IHE has the details. An excerpt:
Whereas doctoral students are currently funded for up to six years, depending on their programs, the new framework promises all students in good academic standing who enrolled in summer 2016 or later full funding until they graduate, with no limits....
Chicago’s guaranteed annual stipend level as of now is $31,000. The new funding model begins next fall and will take two years to fully adopt. Once it is in place, all students will have paid health insurance premiums and full tuition coverage, in addition to the guaranteed stipend.
If full funding is the carrot to finish one’s degree in a timely manner, minimizing financial distractions, there is a stick -- at least for departments. Currently, program cohort sizes aren’t strictly linked to completion. But they will be going forward. Now, the total number of Ph.D. students in the four [academic] divisions affected will be a fixed, yet-to-be-determined number -- and new students will not be admitted until current students graduate or leave.
Only a minority of students in philosophy finish within six years here, and once funding runs out, students often end up teaching multiple courses each term, either at University of Chicago, more often at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which hires lots of liberal arts teachers--as a result, of course, their progress towards finishing the dissertation is slowed even more. The "stick," of course, will lead departments to put more pressure on students to finish; whether that will lead faculty to be more responsible in assisting students with finishing remains to be seen!
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