As a PhD student in the Department of Cultural Anthropology, you are guaranteed five years of year-round support, counted from the year of matriculation. This commitment includes full coverage of tuition and fees for Fall, Spring, and Summer semesters, health and dental insurance, and stipend support for 12 months.
For the 2025-26 academic year, the guaranteed stipend rate is $42,500, paid out at $3541.67 per month from September 2025 – August 2026.
In Fall and Spring Semesters, your stipend will come in two forms, a TA/GA stipend, and a Fellowship stipend. The TA/GA stipend is directly tied to service you provide the department in the form of Teaching Assistantships or Graduate Assistantships (research assistantships) – from a legal and tax perspective, it is compensation for your work. The TA/GA stipend accounts for $12,200 of the total guaranteed stipend support. The Fellowship stipend is not tied to service, it is simply additional support you receive to help enable your graduate studies and research, and accounts for $19,675 of the total guaranteed stipend.
These two stipends are paid out separately. The TA/GA stipend is paid in your compensatory (or “comp”) pay on the 25th of the month, or, if the 25th falls on a weekend, the closest prior business day. The Fellowship stipend is paid in your non-compensatory (or “non-comp”) pay on the last business day of the month. Note that the distribution of these two stipends – that is, how much you will receive in comp pay and non-comp pay – will change throughout the year, but every month the two stipends total to provide the guaranteed $3541.67 per month.
Note that in some cases an individual student's funding package may differ from the standard package described here. The Dean's Graduate Fellowship, for example, waives service obligations and stipend support disperse entirely in non-comp pay, and the J. B. Duke International Dissertation Research Fellowship is dispersed in two lump-sum non-comp payments in September and January. In other cases external grants (most frequently, dissertation fieldwork grants) may replace a portion of your stipend, and be "topped up" with departmental funding to the total, guaranteed amount.
At the start of every Fall semester, you will receive a reappointment letter (sometimes referred to as a "funding letter") with details specific to your funding package, including a monthly numerical breakdown of comp and non-comp payments. If you have questions about any of these policies or about your individual funding package, contact the DGS and DGSA.
For information on Summer term stipend support see Summer Funding.
For information on funding during dissertation fieldwork, see Dissertation Fieldwork Policies.