What Oklahoma’s doing to fund M.A. students

At the University of Oklahoma, we have just adopted a policy of reserving up to 2 assistantships per admissions year to fund MA students. We noticed that our applicants from underrepresented groups were disproportionately coming to philosophy from other fields, and thus in need of further training prior to being competitive for our PhD program. We hope that this MA funding will provide opportunities for members of underrepresented groups to begin their graduate work in philosophy without incurring debt, and to move on to the PhD in our department or elsewhere. MA students are full participants in our program, with access to faculty mentorship inside and outside the classroom. Our graduate students are a tight-knit group, and MA students are fully included in our community.