Funding
This page describes:
- The main types of funding available to AFRE graduate students, and
- Specific Research Assistantship opportunities that are available to new graduate students joining the AFRE M.S. or Ph.D. program in Fall 2025. (Please scroll down to view these opportunities.)
Main Types of Funding
There are several ways graduate students can receive financial support for their programs. The Department offers graduate Research Assistantships, Teaching Assistantships, and Extension Assistantships.
- Research Assistantships (RAs) are the most common type of assistantship and are available to both M.S. and Ph.D. students. RAs support faculty on research projects, most of which are grant-funded projects.
- Teaching Assistantships (TAs) in AFRE are instructor of record positions and entail the TA teaching an undergraduate-level course in AFRE. As such, only Ph.D. students are eligible for TAs in AFRE and students employed as TAs are typically in their third or fourth year of doctoral studies. Prior to TAing, AFRE Ph.D. students typically serve as a grader for the course they will teach and are mentored by a faculty instructor of record in the course content, classroom management, and pedagogy. Students interested in academic careers are encouraged to TA in at least one semester during their doctoral studies.
- Extension Assistantships (EAs) are a new initiative in AFRE beginning in 2024 and are a partnership with MSU Extension. EAs work with an AFRE faculty member on extension/outreach activities related to issues of importance to MSU Extension stakeholders. EAs are available to both M.S. and Ph.D. students and help prepare students for careers that involve extension or outreach.
Graduate assistants are generally expected to work 20 hours per week on their assistantship. As well as providing a stipend ($29,100-$29,700 per year with annual raises), graduate assistantships cover health insurance for 12 months and up to 9 credits of tuition in fall and spring semesters. Also, if the student takes additional credits, they are only charged the in-state tuition rate.
You can indicate in your application if you wish to be considered for a graduate assistantship. ***If you have an interest in a particular type of assistantship (especially RAs and EAs, as these are the types of assistantships offered to first-year AFRE graduate students), please mention this in your application and describe how the assistantship will help you meet your academic and career goals.***
Domestic and international students are both eligible to apply for assistantships.
The number of available assistantships is limited and not all students admitted to the program can be offered an assistantship.
Students not receiving graduate assistantships can finance their program in other ways. Grading opportunities for 10 or 20 hours per week are offered in fall and spring semesters. The hourly rate of pay for these positions is the hourly equivalent of the stipend portion of a graduate assistantship, but grading positions do not include tuition and health insurance benefits. Hourly research positions may also be available.
Many international students can apply for graduate training fellowships through programs operated in their own countries. The MSU Library also maintains a useful list of Graduate Scholarships, Fellowships, and Loan opportunities. You can also visit the MSU Office of Financial Aid. Some students also self-fund their programs. Tuition costs are available here and student health insurance plan information is available here.
The Foreign Fulbright Graduate Student Program is also available to students from many countries. Within the U.S., this program is administered by the Institute of International Education (IIE). Outside the U.S., the program is administered in 50 countries by a Binational Commission, and in the remaining countries by the U.S. Information Service (USIS).
In addition, the AFRE M.S. program is a graduate program partner of the United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service International Agricultural Fellowship Program (IAFP). The IAFP “provides graduate fellowships to qualified individuals who will attend two-year graduate programs in Agribusiness or Agricultural Economics at U.S. universities, provide[s] two summer internships – one domestic and one overseas, offers mentoring from Foreign Service Officers, and provides professional development activities” (source: https://www.fasfellowship.org/). One of four IAFP fellows per year in the first two years of the program chose AFRE for their M.S. studies, and we look forward to more IAFP fellows joining AFRE in the future. AFRE offers an attractive funding package to IAFP fellows to complement their IAFP funding. See https://www.fasfellowship.org/ for more information.
If you have external funding (full or partial), please be sure to describe this in your application.
Research Assistantship (RA) Opportunities for Fall 2025 Applicants
Please note: Numerous RA opportunities beyond those listed below will also be available.
