Our Mission
The Michigan Association of Graduate & Professional Students (MAGPS) consists of participating member organizations which represent graduate and professional students at colleges and universities across the state of Michigan. MAGPS members meet anually and teleconference regularly, marshalling the resources of member organizations to better conditions for graduate and professional students.
This work is especially important in the face of the huge challenges to graduate education posed by the current economic downturn. Michigan universities currently compete heavily for students. While such competition might seem to elevate the situation of graduate students, these are the facts:
- Michigan spends 42% of it's budget on corrections, and only 3% on higher education
- The state of Michigan has reduced support per student by $2,852 since FY2001 (adjusting for inflation)
- Michigan is last in the nation on spending for higher education, with a mere 5.1% increase in higher ed appropriations in last 5 years
MAGPS was formed in recognition of the fact that the problems Michigan universities will be facing are connected closely to state and local legislation. MAGPS members can take direct action by learning more about how institutional, economic, politicial, and legislative agendas shape graduate students' day-to-day lives. By lobbying legislators with a carefully articulated, relevant message reflecting the needs and concerns of graduate students, MAGPS hopes to enrich the lives of graduate students throughout Michigan.
MAGPS is guided by the belief that graduate students empower themselves by forming and maintaining graduate and professional student organizations (GPSOs) which can advocate for them with university and state administrators as they pursue their studies. The Mission of MAGPS is to represent a network of information and member organizations dedicated to encouraging the creation, sustainability and enrichment of graduate and professional student organizations in Michigan universities by providing information and assistance in:
- Helping students form GPSOs at colleges and universities where none exist
- Helping enrich and strengthen the voice of established GPSOs with their constituents, university administrators, and with local and national political representatives.
MAGPS encourages GPSOs to advocate for fair and productive working conditions on campus which will encourage a quality of intellectual and scholarly life such as: engaging in discussions of university and policy and procedure and generally advocating with their departments, colleges, university, and state and federal governments, without fear of reprisal or retribution.
MAGPS encourages GPSOs to advocate for fair and productive living conditions for graduate and professional students which encourage a quality of personal life such as: adequate and affordable health care and wellness programs, affordable childcare (including parental leave and other medical benefits necessary to promote graduate study); egalitarian policies which guarantee fair treatment and equal rights for all graduate and professional students, including international students, and which encourage the diversity of universities in an increasingly global economy.