While graduate students at many schools teach to pay their tuition, students at Harvard and Dartmouth teach to fulfill degree requirements, receiving tuition breaks from outside funds.

"We have a rather unique situation here at Harvard," says John B. Fox, administrative dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). Tuition breaks for the 2400 graduate students do not depend on how much teaching they do. Instead, individual departments require some 1000 graduate students to teach a certain number of "fifths," one section per semester, to fulfill degree requirements.

"We charge low tuition rates outright for every one," Fox says.

Student tuition rates decrease steadily after the first two years of graduate school. If students need to stay on for additional years to finish work on their degrees, they are charged only minimal tuition, Fox says. Figures decrease from an initial rate of $12,015 for the first two years to only $1100 by the fifth year.

Harvard's first-and second-year teaching fellows are paid an average of $2147 to teach one section for one semester, while third and fourth year T.F.'s are paid more, Fox says.

Although Harvard does not have an organized teaching assistant association as does Yale, graduate students may bring any problems they have before the student-faculty Committee on Graduate Education, Fox says. Right now, there are no issues before the committee, he says, but he adds, "We always try to be alert to the needs of every T.F."

Like Harvard's Dartmouth's graduate students teach primarily to fulfill degree requirements. "We do not have T.A.'s at Dartmouth," says Bruce Pites, associate dean of the Faculty of Sciences at the Dartmouth's graduate school.

"All graduate students are granted what we call Dartmouth Fellowships, with no specific teaching duties attached. Students then participate in a specific amount of teaching as dictated by their personal degree requirements," Pites says. "Any financial contribution attached to their efforts is consistent with the payments of other universities."

A graduate student organization, the Council of Graduate Students, functions as a forum to address any graduate student complaints.

Paying for Princeton

Unlike teaching assistants at Dartmouth and Harvard, graduate students at MIT and Princeton, Brown and Cornell Universities usually teach to earn tuition, as well as to fulfill degree requirements.

More than 60 percent of all Princeton graduate students teach at some point while pursuing their degrees, says Carolyn Schindwolf, associate dean for Budget and Financial Planning at the graduate school.

A first-year graduate student at Princeton normally receives upwards of $8600 for full-time teaching duties, which average 20 or more hours per week, Schindwolf says. By the second year of teaching, they earn up to $10,000.

These numbers have kept the Princeton graduate students quiet. "There haven't been any organized complaints by graduate students regarding teaching benefits, but there have been some concerns expressed that the University Fellowship, once taxes have been taken out, doesn't amount to very much," Schindwolf says.

Similarly, at Brown and Cornell, administrators say teaching assistants feel there is no need for unionization, although these schools have significantly fewer graduate students teaching.