Thank you for joining us in this effort!

We are writing to the University System of Georgia Board of Regents to ask them to eliminate the Special Institutional Fee for all graduate students enrolled in USG institutions.

The Special Institutional Fee (SIF) was first created in 2009 by the University System of Georgia (USG) to address financial challenges brought on by state funding reductions. This fee, however, was not meant to last forever and was to expire on June 12, 2012. Instead, the SIF has increased from $100 to up to $450 per semester across USG schools.

At the University of Georgia (UGA), not only does this cause financial hardship among graduate students, but we are not made aware of how exactly these funds are being used. A SIF Fact Sheet created by UGA mentions some of the authorized uses of the SIF include: faculty salaries and associated fringe benefits, graduate student teaching assistantships, classroom maintenance and enhancements, and other operational support for the university’s core mission of academics: teaching, research, and public service. This means that graduate students could very well be contributing to the stipends that we are paid.