Despite Universitywide budget reductions announced in December, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will still increase its living stipend for doctoral students, though there will be cutbacks in other areas of the school’s budget, Graduate School Dean Jon Butler announced yesterday.

Funding for doctoral students will increase slightly and health subsidies for students and their spouses, partners and children will be maintained, Butler wrote in an e-mail to students, faculty and staff of the graduate school. At the same time, individual offices within the school will be asked to reduce their budgets.

“Preserving financial aid for students is among the University’s highest priorities,” Butler wrote.

All doctoral students will continue to receive a 12-month stipend. For 2009-’10, humanities and social science students will receive a stipend of about $25,500. Science students, whose funding varies across departments, will receive proportionately similar increases in their stipends.

Last year, students in the humanities and social sciences received $20,000 for five years, marking the first time students not in the natural sciences received full 12-month funding. Science students received $27,000 to $29,000, depending on the department.

Butler also said the graduate school will continue to maintain the Conference Travel Fund, which provides money for students to travel to conferences when sufficient department funds are not available.

In his budget letter to the Yale community in mid-December, University President Richard Levin called for 5 percent budget reductions across all areas of the University.

To comply with these cutbacks, Butler said the Graduate School will reduce its operating budget by not filling current staff vacancies and asking individual programs to reasonably curtail their own budgets. And, referencing the 9 percent increase in applications to the graduate school this season, Butler said the graduate school will be cautious about the number of offers it makes to prospective students.

In December, Levin projected that the value of the University’s endowment fell an estimated 25 percent — roughly $6 billion — between the end of June and December.