The continuous enrollment policy would be a disaster

TO THE EDITOR:

The Graduate School's proposed Continuous Enrollment Policy (CEP) threatens central aspects of our graduate programs. One key concern is that the CEP as currently proposed strongly discourages our doctoral students from carrying out field work and research overseas.

To find funds for overseas research our students compete for competitive grants which might still pay less than their current stipend and sometimes even our very best students cobble together funds from a variety of sources.

In both cases under the proposed policy this makes them ineligible for CEP tuition support and thus imposes on them — contrary to current practice — what is in effect a substantial new cost.

These students simply cannot afford to pay these tuition charges in this phase of their research and some departments cannot afford to cover tuition for them.

For current doctoral students" the CEP ""benefit"" of accelerating students through to degree could come at the high cost of eliminating or minimizing field research experience. Some of them might well end up mired in even deeper debt to address the additional costs this policy imposes.

Our ability to recruit the very best students will also be substantially hurt" as these turn to less competitive schools that provide better financial incentives.

This is especially true for international students" for whom tuition charges under the CEP while carrying out field research are a significant new burden.

""Global Carolina"" at the graduate level outside the Natural Sciences will shrivel.

CEP threatens several of UNC's leading graduate programs" with profound implications for quality of undergraduate instruction.

Elements of this proposed policy promise to send the state's premier Ph.D.-granting institution backward in these uncertain times which is surely not the message we should be sending to the citizens of North Carolina.

 

Melissa Meriam Bullard

History Department

Director of Graduate Studies

 

Jonathan Hartlyn

Political Science Department

Director of Graduate Studies