More than 1,500 qualifying students seeking doctoral, Master of Fine Arts, Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture degrees will receive full-tuition scholarships by fall 2006.

Students in these programs will receive scholarships because they are pursuing the highest degrees offered in their fields, said John Mayfield, associate dean of the graduate college.

“Our overall reason for doing this is to make Iowa State attractive to high-quality graduate students,” he said. “We are competing with schools who already offer these students full tuition.”

To qualify for a full-tuition scholarship, students must hold at least a half-time assistantship (20 hours a week) for three months during a semester or six weeks in the summer, be in good academic standing, have an unrestricted admission status and meet other department criteria.

Mayfield said there are a few reasons these particular students deserve full-tuition scholarships.

“These are the students who do a bulk of the research work at the university,” he said. “And when these students do something good, it usually leads to prestige for the university.”

All other qualified master’s degree students will continue to receive 50 percent of tuition costs as the standard scholarship.

Funding for the full-tuition scholarships will come partly from the school and outside sources, Mayfield said. The plan is revenue-neutral, which means it will not cost the university any more money, he said.

“When a student is funded by an external grant, that will now pay for half of their tuition,” he said. “Also, some students work for nonacademic units [such as the Department of Residence], and generally the nonacademic units will pay for the tuition scholarship.”

The funds from two eliminated scholarship programs for graduate students, PACE and ABD, are going to go help fund the full tuition scholarships as well, he said.

“The elimination of the PACE awards doesn’t affect students who are already here, only those who haven’t applied yet. That award was for incoming graduate students in any department,” he said. “The ABD award [which paid for the other half of doctoral student tuition] just became obsolete with the institution of the full-tuition scholarship.”

Mayfield said he expects to spend roughly $8 million on scholarships for all 4,700 students in the Graduate College during the 2004—05 school year.

“If that $8 million gets used up, then departments will need to pay the difference [for scholarships],” he said. “But the colleges will try to help their departments absorb the costs if there is a shortfall.”

The three-year transition to the new policy will begin this fall. The progression to the full tuition scholarships will be:

* Current scholarships: 50 percent

* Fall 2004: 62.5 percent

* Fall 2005: 75 percent

* Fall 2006: 100 percent

Lakshminaras Krishnaswamy, graduate student in genetics, development and cellular biology, is pursuing a doctoral degree. He said the new program will benefit students like him, but may hurt him in the short term.

“I currently receive an ABD award, so since that was eliminated and it will still be a few years until I see the full-tuition scholarship, I will need to pay more,” he said. “I may even graduate before the scholarship is in place. This does mean a little extra money from my pocket, but on the whole this is good for graduate students, so I welcome that.”