UCLA Tells Grad Students to Stick Around

Today’s Daily Bruin reports that a tightening in the rules on grad students taking leaves of absence (and thus not paying tuition) is meeting protests from those students:

Graduate students discussed multiple ways to take action against recent changes to UCLA’s leave of absence policy at a town hall meeting Wednesday afternoon. This quarter, UCLA stopped accepting thesis or dissertation writing as valid reasons for taking time off to help graduate students complete their degree paths on time, said April de Stefano, director of academic services in the UCLA Graduate Division…

The change was applied with the intent of encouraging continuous enrollment and uniform progression toward a graduate degree, since many graduate students may find it harder to return to campus after taking a leave of absence…

Full story at: http://www.dailybruin.com/article/2012/11/grad-students-plan-action-against-changed-policy

We did pick up some audio from the meeting in which a spokesperson from grad division had these words: