Graduate Funding Opportunities
The department actively encourages students to pursue educational assistance.
Residency for Tuition Purposes
There is a significant difference between Hawaiʻi resident and nonresident tuition rates. Visit the Office of Admissions Hawaiʻi Residency Requirements for information on the process of acquiring resident status.
Departmental Funding Sources
- Department Funds for Professional Travel - Graduate students are encouraged to participate in professional conferences and workshops. The department has limited funds available to support graduate students traveling to conferences where they have had a paper accepted for presentation.
- Gary Kazuo Sakihara Memorial Scholarship - Awarded to a PhD candidate whose dissertation research employs a challenging research design, presents findings that will benefit the community, and who exemplifies collegiality. Funds for this award come from the Gary Kazuo Sakihara Memorial Scholarship Fund, established in the memory of a former graduate student and long-time friend of the department. The award can be used for tuition books or travel to conferences to present research.
- Hörmann Prize - Each semester, the department offers an award for the best undergraduate and graduate paper that examines social and cultural phenomena in Hawaiʻi. Funds for this award come from the Bernhard Hörmann Prize Award Fund, established by friends and family of former Professor Bernhard Hörmann. The fund awards student papers which reflect Dr. Hörmannʻs interests in ethnic relations and social processes in Hawaiʻi.
External Funding Sources
- Graduate Division - Offers information on various forms of financial support available to graduate students at UH Mānoa.
- Financial Aid Services - Offers a list of local, national, and UH scholarships.
- International Student Services - Information for incoming students from the Asia-Pacific region, or for students interested in that area.
- East-West Center - An important source of financial aid for graduate students.
- Additional scholarships, including some open to graduate students, are administered by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity (now managed through STAR).
Many sociology graduate students have been successful in finding graduate research and teaching assistantships that are administered by other units or by individual University professors. Research assistantships are generally linked to specific extramural grant projects, and usually offer full tuition waiver, salary, and health benefits. Students with strong technical or methodological skills are particularly in demand. Though it is more typical for such jobs to go to graduate students already on campus, incoming students who have received admission can also apply. Search for Career Opportunities at the University of Hawai’i (NeoGov). There are also numerous hourly jobs for students (including those specifically for graduate students) available on the UH Mānoa campus. To search the online job database and to determine eligibility, visit Student Employment and Cooperative Education.