PhD Scholarships 'Below Poverty Line'

Here is another article which is important especially for those who want to study for PhD degree. It was written by David Curry published in Canberra Times on 1 May 2008. The article can be accessed in this address : http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/phd-scholarships-below-poverty-line/402962.aspx

Hope you still have a spirit to pursue a PhD degree!

The dollar value of PhD scholarships is "in freefall" and projected to drop below the poverty line later this year, the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations says.

Figures released by the council yesterday show that the weekly stipend rate for Australian Postgraduate Awards projected for the December quarter of this year $385 will fall below the projected Henderson poverty line for the same period. And that figure is for a single person with no dependents. The stipend, which does not vary according to circumstances, is well below the poverty line of $581 for a person with two dependents.

The standard annual stipend for a PhD student is $20,007.

The council said the dollar value of the PhD scholarship had fallen, in real terms, from 47 per cent of average earnings in 1992 to just 35 per cent in 2007. "These figures spell out what research postgraduates already know that the basic stipend rate for the APA is, by itself, simply not enough to live on," council president Nigel Palmer said.

At the same time, studies showed that between one-fifth and one-third of academic staff at universities were expected to retire in the next decade, and would need to be replaced by PhD graduates.

The council said the Federal Government needed to follow up its commitment to make research postgraduates a priority, by immediately increasing the stipend rate for all postgraduate awards by 30 per cent. It also called for the exemption of scholarships and awards from assessable income for taxation and income support purposes.

Marcia Keegan, 29, an economics PhD student at the University of Canberra, has two part-time jobs to top up her scholarship. The 29-year-old does research work at the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the university and teaches aerobic classes.

Ms Keegan's scholarship is an industry scholarship, which is higher than the standard rate. Having taken out a mortgage before she began the doctorate, she said she would not have been able to make ends meet had she been on the standard scholarship and had her husband not been working full time.

"The base scholarship is about $400 a week, and even in a group house these days it would be hard to get a room for less than $150 a week."

Ms Keegan echoed concerns aired by the council that tutoring, which many PhD students turn to for extra money, resulted in many hours of effectively low-paid work. Students were paid well for the tutorials, she said, but were expected to do several hours of preparation, along with marking and student consultation. Eight one-hour tutorials a week would mean a total of 16 hours of work or more.

ANU PhD student Nicki Munro, 35, who is studying restoration ecology, said she managed reasonably well on a scholarship, but only because she has no dependents, lives in a group house with three others, rarely eats out and usually rides her bicycle.

"It's relatively easy to live in on as a single student, provided you accept that you're going to live as a relatively poor student for the next four years," she said. "I think it would be a lot harder if you were a mature age student with dependents it's very common for people to go back and do PhDs when they're older."

The acting vice-chancellor of the ANU, Professor Lawrence Cram, said the formula for indexing the stipend was inadequate to keep up with the cost of living. "I think questions could be asked as to whether the indexation used is actually appropriate for the salaries of people."

Professor Cram said if the Government was serious about a knowledge economy it needed to increase the number of PhD students, which is low per capita compared with many countries. Most doctoral students regarded the PhD as a job rather than a course of study, and deciding to embark on one was a difficult decision when there was often much more money to be made in the workforce.

Professor Stuart Cunningham, president of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, said scholarships also needed to be extended from three years to four, since most PhDs took more than four years. He said the financial hardship of undertaking a PhD was daunting for anybody.