The Welfare of a Graduate (PhD) Student at Texas Tech University

Nothing is more exciting than when you get to realize that it’s real and not just a dream that you have got a scholarship opportunity to pursue your post graduate studies from a university in the United States. A university like Texas Tech is ranked amongst the top 100 universities in the world, and thus millions in the world have a wish to join such a university, but just a few hundreds get such an opportunity. In most of the cases, the largest percentage of graduate students are experienced and mature, and with independent families.  The expectations of the student, relatives, and friends are always very high, and they do anything to raise money required for air ticket, and initial rental fees while in the United States. Most people even sell some assets like land to ensure that they have the required funding for their travel, in case they didn’t have it. Most graduate students have jobs that they leave back home to pursue further education and to better their lives from a first world country. Many thus leave the jobs, families, and friends.  On arrival, imaginations and memories of what they left behind do not just phase out immediately, but rather gradually. However, the life of a PhD graduate student ought to be given more attention to help them become more refined, stronger, focused, enthusiastic, optimistic, productive, and useful to the community from which they come. My arguments if the subsequent paragraphs support the need for a more improved support toward the welfare of a PhD student at Texas Tech, a research based university.

I have spent two months so far at Texas Tech.  I have realized that a graduate PhD student at Texas Tech University is very busy with specifically academic work yet his/her welfare is not given stringent attention. PhD students do not have time to do any other side activities lest they become ineffective in academia. Their busy nature of life is however intrinsic, and hardly unavoidable. But on the other hand, it is good for instilling into them time management abilities, dedication towards achieving set targets, and general positive attitude change towards a wide range of life aspects. The problem this nature of life poses if not highly regarded, is unprecedented poor living standards that might directly impact the students’ academic performance negatively. I therefore advocate for robust, comprehensive, and sustainable policies aiming at improving the livelihood and welfare of a graduate PhD student on a scholarship opportunity at Texas Tech. There must be a difference between a PhD student and an undergraduate student. A PhD student is more or less an instructor in the making, and a researcher. Avenues should be put in place to have these students more empowered and their esteem strengthened given their busy nature of life.

 As earlier described, PhD students are quite old enough and in most cases above 27 years of age with lots of responsibilities which they end up neglecting due to a drop in finances during the course of a PhD study. At this age, most have families for which they have responsibilities to look after, and as well as establishing their lives both financially and materially.  Coupled with the above, it is pertinent to note that most majors for PhD students take not less than a period of 5 years of serious concentration. This rather means a fully dedicated student will spend five years without financial and material stability. Such a student hesitates to go back home, especially if he/she has been in the United States for over 5 years but yet are older and poor. Therefore, avenues should be put in place to ensure that there is a difference in the life of this student, not only in academia, but in all other life aspects. For instance, most PhD students have job opportunities from which they get some monthly stipends to sustain and support their living while studying. However, the stipend is in most cases consumed in expenses of rent, paying for extra credits at the university, paying for health insurance, etc. The university should put in place avenues for students on scholarships to ensure that their expenses with respect to the university are minimal or eradicated.

Lastly, I wish to category state that in general, there is always low productivity from a less motivated community. We need to ensure high production levels are maintained and improved at Texas Tech University. There is a need to set production targets every year and assess the dependency parameters while establishing avenues of countering unfavorable the parameters. These parameters can as well be used to guide the formulation, and regulation of policies that I talked about in the first paragraph.  The university avails scholarship opportunities to hundreds of students with the expectation of high productivity in academics, research, and innovation.  However, the largest percentage of those enrolled has not performed to the expectations of the university. Many have withdrawn from their courses, while others have finalized without any relevant work that benefits the university.  Literally, my expectation is that more students should be able to finalize with the highest percentage having relevant contribution to the university in research and innovation. I argue that this level of productivity largely depends on the student self-esteem, commitment, and enthusiasm towards whatever he/she is doing. These in turn depend on attitude which is entirely determined by the welfare.

In my conclusion, therefore, if the above as described in the paragraphs are put into practice, Texas Tech University will be deemed to be the most empowering, but also a highly productive with empirical evidence in research areas that practically impact human life and technology positively. I believe that productivity is dependent upon the welfare of the stakeholders. I therefore hypothesize that the better the welfare of all, the higher the commitment and the rate of productivity.

Judas Tadeo