The Graduate Student Council (GSC) of the American Philosophical Association (APA) has compiled the below recommendations for how to support graduate students in light of the unprecedented public health crisis that is COVID-19. It is noteworthy that graduate students already face high levels of precarity, and this recent global pandemic has only made this precarity acutely worse. To give just a few examples: graduate students may now be confined to small apartments, often shared with multiple roommates, where there might be no quiet place to work and/or a lack of high-speed internet connection; many graduate students are in programs which do not offer sufficient (if any) funding over the summer, and as a result, might be suffering not only from lost academic employment (due to the cancelation of summer courses, and related summer institutes) but also because many have been laid off from summer jobs that are relied upon for living expenses. Graduate students, especially first-generation students who come from low-income backgrounds, may be especially vulnerable if they do not have any savings or family support to fall back upon.
We hope that these recommendations will be helpful during departmental and university decision-making in the coming weeks, related to both near-term finances and the next fiscal year. We acknowledge that departments are limited both in the financial means they have available to them and the power they have to put pressure on universities to allocate more funding and other forms of support to graduate students. Thus, while we outline a number of recommendations that involve the increased funding of graduate students, we also outline a number of other (non-financial) interventions that can be implemented at the department level to help meet the needs of graduate students and support their success during this incredibly difficult time.
In this time of crisis, we must recognize the utmost importance of bringing our academic community together and continuing to support all of its members, especially those who are among the most impacted and vulnerable. To that end, we offer the following recommendations.
Graduate school experience and professionalization
The shutting of universities due to COVID-19, while an essential step to flatten the curve and minimize harm, is not without consequence to graduate students. Shutting universities means more than having to move teaching obligations and grading to online platforms. It means the loss of important professionalization activities and opportunities that are essential to the success of graduate education. Social and intellectual interaction with colleagues, visiting professors, and students is an important part of the graduate student experience. Attending talks, workshops, works-in-progress sessions, informal coffee hours, and the like are part of what stimulates our intellectual work. Having all of that stop is a major loss.
Furthermore, graduate students are, in many cases, suddenly less able (or outright unable) to interact with their supervisors and/or larger committees, which can slow (or halt) progression on the writing of seminar papers, comprehensive exams, prospecti, or dissertations. Students might now be facing substantial changes with supervisor and committee interaction (e.g., not wanting to burden supervisors who are suddenly home with kids, who are in at-risk populations, who are teaching courses that they have to transfer online). Not only does this put students who are on strict funding timelines in financially vulnerable positions if they find themselves suddenly off track or less likely to finish, but it is likely to make them less ready for the job market when they enter it (e.g., they may have had less mentorship, given fewer conference talks, and had fewer networking opportunities than they otherwise would have). All of these lost opportunities pose serious barriers to the normal progression and success of graduate students.
Financial support. On this basis, there are good reasons for department leadership to advocate for increased and extended funding on behalf of their graduate students. When possible, departments should consider extending funding packages for at least one year (similar recommendations have been suggested by Marcus Arvan at the Philosophers Cocoon, as well as in a recent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education). We advocate for this extension because graduate students are not getting the full experience and significance of their funding package (e.g., they are losing in-person seminars, valuable contact with and feedback from committees, in-person teaching experience, and intellectual engagement and community). We recognize that funding extensions could disrupt the health of some programs by limiting future enrollments; while this is regrettable, given the scarce state of the job market, we feel that departments with the resources to do so ought to support the success of their current students to the greatest extent possible. (For example, the University of Chicago has already chosen to extend funding for current students, even before the added pressures of COVID-19.) Many universities have also begun to extend the tenure clocks for some tenure-track faculty in order to acknowledge the difficulty of producing work at this time, as the APA has previously recommended. We call upon departments to advocate to their universities for similar support for graduate students by providing the time and resources needed to complete their coursework and research projects. Alternatively (or additionally), students might receive more travel funding or increased releases from teaching duties during the dissertation writing phase. Students in the post-funded cohort could be given access to tuition relief or prioritized for research assistantships. While it is true that everyone is struggling right now, relative to other academics, graduate students are typically scraping by in the best of times, and we are nowhere close to the best of times.
Conferences and travel reimbursement. It is imperative that graduate students do not incur financial losses as a result of cancelled conferences or other planned academic travel that has been cancelled due to COVID-19. Departments should provide reimbursement for all non-refundable travel expenses. It is already difficult for graduate students to pay upfront for conference costs and await reimbursement, as many graduate students live on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis. (See the APA Good Practices Guide for more on this issue.) In addition to covering the costs related to canceled conferences, when possible, we strongly recommend that departments not subtract these costs from students’ allocated travel funding.
Job market. We support the recent calls, including from the APA, for universities to take COVID-19 into account during the tenure review process of faculty, but we would further add that COVID-19 should be taken into account during upcoming job application cycles. While there has always been variability among applicants due to a number of factors, this current crisis will undoubtedly cause even more disparities. Moreover, not all graduate students and early career scholars will be equally disrupted by coronavirus. Instead, those of us who are already most vulnerable will become doubly disadvantaged. With the switch to online teaching, graduate students whose funding depends on teaching will be spending more time working and less time researching. Graduate students living in poverty, who do not have access to high-speed internet or a quiet workplace, will also be particularly hard hit. Thus, we will see increases in time-to-completion of dissertations (and therefore graduate degrees), as well as fewer publications during completion. When these gaps overlap with the coronavirus crisis, they should be treated the way we would treat any gap caused by a health or personal crisis. Hiring committees should encourage applicants to explain their unique situations in cover letters and interviews, and any explicable gap in productivity should be discounted, since it does not reflect the applicants’ true ability to meet and/or exceed expectations, when not working in the midst of a global health crisis.
