Funds for Higher Education in the US

US universities provide mainly 2 types of assistanships – Teaching Assistanship (TA) and Research Assistantship (RA). A Teaching Assistantship usually consists of helping the professor with secondary academic work such as conducting lab sessions, grading assignments etc. A TA is usually offered after one semester but it may be offered to a student with the admission itself if he/she has strong academic records. Key to get a TA is to score well in a professor’s subject in the previous semester. A Research Assistantship (RA) consists of helping a professor with his/her research work. An RA is usually difficult to get than a TA and a student must demonstrate strong interests in the professor’s research work along with the relevant skills. TAs and RAs are usually paid hourly stipends and may be even provided a partial/full tuition waiver. They usually help compensate the student’s tuition and living expenses. A third type of assistantship, Graduate Assistantship (GA) is similar to RA but is usually paid more.