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Op-ed: International graduate students need extended nonresident supplemental tuition waiver

By Masayoshi Yamada and James Boocock

Oct. 9, 2020 1:48 p.m.

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the lives of students, faculty and workers at UCLA in many ways. International graduate students, who make up more than a quarter of the entire graduate student body, are no exception.

Our status as noncitizens, combined with our dual student-worker role, renders us especially vulnerable to the current crisis. Some of us were ineligible for the federal government’s $1,200 stimulus check; many of us could not return to our home countries for the summer, or faced the possibility of not being able to re-enter the United States if we did; still others have been told that we cannot work our normal jobs as teaching assistants or graduate students researchers while we are not in the country.

But one particular issue is aggravating our already precarious situation: In order to continue the research and teaching that the University of California brought us here to do, we may soon have to pay $15,102 out of pocket to cover UC’s nonresident supplemental tuition. This would leave a large number of us on the verge of destitution. For that reason, last week we delivered a petition to the UCLA administration, signed by nearly 600 graduate students, demanding that UCLA alleviate this burden by extending the NRST waiver for one year.

All UCLA graduate students, regardless of where they are from, are issued a contract upon admission. Our home departments generally cover our fees and tuition, and pay us for research and teaching with small stipends and salaries, which we live on. However, once non-U.S. citizens advance to doctoral candidacy, the university allows a grace period of only three years, waiving the NRST during that window, but charging us $15,102 per year if we stay longer. Under normal circumstances, completing a Ph.D. within three years of attaining candidacy is difficult. In the pandemic, it is practically impossible.

Indeed, the pandemic has drastically hindered research activities for graduate students and faculty alike, impeding our degree progress. Access to research facilities and resources, including libraries and labs, has been severely constrained; national borders are closed and visa applications and renewals suspended, so conducting fieldwork in a remote location poses risks for health and for our ability to return to the U.S.; conferences and workshops have been canceled or postponed; research grants are dwindling; many don’t even have adequate resources to pay for rent or internet.

Acknowledging these challenges, UCLA chose to extend the tenure clock for tenure-track faculty an additional year. It also extended teaching limits for graduate students, so that we might stay longer too. Without similarly extending the NRST waiver, however, the lifted teaching limit is an empty promise for international students. Campus administrations at UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz have now taken steps to either extend the NRST waiver for their students, or to ensure that funding will be accessible for doing so.

We believe that UCLA must do the same to protect its international students, who are similarly affected by the ongoing crisis, but uniquely affected by this discriminatory tuition policy. Ultimately, the UC as a whole should act to ensure that we can continue our research and teaching.

In many ways, the pandemic has exacerbated the already existing inequities between international graduate students and our colleagues with U.S. citizenship or permanent residency. For one, many extramural and intramural fellowships, including the Graduate Division’s Graduate Research Mentorship Program, exclude international students. Federal restrictions also prevent international students from working more than 20 hours a week or seeking employment off-campus, limiting our ability to earn extra income.

Recently, the Trump administration attempted to prevent us from studying and working in the U.S., which would have forced many to relocate abroad at short notice. And as U.S. consulates worldwide have curtailed appointments, many have struggled to renew their visas. Lastly, the government targeted students from specific countries such as China with especially discriminatory policies.

International students are now placed in yet another unfair situation: We can either rush to finish our degrees prematurely, or we can bear the economic burden of paying $15,000 out of pocket to literally buy more time to complete our work. On top of everything else, the psychological impacts of this looming financial catastrophe have been profound.

To date, the administration has only answered our letter to say that NRST is “not a term and condition of employment,” and that they have no plans to reevaluate the current policy. This is unacceptable. We urge the UC administration, specifically interim Graduate Dean Susan Ettner and Vice Chancellor Gregg Goldman, to heed our concerns by implementing a universal one-year extension of the NRST waiver for all UCLA international students.

Time is of the essence.

Yamada is a doctoral candidate in history at UCLA.

Boocock is a doctoral candidate in human genetics at UCLA.

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