There’s a $19 million disparity between the pay raise sum asked for by the Graduate Assistants United and UF’s actual Sept. 11 offer, according to PhD student and GAU co-President Hannah Jacobs.
The negotiations for higher salaries began in early September with GAU’s proposal for an across-the-board 30% raise to help pay for basic necessities such as food and rent, Jacobs said.
On a graduate assistant’s minimum salary, Jacobs said, employees are eligible for food stamps, earning just 1.2 times the Floridian poverty line. As of 2026, the minimum graduate assistant salary falls just above that number at 1.25 times.
“When I go to apply for food stamps and I tell the state of Florida that my stipend is my full-time salary, they don’t question it,” Jacobs said.
UF’s graduate assistants haven’t received a negotiated salary bump since 2023, when they received a $2,200 raise, she said.
But, in UF’s offer, graduate assistants in the lowest paid colleges — Liberal Arts and Sciences, Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Arts and Education — will only get a $400 raise, bumping salaries from $20,600 to $21,000. Meanwhile, assistants in higher-paying schools, including the College of Dentistry and the Warrington College of Business, will see their salaries increase by $4,000, from $21,000 to $25,000.
To Jacobs, UF’s offer is cheap.
“We know that they have the money,” Jacobs said. “But they have their buckets in the budget that they simply allot how they would like to.”
Patrick Keegan, the chief negotiator for the UF Board of Trustees, said in April 2025 that UF has the money to raise graduate assistants’ minimum salaries, but they are unwilling to spend it.
The board did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite some colleges having higher average pay, graduate assistants from all departments struggle.
Sikander Khare, a biology graduate student and UF-GAU’s former bargaining chair, criticized the blatant wage gap among colleges. While he finds UF’s salary counteroffer offensive, he said, he finds the pay disparity even more so.
“Trying to get everyone to a minimum where they can survive is really the ultimate goal here,” Khare said.
UF-GAU will meet with the Board of Trustees Sept. 25 for further salary negotiations, and Khare said it is hopeful the discussion will help them get the contract they desire.
The faculty side
Despite the success of a Sept. 9 agreement on 5% merit raises, which proposed salary raises based on faculty performance, the UF chapter of the United Faculty of Florida is fighting for more rights as a union under the collective bargaining agreement it has with the university, said Meera Sitharam, the chapter’s co-President.
Changes are proposed to three articles. Changes to article four would allow members involved in bargaining to receive pay for hours they dedicate to negotiations. The changes proposed for article 28 would allow the union to negotiate with UF directly, rather than strike or sue, significantly lowering the amount of time and money that goes into amending their contracts.
Amendments to article 18 would give faculty the right to progressive discipline, meaning faculty can’t be fired without a history of warnings and disciplinary action against them.
However, UF is debating whether the articles are open for negotiation, Sitharam said, claiming the union is limited by “imposed terms and conditions” that don’t allow it to edit its contract or start new negotiations.
But Sitharam said the conditions ended last year.
“They can’t indefinitely say that we are living under imposed conditions,” she said. “That’s nonsense.”
UF will meet with UFF-UF again Sept. 21.
Contact Erica Dybas at edybas@alligator.org. Follow her on X @Erica_Dybas.
Erica Dybas is a first-year journalism major at UF and this Fall's Graduate School Reporter. This is her first semester at The Alligator. If she is not writing, you can find her reading, working out, or listening to punk music.
