Graduate Student Stipends

The College of Sciences at Georgia Tech is focused on the well-being of all members of our community. A 2019 analysis of graduate stipends concluded that our graduate assistantship stipends, net of required student fees and taking into account the local cost-of-living [1], were significantly lower than those of students in the sciences at over 90% of the institutions surveyed. The overall cost-of-living for students in Atlanta, driven primarily by the cost of rent, continues to increase at a rate that appears to be higher than that of the nation as a whole. 

Concerns regarding the remuneration of graduate students in the college have been actively addressed using a multifaceted approach.

  1. Student fees have been lowered by removal of the University System of Georgia "Special Institutional Fee".
  2. Graduate assistantship salaries have been increased, most recently by 6% for FY2022 and by 8% for FY2023.
  3. All state-supported stipends of our Graduate Teaching Assistants and grant-supported Graduate Research Assistantships carry the same stipend.

Examples of gross graduate stipends at peer institutions and the relative living wage for each location (Atlanta = 1.00) include:

Georgia Tech  
Stipend: $33,500 (2023-24)
Relative living wage: 1.00

Duke University  
Stipend: 38,600 (2023-24, [2])
Relative living wage: 0.91

Emory University
Stipend: $36,376 (2023-24, [3])
Relative living wage: 1.00

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Stipend: $37,000 (2023-24, [4])
Relative living wage: 0.91

University of Wisconsin
Stipend: $34,074 (2023-24, [5])  
Relative living wage: 0.92

 

To maintain a focus on providing appropriate levels of support to Graduate Research Assistants, and to provide parity with state-supported Graduate Teaching Assistantships, PIs in the College of Sciences should work with their grant administrator(s) to include the following stipends on all research grant proposals.

Academic Year Graduate Student Stipend
2023-24 $33,500
2024-25 $35,500
2025-26 $37,500
2026-27 $40,000
2027-28 $42,000
2028-29 $44,500
2029-30 $47,500

 

The following brief statement should be included in the budget justification (to be updated each August for all new proposal submissions): 

Graduate student stipends 

The proposal budget includes Graduate Research Assistantships with a stipend of $37,500 per year for the 2025-26 academic year. Per guidelines provided by Georgia Tech's College of Sciences, the stipend is increased by ~6% per year for the subsequent years of the award period to better support our students in relation to the cost of living in Atlanta and relative to students at peer institutions. For more information, please see: www.cos.gatech.edu/graduate-stipends

 

For grants submitted to agencies that do not include escalation of stipends, it is recommended that the budget request includes the average student stipend over the period of the project.

The assistantship stipend level will be subject to annual review and approval, and depends on the availability of funds.

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[1] https://livingwage.mit.edu

[2] https://gradschool.duke.edu/financial-support/tuition-fees-and-phd-stipends

[3] https://www.gs.emory.edu/_includes/documents/sections/funding/tuition/lgs-phd-stipends-2023-2024.pdf

[4] https://bbsp.unc.edu/prospective-students/financial-support

[5] https://grad.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/329/2023/04/Stipend-rates-FY24_final060723.pdf