On November 12, U of T announced that all current and incoming students in funded PhD and doctor of juridical science (SJD) programs will be individually guaranteed annual base funding of $40,000, including tuition, for the first four or five years of their programs. Following two years of meetings and negotiations, the announcement stated that this increase in base funding aims to alleviate the financial stress of doctoral work, advance equity in graduate school education, and enhance the research outcomes of graduate students. 

In fall 2022, U of T’s School of Graduate Studies (SGS) convened a Graduate Funding Working Group made up of faculty and students to study and make funding recommendations based on the university’s current graduate funding packages. In its fall 2023 report, the group made 29 recommendations to the university on enhancing graduate funding practices. According to U of T, this new measure will increase the funding of 2,800 domestic and international PhD students.

Graduate students weigh in

In a statement released on November 12, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) Base Funding Committee (BFC) welcomed the increase while reiterating several priorities they believe were overlooked in the announcement: masters students who are not covered by the increase, professional students who do not receive funding and pay higher tuition than doctoral students, and international students who “face uncertainty and financial precarity due to rapidly changing provincial and federal policy.” 

At the fall 2023 UTGSU annual general meeting, the union voted to establish BFC to advocate for graduate students’ needs. This committee, established in January, included several graduate student members who organized at the departmental level to increase funding and make graduate school more accessible. Their efforts included the Support Our Science campaign, letter-writing campaigns, boycotts of recruitment events, and collective action to raise awareness among departmental chairs and leadership. 

BFC Chair and UTGSU Vice-President Academics 3 & 4 Julian Nickel addressed the ambiguities of the increase, noting that the varied amounts of funding across departments mean that, for some, the base funding increase does not significantly improve their funding support. He also highlighted the complex ways in which funding streams — from teaching and research assistantships, the provincial government, and the university — are combined.

“Every time we have a meeting, we find someone who has another exception to the [new] rule. But the gist of what we know for now is there’s no concrete policy on how the 40k is to be achieved,” Nickel said in an interview with The Varsity, “It’s really going to be department by department on how much of that labour can contribute to the 40k and that’s something we’re very concerned about… I’d call this a clawback.”

The BFC urged the university “not to use this funding improvement as an excuse to increase already high student fees” and outlined three priorities for the funding increase going forward: “Ensuring the new funding structure does not unreasonably increase graduate students’ already substantial research and teaching workload,” “establishing mechanisms for funding to keep pace with inflation and Toronto’s rising living costs,” and “advocating for provincial and federal governments to match this support through increased operating grants and research funding.”

“There’s been a huge student impact [from the funding increase] at all levels, but at the end of the day, students are never really the decision makers,” Nickel explained. “So even though we’ve been trying to push this forward in all these different ways, you can tell by our petition that only one out of three of the… main asks [increase to 40,000] was accounted for.”

In this petition, the BFC also highlighted labour and accountability concerns, demanding that at least $30,000 of that base funding sum be achieved without additional labour that does not contribute toward graduation, as well as providing annual increases to account for inflation.

In an interview with The Varsity, fifth-year political science PhD student Taruneek Kaur Kapoor pointed to the several groups of students and areas of equity that the university left unaddressed. 

For Kapoor, “one big issue is [that] years of completion [don’t] correspond with years of funding. So, there’s no real way to secure funding for upper years, including myself.”

She called on the university to promote more equitable initiatives that would address the concerns of commuter students, international students, and students paying off their student loans. Graduate students, Kapoor argued, are “the backbone of this university.”

“We don’t want our funding to be at the expense of any groups of students. There [are] conversations about cutting cohort sizes to accommodate tuition or have tuition increases, which often falls upon [undergraduates] and international students,” said Kapoor. “They don’t factor into this conversation at all.”

In an email to The Varsity, the UTGSU International Students Caucus (ISC) co-chairs expressed frustration that the university had excluded international students from the conversation about “fair funding packages.” According to the Co-Chairs, by not considering their specific needs related to immigration policy, the Toronto housing market, and provincial and federal funding, the SGS was not setting them up for success. They argued that the funding increase does not address the barriers or discriminatory practices faced by international students. 

“Most members of UTGSU, who are masters and unfunded graduate students, will still be pushed to find a way to survive with the 20k base funding. This bare minimal funding creates conditions for financial, mental, and academic instability,” wrote the ISC co-chairs. 

They added, “International students face many challenges, including fair access to major scholarships like [those from] [the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council] and [Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council], finding affordable housing on/off campus, and competing over the limited spots for study permits due to recent changes in immigration policy. Compounded by inflation, this base funding increase barely changes anything for us.”

For the next steps, Nickel and Kapoor led a Graduate Funding town hall at Sidney Smith Hall on November 26, emphasizing the need to maintain the momentum.

“We don’t just want more of the pie at the university, we want the pie to be bigger,” Nickel said.

In an email to The Varsity, a spokesperson for the university declined to comment on these priorities, stating that the university will address UTGSU’s concerns with the union directly. 

“Students can find information about the increase in base funding for PhD and SJD scholars via this U of T News story and the School of Graduate Studies, which includes this FAQ,” they wrote. “Students can seek information not available there by contacting their graduate unit.”