Graduate assistants and graduate associates will see a pay raise this coming fiscal year after five years of going without.

The last raise that graduate assistants received was in 2008, said Zachary Brooks, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Council.

At the last GPSC general assembly meeting on April 16, Brooks collected input from representatives on raises to bring to the dean of the Graduate College. He then told the dean that the raise was positively received, but said there is still a large gap between wages and the cost of living. However, the raises are a “good first step,” he said.

GPSC’s input did not come as a surprise, said Andrew Carnie, dean of the UA Graduate College, in an email interview.

“There is widespread dissatisfaction with the compensation and workload requirements for our GA’s,” Carnie said. “GA’s are a critical component of our teaching, research and service missions.”

Those who receive their salary through state funds will be impacted immediately. Those who are being funded through grants or other non-state money will also receive a raise, but it will come later due to outside organizations having to “get more money or to [re-budget],” Carnie said.

Carnie is assembling the raise package, which then goes to the UA administration. There is no set timeline for when non-state funded graduate assistants will receive their raises.

“Teaching assistants, and actually research assistants, are of course key members of the team … because we deliver all of our teaching through teams of people not just in one mode,” said Andrew Comrie, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “And I think the same applies in research, where graduate students are absolutely critical to getting the fundamental bulk of research done.”

The exact size of the raise is not known at this time. However, the raise is expected to be a single digit percent increase, according to Comrie. It will be a uniform percent increase for graduate assistants, but there will be variations in the salaries depending on what field the graduate assistants are in and what the position specifically entails, Comrie said.

The official raise proposal is expected in a matter of days and the official decision will be released sometime next week, Comrie said.

“The goal will be to have everyone who has a satisfactory evaluation to have higher salaries by the end of the next academic year,” Carnie said.