Funding and Financial Aid

The Feminist Studies Department offers students 5-year funding guarantees with support from fellowships and employment opportunities (Teaching Assistantships, Teaching Fellowships, and Graduate Student Researcher positions). In addition to providing a salary and in-state tuition remission (including health insurance), the employment opportunities also provide valuable experience and training for the job market. Fellowship stipends and salaries are typically in the range of $7,000-$8,000 per quarter. Since international students are also charged non-resident tuition, the university offers two-year fellowships or waivers to off-set the cost.

At the time of admission, we nominate top applicants for campus-wide competitive fellowships, such as the Chancellor's and Cota-Robles fellowships.  More information on these and other funding opportunities are available here: https://graddiv.ucsc.edu/financial-aid/index.html.

We also offer competitive quarterly fellowships for Qualifying Exam preparation and dissertation writing. The department provides occasional summer research funding, pending resources, and an annual fund for conference travel. More broadly, The Humanities Institute offers several opportunities for competitive funding, including dissertation fellowships, research fellowships, and Teaching Fellowships. You can learn more about these opportunities here: https://thi.ucsc.edu/funding/.

While the department will cover most tuition-related expenses and will provide stipends/salaries during the first 5 years, prospective students are encouraged to consider the cost of living in Santa Cruz.  A team of UCSC faculty and graduate students have created a tool which calculates the cost of attendance and living: https://www2.ucsc.edu/gradcosts/