Reilly, who is a Ph.D. student at the GSE and TFs a course there, said the payment for these benefits should not rest on the individual graduate schools.

“Education, despite its critical importance in our society, isn’t exactly rolling in the dough all the time,” Reilly said. “It’s just kind of a shame for it to be left up to the schools like that instead of through this central school I felt I was affiliated with.”

Members of the graduate student unionization effort, with which Reilly and Xu are both involved, also brought the top-up issue to light during information sessions the group held earlier this semester.

Similarly, the Graduate Student Council met with Aloise and other GSAS administrators several weeks ago to discuss top-up disparities. Dykstra, who attended that meeting as the Council’s at-large representative for the social sciences, said she left feeling “cautiously optimistic.”

Kennedy School spokesperson Melodie Jackson wrote in an email that students and faculty had raised the top-up issue with the School’s Dean, Douglas W. Elmendorf, who spoke with GSAS Dean Xiao-Li Meng about it. Jackson wrote that Elmendorf is “actively exploring ways to address the problem.”

“It’s a process; it takes time,” Aloise said, calling the top-up conversations an “ongoing dialogue.”

—Staff writer Leah S. Yared can be reached at leah.yared@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @Leah_Yared.