Bryer Haywood, Contributing Writer
VCU graduate students say they are having a hard time affording living expenses with the pay they receive for campus work as costs rise across the region.
According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, one adult working to support themself would need to be paid $25.21 an hour to make a living wage in Richmond. The site defines a ‘living wage’ as the full-time hourly rate one needs to support themselves and/or their family.
The current minimum wage in Virginia is $12.77 an hour, a 2.9% increase from $12.41 in 2025. Graduate students are paid with stipends based on how many hours they work per week.
For nine and 10 month assistantships, minimum stipends are $4,000 for 10 hours of work per week and $7,500 for 20 hours of work — amounting to as little as $10.42 an hour.
There are 902 Graduate Assistants actively employed by the university as of Feb. 9, according to VCU spokesperson Brian McNeill.
For dissertation assistantships, the stipend is $9,375 semesterly. Participating Ph.D candidates must work on their dissertation full-time and cannot work elsewhere during the award period.
The hiring webpage for VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences states that graduate assistants cannot work another job without permission from their respective department graduate director and cannot work more than 29 hours per week.
The average stipend for a graduate assistant in the Department of English is $14,000 annually, with “those that coordinate VCU’s national literary awards” making $22,000 instead, per their website.
Harry Szabo, an assistant professor and former graduate teaching assistant (GTA or TA), said they earned $14,000 a year as a graduate student from 2015 to 2018.
“In order to make ends meet, I lived in a laundry room, like [a] washer, dryer, twin bed. My graduate TA’s this year in 2025 told me that they also make $14,000 a year which is 10 years after I started my program,” Szabo said. “That wage was not a living wage in 2015 and it is not a living wage in 2026.”
Szabo said they do not know how TAs make ends meet.
Szabo called it an equity issue while speaking at the General Assembly on Tuesday in support of collective bargaining rights for university and other public employees.
“It means that the people who can afford to go to graduate school in Virginia are people who can afford to accept that rate of pay, which means that they have to get their money somewhere else,” Szabo said.
Mahmoud Kaid is a Ph.D. candidate working in a chemistry lab where he develops “materials and electrochemical systems” to improve lithium-sulfur batteries, reducing the cost and environmental impact of current lithium-ion batteries.
Grad student funding normally comes from either GTAs or research assistantships (GRAs) supported by external grants, according to Kaid. His current work depends on a grant from the American Chemical Society after federal funding cuts removed the grant that supported him as a research assistant.
“Graduate students play a central role in research, teaching, and innovation at universities,” Kaid stated. “Fair and competitive compensation is essential not only for financial well-being but also for academic productivity and mental health.”
Kaid’s stipend generally covers basic living expenses, but he noted that financing rising housing, health care and daily costs can still be challenging.
The CT spoke to several graduate student workers who requested to remain anonymous to protect their employment status. Many said the current wages are not enough, or are enough only to cover rent and utilities.
They shared that many graduate workers have to take on multiple jobs to afford living expenses, and some said their pay was only enough for a “per-semester basis.” In addition, one student who works in student support said they do not get paid when the university is closed during breaks or inclement weather.
An international student who works as a TA noted that their status disallows them from working anywhere off-campus.
“I am passionate about supporting college students through their academic journey, but I do not feel as if the campus administration will advocate for us financially,” one student said. “Especially considering the changes that the federal government is currently making towards financial aid options for students.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: The CT made the decision to grant certain sources in this story anonymity in order to protect them from possible reprimanding by their employers.