Margaret Mills has been losing sleep lately.
As the chairwoman of the Asian and Slavic languages & literatures department, she said, she is worried about how budget cuts might affect her international teaching assistants.
Foreign graduate students often come to the UI relying on teaching jobs for support, and visa rules constrain them from being employed outside of the university.
With the UI cutting more than 150 TA positions so far, and some fearing more could be eliminated, some worry the UI will have a more difficult time recruiting international graduate students.
“Ninety percent of our graduate students are international students, so these cuts are going to kill us,” Mills said. “They will not be able to come here.”
UI officials won’t announce specific budget trimming plans publicly until Thursday’s state Board of Regents meeting.
The funding international graduate students receive through teaching assistantships is essential in order to afford tuition and fees at the UI, Mills said.
“We all heavily rely on this funding,” said Regina Range, a German language TA. “If we don’t get it, we have to pack our bags and go home.”
Because of stipulations in the visa issued to international graduate students, they are restricted from obtaining jobs outside of the UI unless it’s in their academic field, Mills said.
Gyorgy Toth, international student representative of the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students union, said he would abandon working on a doctorate and go home if his position is cut.
“We are hopeful that [UI President] Sally Mason and other leadership will find other ways to get these budget cuts,” he said. “International graduate students provide a cutting edge in innovation research. [The UI] might sink back to being a second-rate research college.”
Mills said international TAs are necessary in the language and linguistics fields. In addition to helping professors, TAs provide firsthand experience about foreign countries’ culture, which helps undergraduates better understand the language.
For example, TAs in Mills’ department teach classes on Japanese anime and Korean pop culture. Losing classes such as these will have a negative effect on diversity at the UI, she said.
Toth said cutting more TA spots would likely result in fewer classes with more students. He said taking on more pupils would affect the university’s quality of the education, noting he already grades 810 pages of undergraduate papers three times per semester on top of other teaching and academic responsibilities.
“It is a struggle,” Toth said. “It is going from an uphill struggle to a losing battle.”
But for some TAs, the position means more than receiving enough funding to get an advanced degree.
“This is how I define myself,” Range said. “If you want to be in academia, you need to teach.”