Statement in Support of Departments with Graduate Programs Funding their Graduate Students’ APA Membership Fees

As the Graduate Student Council of the APA, we believe that it is imperative that graduate student voices are integrated into the profession and its professional organizations, especially in these trying times where issues of strained budgets, loss of permanent employment, the move toward increasing use of adjuncts, and the like are deeply impacting graduate students as they begin to join the profession. Membership in the APA, as the field’s premier professional organization, provides graduate students with an invaluable entryway to the profession through its conferences, blog series, video series, publications, and career-related resources, connecting graduate students to the profession as a whole.

However, there has been a significant decline in graduate student APA membership—of 16.1%—in the period from 2019 to 2022. We believe that those graduate students who are no longer members of the APA will seriously miss out on key aspects of the profession, to both their detriment and the detriment of the future of the field.

Accordingly, the Graduate Student Council of the APA strongly urges philosophy departments with graduate programs to fund their graduate students’ annual APA membership fees. This would be beneficial both to the individual departments, in further professionalizing their graduate students and connecting them to the wider profession, as well as to the graduate students themselves, in fully integrating them to the profession that they will inherit.

Sincerely,

Sean M. Costello, Chair of the GSC
On behalf of the Graduate Student Council

Issued September 14, 2023