About Us

Rutgers University needs to start acknowledging and supporting its student parent community. Rutgers AAUP-AFT represents full-time faculty and graduate workers who went on strike last Monday, April 10. In addition to bargaining for livable wages and equal pay for equal work for adjunct faculty, they are also working to increase parental and caregiver support for graduate students, including a $5,000 childcare subsidy. If the union demands are met, this will be a huge leap forward in supporting graduate student parents.

​

Shortly after starting my PhD program at Rutgers, I found out I was pregnant, so I asked a fellow teaching assistant with a baby about available resources. She laughed and said, “There are no resources, and you don’t need to let anyone know except for your advisor. It’s not like Rutgers will help you anyway.” This was a complete shock. Not that I expected a free nanny and a university-gifted R-embroidered onesie, but I thought there would at least be information available online for student parents. But nope. Nothing. 

​

Childcare costs can be financially crippling for graduate students. Rutgers has only two on-campus childcare facilities, and the discounted price for Rutgers affiliates is $1,033–1,299 a month (similar to daycare rates in the surrounding area). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advises that daycare should amount to no more than 7 percent of a household's budget. If I sent both of my children to daycare, 92% of my stipend would be gone. 

 

Was it possible to be a parent as a graduate student? In wrestling with this, I sought out other parents and started a graduate student organization: Supporting Parents & Caregivers at Rutgers. Here I met other graduate student parents who were also struggling. High childcare costs are difficult for any parent, but it makes a graduate degree here particularly inaccessible to parents without additional income.

​

One single mother lived in Rutgers “family housing,” where rent consumed 73% of her fellowship stipend. Her fellowship had no health benefits despite its teaching assistant duties. She was unable to get care for her child’s chronic condition because she couldn’t afford the high deductible on the student health plan. Ariella, a mother of three whose husband has a degenerative disease and is unable to work, relies on Medicaid to cover medical costs since childcare and housing costs 91% of her monthly stipend. Chloe works three jobs in addition to her teaching assistantship at Rutgers to provide for her family. Her husband, who moved to the United States so Chloe could attend Rutgers, has had trouble finding work as an immigrant.

 

Chloe expressed our common frustration well: “I felt truly naive to think this would be feasible, given our economic realities. It angers me to think that for someone supporting a family, a PhD is only for those who have a spouse with a big salary or significant family savings; this keeps academia for the upper class and only pays lip service to missions of social justice and equity.” If we want diversity, if we want a “beloved community,” we need to make it possible for single parents and international parents to be a part of the community. It is not an outrageous idea to financially assist parents.

​

Most peer universities offer some form of assistance, and Rutgers is lagging behind. Penn State subsidizes up to 75% of childcare costs for low-income students. CUNY has 17 childcare centers, with sliding-scale payment options costing as little as $5 a day. There are many available models. Many people do not understand why parents would choose graduate school instead of “getting a real job.” Putting aside the fact that teaching and conducting university research is a real job, higher education provides a path to much-needed opportunities and should be accessible to all.

 

Motivation for Rutgers student parents I’ve met includes researching diseases that afflict loved ones, breaking cycles of intergenerational poverty, and improving climate resiliency in New Jersey communities. The commonality is that graduate student parents are highly driven to improve the world for future generations. This motivation cannot die out because we look the future generation in the eyes every day when we make them breakfast in the morning and tuck them into bed at night.

​

​

 

Tracy Youngster is a PhD candidate in Ecology and Evolution at Rutgers University and a member of Rutgers AAUP-AFT.