Saturday, March 15, 2008

Graduate students welcome increase in graduate scholarships

Graduate students welcome increase in graduate scholarships


National Graduate Caucus

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

OTTAWA-- The announcement of new scholarship money for graduate students will increase access to graduate research positions in Canada and will allow more graduate students to conduct innovative research.

“Graduate student research in Canada is under-funded, and this budget takes small steps to address that,” said Graham Cox, Chairperson of the National Graduate Caucus of the Canadian Federation of Students, “Graduate students play a large role in both basic research and faculty renewal—two cornerstones in maintaining healthy public universities.”

The government announced an additional 500 Canada Graduate Scholarships available for PhD students, providing $50,000 per year for up-to three years of study. In addition, 250 scholarship holders will now be able to get funding to study abroad for one semester.

Budget 2008’s investments in the granting councils were slim and unbalanced. Although the majority of graduate students (53%) carry out research in the social science and humanities, scholarships announced in the budget favour science and technology research areas over the social sciences and humanities by more than five to one.

“The Conservative government has to get past the idea that it has a role in meddling with the university research agenda. Intervening by setting the priorities for independent research goes against the principles of academic freedom and scholarly inquiry,” said Cox.

The National Graduate Caucus is Canada's voice of graduate students, uniting over 60,000 graduate students from all ten provinces.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

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