UCLA graduate student support is not even close to what competitors offer

Diego Ayala applied for PhD programs in Sociology, to start in 2022–2023, and gave permission to post the financial offers he received from various programs, summarized in the table above. This table focuses on offers for the year 2022–2023, but offers from some schools vary over year, and this variation is shown in the table. As you can see, UCLA’s total financial support is much lower than those offered by competitors, which offer in dollar terms 15 to 78 percent more, with only Wisconsin offering less. (Click on the following links to view the offer letters from UC Berkeley, Brown, University of Chicago, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, University of Michigan, Northwestern, University of Wisconsin, and Yale. The $25,000 figure for UCLA in the table is from César Ayala, who served on the graduate admissions committee for UCLA Sociology.) When adjusted for cost of living, UCLA offers by far the lowest, and UCLA’s competitors offer from 25 precent more to more than double. Even considering only the “base” stipend or salary (in the third column of the table), UCLA’s offer is much less than offers from private universities. The UC’s statement that its current wage proposals ($24,874 for beginning Academic Student Employees) are “on par with top private universities” is far from true.