Does grad student support decreases following first year?

[arnds]

Hi, I will be joining a grad school this fall (Rutgers) with the usual offer of a scholarship (around 30,000) for a year in a biomedical science related program. After that I was said to be supported by the research funds from individual research groups (which is the customary thing). I was wondering if a grad student's payment gets deduced or increased following the first year of study. I do understand that it may differ from school to school and program to program, still I was trying to understand the norm. (by the way, if someone may exemplify with amounts it would be great).

 

thanking you in advance,

[St Andrews Lynx]

In my program at Rutgers the funding is supposed to remain "roughly fixed" during the course of the program, according to the Dept. Provided I remain on TA/RA support (fellowships might be different) I don't think there will be any variance beyond $2-3K (from my initial $32K p.a).

[TakeruK]

Usually the funding offer makes it clear. In most cases, the funding level will not decrease from year to year, unless your first year's stipend is supported by a special one-time-only fellowship, award, etc. You can always ask the department and/or current students to clarify. In most cases, your stipend will actually go up between years (although maybe not every year), but the general trend is if your stipend is going to change, it's likely to go up more than down. In addition, if you are unionized, hopefully your union has negotiated cost of living increases from year to year. At my Canadian MSc school, the unionized part of our pay went up by 1-2% per year. It's not much (few hundred dollars) but it's a symbolic recognition that our pay grade should go up over time, basically.