Research Assistantship: Adapting Pistachio Production to a Changing Climate (with Dr. Tor Tolhurst)
AFRE faculty member Dr. Tor Tolhurst is seeking to hire an incoming AFRE M.S. or Ph.D. student as an RA under the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Specialty Crop Research Initiative. The project examines strategies to adapt pistachio cultivars to a changing climate through breeding and management practices, including emergent biotechnological solutions. The economic research team is responsible for measuring the effects of weather and climate changes on pistachio yield and quality using county, field, and trial data. More broadly, this project will contribute to the evolving literature on perennial-crop supply responses with the application and development of frontier econometric methods. While the student is responsible for contributing to the project’s research objectives (e.g., data analysis, contributing to papers and briefs), the successful candidate may also have access to the research team’s resources to pursue their own interests. The successful candidate will have a strong background or interest in climate change economics, coding, and quantitative methods.
The RA position is for an average of 20 hours of work per week and includes stipend, tuition, and health insurance benefits. To express interest in this RA opportunity, please mention the position and why you are interested in it in the academic statement portion of your application to the AFRE M.S. or Ph.D. program. Application materials for interested applicants who are deemed admissible by the AFRE graduate admissions committee will then be shared by the admissions committee with Dr. Tolhurst for further consideration.
Please direct questions about this opportunity to Dr. Tor Tolhurst at tolhurs2@msu.edu.
Research Assistantship: Climate Resilience in Michigan Agriculture (with Dr. Molly Sears)
AFRE faculty member Dr. Molly Sears is seeking to hire an incoming AFRE M.S. or Ph.D. student as an RA to support a project funded by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) on climate resilience in Michigan’s agricultural sector. This project focuses on identifying effective irrigation and climate-smart strategies to support resilient, profitable, and environmentally beneficial farming practices in the face of changing climate conditions.
The RA will contribute to three primary objectives: (i) assessing the costs, benefits, and environmental effects of climate-smart practices to aid in producer decision-making; (ii) estimating the likelihood of climate-smart practice adoption, conditional on weather, farm, and household characteristics; and (iii) simulating how adoption will change under mid-century climate conditions, and its potential impact on water quality, water availability, and crop production. Results will be used to develop a decision support tool, as well as academic research articles.
The ideal candidate will have:
- A background or strong interest in agricultural and/or environmental economics
- Experience with data analysis and discrete choice modeling (preferably in R or Stata)
- An ability to work both independently and in a team environment
The student will be joining an interdisciplinary team of researchers from across MSU, including faculty and students from the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MSU Extension, and AFRE. The RA position is for an average of 20 hours of work per week and includes stipend, tuition, and health insurance benefits. To express interest in this RA opportunity, please mention the position and why you are interested in it in the academic statement portion of your application to the AFRE M.S. or Ph.D. program. Application materials for interested applicants who are deemed admissible by the AFRE graduate admissions committee will then be shared by the admissions committee with Dr. Sears for further consideration.
Please direct questions about this opportunity to Dr. Molly Sears at searsmo1@msu.edu.
Research Assistantship: Managing Jointly Determined Agri-Environmental and Production Risks (with Dr. Richard Horan)
AFRE faculty member Dr. Richard Horan is seeking to hire an incoming AFRE Ph.D. student as an RA for a project entitled “Managing Jointly Determined Agri-Environmental and Production Risks: Application to Agricultural Nonpoint Pollution With Climate Change.” Random weather events create agricultural production risks as well as environmental risks since these events drive agricultural nonpoint source pollution and other agri-environmental impacts. Our research will explore the importance of correlated environmental and farm production risk in the design of environmental policy instruments, especially in the face of climate change. These policy design issues will be examined in theory and also numerically using simulation analyses. The RA’s duties will largely involve helping to calibrate and program the simulation model and analyze the results. There will be opportunities to present this research at professional meetings and to co-author publications.
The successful candidate will have one or more of the following characteristics:
- A passion for environmental economics
- Willingness to learn math programming software
- A strong work ethic
- A high level of discipline
To express interest in this RA opportunity, please mention the position and why you are interested in it in the academic statement portion of your application to the AFRE Ph.D. program. Application materials for interested applicants who are deemed admissible by the AFRE graduate admissions committee will then be shared by the admissions committee with Dr. Horan for further consideration. The RA position is for an average of 20 hours of work per week and includes stipend, tuition, and health insurance benefits.
Please direct questions about this opportunity to Dr. Richard Horan at horan@msu.edu.
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