PLAN, Manage Your Professional Development as a Graduate Student
The Dean and the Executive Board of the Rackham Graduate School have approved the adoption of a continuous enrollment requirement for Ph.D. students at the University of Michigan, to become effective in the Fall Term 2010.
Once admitted to a Ph.D. program, students will register every fall and winter term until their degree is awarded, unless they are taking an official leave of absence. Requirements for registration in the summer will not change. Students will register in spring or summer terms only when they elect courses, take preliminary examinations, or defend their dissertations.
Substantial benefits for students and for graduate programs arise from continuous enrollment. These benefits include:
Doctoral students need to be firmly connected to their programs and actively working with their faculty mentors. When students enroll continuously, there is structure that helps keep them on track and connected. Continuous enrollment provides institutional support for the periodic communications between students and their programs and faculty advisors. It promotes and supports programs' knowledge of where students are in their programs.
For many external purposes, official student status is necessary for students to benefit from an offering or adhere to important requirements. There are externally imposed rules for financial aid eligibility, loan payment and interest deferrals, and visa compliance.
The University's ability to provide student services and financial aid is facilitated by having a consistent pattern of enrollment. Ph.D. students will have year-round access to the University Health Service, other health and wellness offerings, Recreational Sports facilities and programs, student parking permits, financial aid programs, Student Legal Services, information technology and library offerings without questions about eligibility.
The Continuous Enrollment Policy eliminates the need for the policy on Required Fee Totals, which has served as U-M's mechanism to promote registered status. The elimination of Required Fee Totals creates an easier path for students who transfer to U-M from another university or who enter a Ph.D. program with a prior masters degree.
Decision-making and policy development at any level within the University are improved when supporting information is complete, comprehensive, and an accurate reflection of the University's existing practices and populations. When Ph.D. students are enrolled, they are reflected in the University's data that undergird decision-making. Academic administrators in graduate programs, schools and colleges, and central administration will be supported by better data and more complete analyses as they seek to improve Ph.D. education.
One of the conditions for the implementation of the continuous enrollment policy is that the Board of Regents approves a request to reduce candidacy tuition rates in direct proportion to the expected increase in registrations. This proposed change in the tuition rate is of particular importance to those faculty members who support graduate students on sponsored research grants. A lower tuition rate is helpful to researchers, especially in the current constrained funding environment.
Our Ph.D. programs admit intelligent, well qualified students who are fully capable of succeeding in graduate study. Inevitably, some students who begin doctoral study will decide not to pursue the Ph.D. However, we’d like to create an environment in which as many students as possible are able to complete their work at a high level of excellence. A continuous enrollment requirement is an additional tool to support our graduate programs and their training of scholars. A ten-point increase in our completion rate—moving from two-thirds of students completing to three-quarters—would mean 100 more Ph.D. degrees awarded each year without any increase in the number of students admitted.
Tuition is a revenue source in the University's General Fund, which is allocated to University units by the Provost. The Provost, through the University's budget model, allocates tuition revenue to the schools and colleges based on student enrollment and instructional activity in the school or college. This approach to budgeting helps ensure that each of the University's academic units has resources to support instructional and student support costs.
Under continuous enrollment, tuition revenue remains constant and University payments for tuition remain constant. The total tuition cost for Ph.D. students will not change due to the policy change. University resources currently pay about 92% of the total tuition bill for Ph.D. students, and the University will continue to pay the same percentage of the total bill and the same dollar amount under the Continuous Enrollment Policy.
All schools and colleges, and their graduate programs, are working to identify funding that will cover the additional terms of registration resulting from the Continuous Enrollment Policy. Students will not pay a larger share of tuition as a result of the policy change.
Schools and colleges have the flexibility to make provisions for their own students in ways that meet their needs. One mechanism that many academic programs plan to use is a tuition-only fellowship for students who are making satisfactory progress to degree. The restructuring of the candidacy tuition rate allows the University to dedicate funding to tuition fellowships. These fellowships can provide a safety net for students who are not otherwise supported. Tuition fellowships will allow those students to continue to hold official student status and so maintain their strong connection to their programs, and benefit from the full array of University services and resources year-round.
There will need to be some shifts of resources to respond to the variation in experience among graduate programs. Now that the policy has been adopted, the Provost, the deans of schools and colleges, and the Dean of Rackham are working together on concrete plans for funding allocations that recognize the specific impact of the new policy on individual programs.
Many students pursue research and study activities in other countries or in other areas of the United States as part of their degree work. These activities are essential for those students and their courses of study. This work might be field research, language study, ethnographic data collection, use of library or archival collections at other institutions, collaboration with scholars in other countries, or a host of other circumstances. These are necessary components and strengths of many of our graduate programs.
With the Continuous Enrollment Policy students will be registered regardless of their location. Registration status confirms students' eligibility for the full array of University services and resources, many of which remain fully available to students outside of the Ann Arbor area due to advances in technology and travel convenience. Sometimes life events or medical reasons interrupt a student's progress for a period of time. The policy provides flexibility for students who need to take an official leave of absence and makes a clear statement about expectations upon return.
The Continuous Enrollment Policy will be effective for all Ph.D. students in Fall Term 2010. The window prior to implementation provides planning time for programs to restructure their internal procedures and plans for financial support to accommodate the increased registrations and reduced tuition rates resulting from the new requirement. It also provides time for administrative areas to make the necessary systems and documentation changes. Current students who are still enrolled in Fall 2010 will be included in the move to continuous enrollment, but the changed tuition structure and new mechanisms for tuition fellowship awards will allow those students to move through their programs as anticipated and without an unexpected tuition cost.
The planning for this policy incorporates the need for resources to cover unexpected circumstances during the transition from current practice to new policy. The commitments for special circumstances made to current students at the time of their admission will be honored. The change that current students will see is that they will be registered every fall and winter term. So long as they are making satisfactory academic progress, tuition for any terms of registration resulting from the implementation of a continuous enrollment policy will be paid from a University source. New students admitted after the requirement has been adopted will receive information from their graduate programs at the time of admission about the availability of financial support throughout their graduate careers. Combining the new enrollment policy with other initiatives such as the MORE Mentoring Initiative, Graduate Student Success Programs, expanded Dissertation Writing Workshops, and increased numbers of Rackham Predoctoral Fellowships, the University is working to create an environment in which faculty and students can focus on the excellence of student scholarship and degree completion.
Comments on the policy or further questions can be sent to Rackham by directing e-mail to the Dean's Office.
