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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Joshua WeitzThe quiet of the summer seemed a good time for at least one new enrollee to come fill out his paperwork for the master’s program in public administration at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York. Except for the backpack he was wearing, it would have been hard to pick him out as a graduate student. Like many Americans who go to graduate school, he works full time and will attend Baruch part time for the next three years in hopes of improving his career prospects. He’ll pay for it himself with student loans. That’s why he was so perturbed to learn that, on top of the tuition he has already budgeted for, he’ll have to pay the university a $1,000-a-year “academic excellence fee.” ... “It may not seem like a lot, but when you’re making [a stipend of] $25,000 and working in a major city, it’s a major problem,” said Joshua Weitz, a professor of biological sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Weitz depends on graduate teaching and research assistants, and has become a critic of these fees.
