Readers react to an article about the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture reducing stipends for its graduate students. The reduction is part of the college’s effort to avoid running a deficit in order to meet WSU President Kirk Schulz’s mandate to reduce spending by 2.5 percent across the university.

Read the full article here.

Daniel Stuart Hoffman: “That’s a joke, what they get currently is already a poverty level income and they are going to take a sixth from those people? I think we (grads and undergrads) need to hold a campus strike. Really President Schulz, this is how we are going to ‘Drive to 25?’”

Amelia Jordan: “As a former grad student, I can tell you that this decision will eliminate any applicant who has any chronic illness or comes from anything other than an affluent background. Grad programs across WSU will lose necessary diversity of experience, thought and ability. Grad students already live at the poverty level, they shouldn’t be subjected to slave labor wages even further.”

Faith Martian: “Terrible — cuts should be taken at the high end admin jobs, not the low end grad students. Shame on WSU — with all the cuts and the emphasis on athletics over academics, I just told my son to look elsewhere for college.”

Roger Whitson: “Given how much money this campus makes off of graduate labor, I’m very disturbed by this decision. If the administration needs to make cuts, surely they can find better places than doing so off the backs of our most vulnerable populations.”

Michelle Fredrickson: “Shame on Schulz. This is absolutely disgusting. He’s taking money from poor grad students, who probably budgeted for the year with these stipends, and yet neither he nor the higher executives or athletics coaches are taking pay cuts. I’m so glad I decided to go elsewhere for my master’s, because this will be prohibitive for students from anything other than rich backgrounds.”

Mindy Michelle Morgan: “Not every department or college intends to cut their grad student stipends. Cutting the stipend was a decision by the college of engineering to solve its budget problems. Schulz didn’t say ‘cut the grad stipends.’ Blame the engineering school, not the president for that specific action, this is how the engineering department chose to solve the problem. They could have thought of other resolutions than cutting the grad stipends to balance their budget.”