Student Parents Wait for Reforms

Despite recommendations set forth in a February report about new student parents, the maternity process for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is still awaiting a rebirth.

Graduate Student Council president Kyle M. Brown said a committee is currently fine-tuning the details of “two halves” of the parental accommodation policy: providing access to affordable childcare and paid time off for new student parents.

According to the report issued by the Joint Student Committee on Parental Accommodation, 50 percent of surveyed GSAS student parents saw their stipends lapse while on leave and 40 percent were unsatisfied with the childcare they were able to afford.

The report—authored by members from the Graduate Student Council and Harvard Graduate Women in Science and Engineering—surveyed 101 student parents, or approximately 40 percent of graduate student parents.

The new policy is being crafted within GSAS—Brown and HGWISE member Karen M. Ruff have been meeting regularly with GSAS Administrative Dean Margot N. Gill and GSAS Dean of Student Affairs Garth O. McCavana.

Brown said he hopes the new policies will mean “parents don’t have to come begging all the time and pull together funding from various sources.”

UNIVERSITY-WIDE INITIATIVE

The recommendations of the report are not specific only to GSAS students, but to all doctoral students—even post-doctoral faculty members—in every graduate program, according to Brown.

“It’s going to have to be a University-wide initiative,” Brown said. “We need to make sure that there’s leadership coming from the top.”

The varying amounts of financial support between the different graduate schools make full implementation of a comprehensive parental accommodation policy a “complicated landscape,” Brown said.

“Right now, it’s a matter of making sure that everyone at all the various schools are all on the same page about the necessity of the program,” he said.

Full implementation of the policy will take time, Brown said. He cited Yale, which recently implemented a “very inclusive policy” with a speed that created unanticipated challenges.

The working group had initially hoped to feature the policy recommendations in next year’s budget.

“But I would say, now, there’s a 50 percent chance,” Ruff said. “We’re still in the process of trying to get this policy figured out.”

The details of the policy will most likely be determined this year, but “whether it will be figured out in time for funding next year is the question,” Ruff said.

Some funding will definitely be available for child care and for time off, Ruff said, but at this point, she does not know the official level of funding to be expected.

PUSH OUT, HEAD FIRST

Some changes have already found their way out of the womb.

The G-clock policy—which extends key graduate school deadlines by a year for new parents—is now official, Ruff said.

“Now it’s clearer and much more widely known that when students have children, they deserve extension of their G-clock,” Ruff said.

The Joint Student Committee, however, will continue to brainstorm and learn from peer institutions to create a coherent parental accommodation policy.

“We have to advocate,” Brown said. “Part of the goal of working with our deans is to put together a plan that’s going to be effective and can be implemented.”

Brown said he did not anticipate the level of difficulty in creating and implementing the policy.

“It’s just the way the Harvard landscape is,” Brown said. “It’s a big bureaucracy.”

—Staff Writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.