UC Davis graduate programs will be getting an extra $600,000 next academic year and another $500,000 in 2000-01 to better compete for top students. Campus administrators have agreed to increase the graduate-studies block grant to provide financial support to more students as enrollment rises. The money will come from Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef's discretionary funds. "It became clear that the recent increases in fees and especially in out-of-state tuition were hindering our competitiveness in recruitment of graduate students, said Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert Grey. "Because graduate education is a high priority for the campus we decided to use discretionary funds to take a step toward restoring our competitive stance in grad-uate student sup-port," Grey said. "It is, however, only a step. We still have much work to do to develop a stable, long-term financial strategy for graduate student support." The funding increase was requested by graduate studies dean Cristina González to help keep pace with anticipated enrollment increases and to offset projected tuition increases for out-of-state and foreign graduate students. González said graduate-student financial support has been her top priority since she came to UC Davis in September 1997. "I am delighted with Chancellor Vanderhoef's and Provost Grey's decision to invest in this area over the coming years," she said. The money is critical to both graduate students and the university, González said. "Our graduate students, who are a very diverse group, often with family and other responsibilities, need sufficient funding to be able to concentrate on their studies. Our graduate programs must be able to compete for the best graduate students in the country and the world." Block-grant funding is a major source of graduate-student support, in addition to assistantships, scholarships, financial-aid grants, work-study programs and loans. The block grant gives graduate programs needed flexibility in recruiting and retaining top students. Unlike most financial-aid programs, block-grant money is not tied to financial need. It also defrays about half of the more-than-$10,000-annual tuition costs for the campus's 735 out-of-state and foreign graduate students. Graduate-student enrollment is expected to increase from 3,090 to 3,770 over the next eight years. Grey said decisions about how to distribute the funds to specific students and programs would be left to deans, department chairs and graduate group chairs. The money is one-third to one-half of the estimated $2.1 million to $2.9 million that graduate programs will need over the next five years to keep pace with growing enrollments and projected non-resident tuition cost increases, Grey said. State funding for enrollment growth will provide some relief but won't be enough by itself, he said. As an outgrowth of the chancellor's 1998 Fall Conference, a Task Force on Graduate Student Support is looking to find other sources of money to provide more graduate-student support. González said the task force will make its recommendations by the end of the academic year. "We need to determine the proper balance among block grant allocations to programs, individual fellowships to students and matching funds to faculty, for training grants and the like," she said. "Our goals are to give flexibility to graduate programs, reward outstanding students, support enterprising faculty and foster academic excellence. I am very pleased with the progress we have made thus far."