Good morning, bonjour, tansi.
Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to address this committee on an important topic for research trainees in Canada.
I am dean of the college of graduate and post-doctoral studies at the University of Saskatchewan, which is situated on Treaty No. 6 territory and the homeland of the Métis. I'm also president of the Western Canadian Deans of Graduate Studies.
I'm here to recommend that the federal government work with the tri-agencies to address the erosion of the value of the scholarships and fellowships.
As you well know, the dollar value of these awards has not risen since 2003. Staying within the current suite of programs, I would recommend that the Canadian graduate master's scholarship increase to at least $25,000, the Canadian graduate doctoral scholarship increase to $45,000, the agency-specific scholarships increase to at least $35,000—or simply harmonize with the CGS-Ds—and the Bantings increase to $90,000.
As a point of comparison, according to Glassdoor, the average salary a fellow received last year was over $76,000 from the NRC, which indicates a Canadian market rate for post-docs in science, technology, engineering and math.
At the time the Vanier scholarships were introduced in 2008, the tax-exempt $50,000 was a boon to the recruitment of outstanding international and domestic post-doctoral students. As well, the Banting fellowships were competitive by international standards. The failure to keep pace with inflation means that these scholarships no longer hold the same prestige nationally or internationally.
I want to fully recognize the increases the tri-agencies have made in the number of scholarships over the years, and most recently in creating equity within the scholarship systems.
The committee has heard from a variety of stakeholders already. They include students who have expressed the dire financial strains they experience in general, leaders of organizations of the universities and tri-agency leadership.
What I appreciate is that the committee wants to hear about how we fund graduate students within the university.
Offering competitive funding packages is vital to attracting and retaining graduate students and to preventing exploitation of early career researchers—full stop. My central message here today is in fact that the national scholarships should lead and impact the baselines for student funding packages.
We at the University of Saskatchewan are currently implementing some dramatic changes to our central graduate scholarship programs, with a goal to bring every Ph.D. student to a minimum of only $20,000 a year for four years. That $20,000 is reached through a combination of scholarships, stipends from grants, and academic employment as teaching assistants.
Throughout the internal consultations, there was considerable push-back from faculty, who have to manage their grants, in terms of seeing those increases then leading to contractions of their research personnel. For doctoral students, many, if not most, of our STEM programs already provide $25,000 to $30,000 a year, and our internal central scholarships are also in that range.
In 2021-22 at USask, graduate student financial support was just over $44 million. Of this, $2.9 million was directly from provincial funds, $7 million was from industry and non-governmental organizations and nearly one-third came from federal sources, with $3 million of that in the graduate scholarships and $10 million through the tri-agency grants. The other $22 million comes from the university itself, and I'll break that down. About a third comes through endowed scholarships, and the other two-thirds, including $8 million that I administer through the college of graduate studies, is from the university's operating budget. The vast majority of that is provided in scholarships, with $5 million as academic employment.
To give you a sense of just how important increasing funding sits with graduate deans, we devoted our last western deans conference to the topic. We had a keynote address from an advancement professional on how graduate deans can better attract philanthropy, and discussions focused on sharing how to implement minimum funding guarantee policies within our organizations. We also discussed a lot about what a livable income is for a graduate student.
To conclude, now is the time for new investment to raise the value of scholarships and fellowships. We need to prevent exploitation and promote equity. Training as a researcher should not be accessible only to those with independent wealth.
We need to decrease the opportunity costs, including for those not wanting to take on added employment or external employment that delays their time in the program and ultimately their entry into the workforce.
We also need to maintain Canada's competitive position. The federal granting agency scholarships and fellowships should not be below the minimum funding packages currently offered at our Canadian research-intensive universities.
Thank you.