Financial Information

Tuition and Fees
Financial Aid
Teaching and Research Assistantships

Tuition and Fees

Please see the Accounts Receivable website for current tuition and fee information. Your tuition rate is determined by your residency status – either in-state, out-of-state, which would include international students or online. Guidelines for residency status are posted on the Division of Student Affairs site.

Teaching and Research Assistantships  

A limited number of teaching and research assistantships are available for matriculated, full-time (minimum of 9 credits/semester) graduate students. Assistantships are assigned by the student's department and are subject to the agreement between UMass Lowell and UAW/Graduate Employees Organization. Therefore, all requests for teaching assistantships should be directed to the departmental graduate coordinator or chairperson.

Qualifying for an Assistantship
To ensure that teaching assistantships are awarded to the most qualified individuals, the Graduate School has established the following requirements:

1. No teaching/research assistantship may be awarded to a graduate student with incompletes, F's, or U's on his or her transcript. 

2. No teaching/research assistantship may be awarded to a graduate student with a cumulative grade point average under 3.0 on the official transcript.

3. No University-funded teaching/research assistantship may awarded to a master's degree candidate if he/she has completed the total number of credits required for his/her program.

4. Level III teaching/research assistantships may only be awarded to graduate students who have reached doctoral candidacy (i.e. completed all course work, oral/written and language examinations) and are enrolled in dissertation research.

Research assistantships are available through special arrangements with individual research advisors. Individuals interested in research assistantships should contact departmental faculty members concerning the availability of this form of financial aid.

Assistantship Amounts
The amount of the teaching or research assistantship (TA or RA) for each semester or academic year is set according to agreement between UML and the UAW/Graduate Employees Organization. 

For in-state students, a full or half-time assistantship carries a taxable stipend plus a full tuition and fees waiver for each semester. For out-of-state students, a full or half-time assistantship carries the same taxable stipend as the in-state students, plus a full out-of-state tuition waiver. However, the out-of-state student is still responsible for any fees.

The TA and RA contract packages for 2007-08 are found in the table below. Note that the amounts shown in the table are per semester, and do not include summer support, which may be available in the department from individual researchers. The amounts shown are for "stipend level 1" – master's and doctoral students in their first year. Doctoral students may qualify for higher amounts depending on whether they have passed their qualifying exam (stipend level 2) and whether they have completed all their course work (stipend level 3). Academic year (2 semester) support would be double the amounts shown.

An incoming in-state student with a full time TA or RA would receive a full (two semester) stipend of $12,259 and a full in-state tuition & fees waiver of $7,708 (for a total package value of $19,967), in addition to any summer RA funds that may be available.

An incoming foreign student with a full time TA or RA would receive an academic year (two semesters) stipend of $12,258 and an additional out-of-state annual tuition waiver of $6,425 and an out-of-state fee waiver of $4,156 for a total package value of $22,838. The student’s financial responsibility would be $1,816.