PA Fee Effects

Mike Supanich has a letter in The Badger Herald about the effects proposals to raise the charges departments and faculty pay for employing graduate students which is a must-read for anyone interested in university financing. We keep hearing how budget cuts are directed at the administration, but it can't be carved up as easily as all that. For one thing, PA-ships are effectively a key of financial aid for graduate students. If you hurt that, you hurt the quality of graduate students you are able to recruit, and hence the education given to undergraduates of whom graduate students are the most frequent front-line instructors.