Adequate financial support presents one of the most pressing challenges in graduate education today. Rising inflation paired with, until recently, stagnant funding has pushed graduate students who can’t afford the cost of living to a breaking point and has once again put the financial precarity of our emerging researchers in the spotlight. Since adequate financial support is a pillar of excellence in graduate education, we must intentionally and systematically examine how our students are supported. This is especially true if we wish to avoid losing talented individuals to places that offer at least the cost of living as compensation for the important contributions they make to research. A critical eye to funding is also necessary to provide inclusive access to graduate education and avoid restricting our talent pool to those who have access to existing wealth.

To better understand the shifting landscape of graduate funding and the potential impact on our students, the Faculty of Science at McGill University commenced a project pillared on in-depth funding analyses of our 1,200+ graduate students. This session will share an overview of how we conduct our analyses and discuss how we are applying this information to work toward positive changes in graduate funding.

Importantly, our work goes beyond examining average funding levels and gross income. In this session, we will share the steps of our graduate funding analyses. For example, beginning with centrally-captured data on total payments to each graduate student, we calculate individual take-home amounts and benchmark these with the Market Basket Measure. We will also discuss engagement efforts, such as hosting departmental consultations to contextualize data, checking in on outliers, meeting with students, and advocating at the federal level. The session will include an overview of what we have done the past few years, outcomes and challenges observed thus far, and considerations of the broader context of graduate student funding in Canada. We anticipate that sharing some valuable lessons learned, such as aspects of graduate work not captured in the data but impacting students’ financial situation, will provide insights to other graduate education leaders who are also navigating this challenge. The aim of this session is to inspire other units to consider such a project if they have the means to do so. We also aim to encourage discussion of ways that, as institutions, we may contribute to a better graduate funding landscape.

Speakers | Conférenciers