Stanford University will increase the share of tuition it covers for research assistants (RA) from 55% to 75% in the 2026-2027 academic year, making it less expensive for faculty to conduct critically important research while reducing funding uncertainties.

The provost and the University Budget Group approved the RA tuition allowance increase. “In a challenging fiscal environment, the university is prioritizing investments that directly support our core mission of research and education,” Provost Jenny Martinez said. “This is an investment in our graduate students and in our faculty’s research, both of which are top priorities.”

Most RAs are graduate students. When a faculty member hires a research assistant on a grant that carries the full indirect cost rate, the RA’s department pays a portion of tuition, often through research contracts overseen by faculty, while the university covers the rest. Under the new rate, Stanford will pick up 75% and the faculty member’s grant will cover 25%. Federal grants often fall short of the actual cost, so the larger university share eases pressure on lab budgets.

“Faculty are always weighing how they can most efficiently use the dollars that they get,” said Neil Hamilton, director of financial planning and policy analysis. “From the faculty’s perspective, this is a way to help them respond to any research reductions they might face. They’re spending less to do the same amount of research.”

Stanford’s PhD students are recognized globally as independent, top-tier scholars, said Ken Goodson, vice provost for graduate education and postdoctoral affairs, and the university encourages students to collaborate across school boundaries.

“This will make it easier for faculty to support PhD students,” Goodson said. “By bolstering the doctoral training tradition at Stanford, we reinforce the opportunity for this interdisciplinary discovery, and Stanford's a very special place to do that.”

It’s the second time in three years the university has raised the rate. In 2023, Stanford increased the RA tuition allowance from 40% to 55%, the first bump in nearly a decade.

The change only applies to roughly half of the university’s research activity that is at full indirect cost and is outside the School of Medicine, which operates under its own funding model and budget. RAs supported on grants at rates other than the full indirect cost rate will still receive a 40% tuition allowance from the university.

The vast majority of RAs are in the Doerr School of Sustainability, the School of Engineering, and the School of Humanities and Sciences. In fiscal year 2025, those three schools had about 1,800 research assistantships that would be affected.

For a typical RA working three quarters on an eligible grant, the change will save their faculty advisor’s lab about $8,500, Hamilton said, which could potentially go toward funding additional RAs or other training.

“There is hardly a more direct way to benefit faculty research than this,” Hamilton said. “There are a lot of concerns about federal support for sponsored research, and if we can decrease the cost for faculty members to hire a research assistant, that means they can stretch the dollars further that they receive from the federal government.”

Supporting research

An analysis from the Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research found that the cost of an RA on sponsored projects at Stanford rose about 45% between 2016 and 2026. Meanwhile, the federal research budget for higher education grew only 2.1% annually from fiscal year 2010 to 2020, and grants to individual investigators have not kept pace with inflation.

Stanford’s increased tuition coverage will make federal funding sources more attractive for faculty. Every federal grant a faculty member secures with student collaborators strengthens Stanford’s standing as a research university, Goodson said.

In some disciplines, Stanford trains as many PhD students as peer universities that have twice as many faculty, Goodson said. It also provides funding opportunities that are less widely available at other schools, such as donor-based funding routes like the Stanford Graduate Fellowship in Science and Engineering.

“These encourage students to explore and choose their research topics in a way that is not available at many other institutions,” Goodson said. “They are actually the crown jewel in certain ways of what we do in graduate education here at Stanford.”

“Stanford students want to choose their own path, and we’re able to give them that opportunity,” he continued. “Efforts to support students and faculty engaged in research are very important, because this is a big part of what makes Stanford exceptional.”