For all of you English majors who may be worried about the power of words in the modern era, know this: the GEO is striking over one word the administration won’t say. The GEO wants the administration to say “practice,” but they’ll only say “policy.” Those words sound so similar that if you weren’t closely paying attention it might look like agreement, but the difference is actually quite large. To understand how large requires a little background.

Like most undergraduates, most graduate students need outside help to pay for college. Undergraduates tend to look to their families, to scholarships and to student loans, while graduate students seek grant money, fellowships and university waivers (probably because they’ve already used up all their family money and taken out all their loans as undergrads). Most of those represented by the GEO get a waiver from the University as part of their compensation. It’s a good deal for the University: graduates who have bachelor’s and master’s degrees could make $40-80k in the private sector, but the University can hire them for $16k with a tuition waiver. Since most graduate students don’t take many classes, these waivers don’t cost the University anything. It’s just money they don’t get to collect. These waivers are part of University policy, and changing that would require negotiating with the GEO and with the boards at all three University of Illinois campuses, so it’s not likely to change.

BUT! This waiver only guarantees in-state tuition. This is a big deal because the majority of graduate students come from another state (I come from Montana for instance), and Illinois makes it very difficult to become an in-state student. So far the University has made no distinction between in and out-of-state graduate students (after all both waivers cost them $0) but this practice could change at any time.

What would the impact of this change be? I can only use myself as an example. I make about $15k a year (after taxes) teaching psychology (more than the current minimum). The difference between in and out-of-state tuition is about $13K. So I’d be living on about $2K per year.

My wife has some income, but my cat makes no financial contributions, so it’d be very hard. I might have to go into debt, quit teaching and find a fellowship, or move to another University (Illinois is 9th in the Big Ten on grad student wages and benefits, so it’s not impossible that I could find a better deal elsewhere). I find this frustrating. My waiver costs the university $0, but if they changed their practices, they could use my salary as a new way to make $13K each year. If they did this for every out-of-state graduate student, they’d have invented a way to create about $25 million in income each year. My credit card recently did something similar, charging me a fee for paying my bill online. It was an imaginary cost before, but with the stroke of a pen, they turned that $0 into real money.

This is the sticking point. The GEO wants to protect both in and out-of-state students so they want the right to renegotiate the contract if the University starts charging out-of-state students the difference between in and out-of-state tuition. The University wants the right to change the practice without threat of retaliation from the union. If the GEO accepted the University’s current offer, they could not bargain or strike if the practice changed, only if the policy did.

So when you read a statement from the University, look for the word “policy.” When you read a statement from the GEO, look for the word “practice.” That one word is worth $25 million dollars.

Patrick Watson,

graduate student