Extending deadlines and creating an online community. Departments are encouraged to advocate for extended deadlines for meeting coursework, qualifying papers, comprehensive exams, and dissertation requirements. They should also consider removing residency requirements, particularly for international students who have traveled to their home countries for the duration of this crisis. These are all accommodations that may likely be implemented without having to involve university administration. When possible, departments should also strive to provide online replacements for research talks, professionalization, and networking opportunities that have been canceled. Furthermore, faculty supervisors should be encouraged to proactively reach out to their students, rather than expecting students to get in touch if they are struggling. Faculty are of course also deeply impacted by COVID-19 and we do not wish to add to their burdens, but providing online community spaces for continued contact with colleagues would benefit everyone, not just graduate students. These replacement opportunities need not occur simultaneously with the sudden shift to online teaching. Instead, a plan could be put in place to create these opportunities over the summer. Departments should also encourage graduate students to take advantage of opportunities for online networking and feedback outside their home universities (such as PEA Soup and the Blog of the APA).
Teaching
We know that all faculty are negatively impacted by the sudden switch to online teaching. However, we must also recognize the unique disadvantage and burden that this transition has placed upon graduate student teachers (especially those who have to take on childcare duties or other unexpected care work at home). Graduate students are likely to be new to instruction in general, and newer to online teaching and learning management systems in particular, and they are much more likely to be teaching courses that they have never taught before. As a result of this, transferring to online-only instruction is likely to impose greater consequences on graduate students, beyond the increased workload that any given faculty member might experience with this transition. In addition to the course preparation we were already performing, we now have to perform many new tasks that were not specified in the contracts we signed at the beginning of term, and we can little afford to take on this unpaid labor, given our already precarious circumstances.
Financial support for lost teaching opportunities. When possible, departments should refrain from cancelling summer classes and other sources of funding for graduate students, such as diversity institutes or summer camps for high school students. These opportunities should be shifted online, if possible, and if they must be canceled, then departments should ensure that graduate students are paid for the work on these initiatives that they have already completed (such as application reviews).
Increasing teaching opportunities. Departments could also advocate for more graduate student teaching opportunities and/or prioritize graduate students for teaching in future terms that would otherwise be given to more senior faculty who are not as financially precarious.
Recognizing additional labor and online training. We strongly encourage departments to advocate for pay increases for graduate students who are currently leading online discussion sections or teaching their own online courses. Additionally, we call upon departments to provide (paid) training in their university’s online system. If financial support is impossible, then departments can at least provide support to graduate student teachers by advertising resources for online teaching (such as those found through the Philosophers Cocoon, and the online teaching forum on APA Connect).
Teaching evaluations. We encourage departments to recognize and collaborate with their graduate students on a plan for how to use teaching evaluations from this semester in future hiring decisions. Student course evaluations are not fully reliable in the best circumstances and often disadvantaged students from historically marginalized groups. It is important that graduate students are not penalized (by either reprimands or lack of endorsements) for poor teaching evaluations during what is an incredibly challenging period for all instructors, but especially for those of us who are newer to teaching.
Further recommendations
Health and wellness services. Many counseling and psychological services, wellness and fitness facilities, and other resources aimed at the mental and physical well-being of graduate students, are no longer available. Departments should strive to offer students online resources to support their mental and physical health (such as this guide from Massachusetts General Hospital). This is of incredible importance as students are likely to feel isolated from their social support networks and communities during this time.
Emergency loans and grants. Departments should advertise their university’s emergency loan and grant programs (when applicable), particularly for students who have lost off-campus jobs and those who cannot complete teaching work because of increased childcare duties or other unexpected care work. When possible, we also strongly encourage departments to provide additional financial support (such as need-based summer research assistantships) for graduate students.
Fees. We would also like to encourage departments to advocate to universities to refund any mandatory fees that are no longer applicable, such as transportation fees, recreation fees, classroom rehabilitation fees, parking fees, or any other cost incurred to graduate students for services that will not be received due to the shift to online-only instruction.
International students. Many international students are significantly limited in the amount of online course work and teaching they are permitted to do. It is imperative that departments support these students and make appropriate accommodations in order to ensure that they are able to complete their program on time. Departments should lobby universities to release international students from the residency requirement and protect students whose visa status is threatened by the shift to online teaching and other pandemic related disturbances.
Continuing to offer remote access options for disabled students and students working in absentia, once the crisis has passed. We’ve now proven that many in-person meetings can happen online, and many deadlines can be extended. Although universities should not shift permanently to online-only classes, we should keep remote access options open for students and teachers who require accommodations.
Investing in humanities and public philosophy. We encourage departments, unions, and the American Philosophical Association to lobby universities not to make the move to online teaching permanent and not to freeze hiring post-COVID-19. In-person teaching is a necessary part of discussion-based philosophy classes, and social isolation will likely push more and more people to become interested in philosophical questions. Now is not the time to cut humanities teaching or research. Now is the time to invest in philosophy, especially public-facing philosophy.
– Emma McClure, Heather Stewart, and Arianna Falbo, on behalf of the APA Graduate Student Council
The GSC is composed of 12 graduate student members who come from a diverse range of backgrounds and philosophy graduate programs. The GSC acts as a liaison between graduate students and the board of the APA, and has the charge of advocating on behalf of all graduate students in the discipline.
