Graduate-Financial Assistance

There is no financial aid for graduate study. However, we do support students with graduate assistantships. These are part-time jobs at the university (e.g., teaching a course, assisting a professor in research) that provide a monthly stipend and pay for your tuition and health care costs. Assistantships are assigned based on availability and student performance. You can apply for an assistantship but there is no guarantee that you would receive one while you are here.

In our department, there are two main types - those paid for out of funds by the Industrial & Management Systems Engineering department and those paid for out of faculty research contracts. Department funds typically are used to fund students to assist in meeting the teaching and administrative needs of the department. The department chairman has the discretion as to how these funds are allocated. Outside of these opportunities, individual faculty may have a contract to explore a research issue. For example, a faculty member might have a research contract with the National Science Foundation or the National Institute of Health. Using the funds from this contract, a faculty member will potentially need to hire graduate students to help in performing the research. In this instance, the employment of a graduate student(s) is at the discretion of the individual faculty member. In general, faculty looking for graduate student help often require students to demonstrate their abilities and competence as a student in one of their courses before they will make an assistantship offer.

In addition to a graduate assistantship, the University of Nebraska is quite good in making available numerous hourly opportunities for students wanting to work. Current and former students have held positions at the university bookstore, working as a web developer, serving food in a dormitory kitchen, doing general maintenance on campus. The following is a link to available campus opportunities:

http://www.unl.edu/careers/seic/studentjobs.shtml