Great news. More $$ & more scholarships !! but… most grad students paid by grants & those +3-8% which leaves big doubts about grad stipends for most. A 30K grant will be +2.4K at the max. We will have 2 classes of grad students & that worries me. - ThreadSky

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wilsontoxlab.bsky.social • 318 days ago

Great news.
More $$ & more scholarships !!

but… most grad students paid by grants & those +3-8% which leaves big doubts about grad stipends for most. A 30K grant will be +2.4K at the max. We will have 2 classes of grad students & that worries me.

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girls-can.bsky.social•318 days ago

Also, there’s another 1.8B in there for grants. So actually grants are benefiting from the advocacy of our students. A lesson to us faculty 😉

girls-can.bsky.social•318 days ago

I agree, more work to be done. But advocacy works and this is a great start! NSERC scholarships set a ceiling for most grad stipends. This will help me advocate bigger stipends in my institution and all my grants - got to stay competitive!

wilsontoxlab.bsky.social•318 days ago

My department has been doing everything it can to find ways to increase stipends. But NSERC DG have real limits. something like 80% of grad students are paid from grants, not scholarships. Yes it helps, it matters & advocacy worked here. But advocacy for grants has been ongoing & +3% is not v good

hundred00.bsky.social•318 days ago

There’s money in the budget for that too.

wilsontoxlab.bsky.social•318 days ago

The amounts are small. It will maybe add a few K to an average grant. That helps maybe 1 student go up in stipend but only if you can cut back on their research costs in some other way. Inflation & rising costs on lab supplies will make this very difficult to translate to better stipends for most.

hundred00.bsky.social•317 days ago

I guess we’ll see. ;)

wilsontoxlab.bsky.social•317 days ago

Someone showed awards from NSERC for the last cycle on X. 50% of the grant awards were too small to cover a single student stipend. Alex Usher calculated a 3-8% increase in open call
Operating grants based on the budget amounts. That’s a few K on a 30K grant. Grants need stipend + research costs

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