pocket, that’s just unfeasible,” Gergely said.

Gergely said the University was not providing adequate support.

“Much of the undergraduate instruction relies on graduates,” Gergely said. “It’s largely dependent on us.”

Michael Simeone, communications officer for GEO, said the organization still didn’t know what form the final proposition would take.

“A lot of things are still up in the air,” Simeone said.

The overall accessibility of education at the University needed to be considered, along with the cooperation between administrators and graduate students, Simeone said.

“There’s a little bit of tension,” Simeone said. “We want to be involved in the process.”

Simeone said that although students were able to talk to Wheeler a few weeks ago, it was clear that the administration’s plan has been under consideration for much longer.

“We want to protect the long-term health of graduate programs at U of I,” Simeone said.