These funds have usually been contributed for the broad purpose of advancing graduate education, rather than the more specific purpose of providing supplementary salary to TAs. If a department wishes to invest these funds in advanced students who are known quantities, this need must be sacrificed in order to support newcomer TAs. A third approach used by some units is to start beginning TAs at a point on the salary schedule above the entry level in order to address this problem. It must be emphasized that even the highest of three currently allowed levels is below the competitive wage in some disciplines. A fourth approach is that some units that have no state-funded TA positions ask TAs to teach as a degree requirement while they are being funded on an RA using a higher rate the variable arrangement allows.
Some units use all of the above mechanisms.
The existence of these mechanisms indicates a need on the part of units in some areas of campus, to provide compensation at rates above those found on the TA salary schedule in order to be competitive with peer graduate programs. This is not surprising, considering the fact that faculty salaries in the various disciplines are structured to be similarly competitive. It is the opinion of the task force that UW is not well served by the current TA compensation policy. Other than its simplicity, there is no obvious reason for a policy which leaves to impacted units the task of solving the problem of competing with their peers in this arena, particularly when, as noted below, the majority of peer institutions deal with this problem centrally. The present policy leaves the upper administration without tools to help academically strong units experiencing this problem.