New restriction on graduate student pay will be tied to scholarships

Pete Yee

CAP THAT! Dan Manolescu, GSA VP of labour relations, outlines why the salary cap doesn’t irk grad students.

A cap on graduate stipends at the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta could see some students receive less departmental funding just because they’ve earned a scholarship.

Since 1999, the department has provided a minimum stipend to their graduate students to ensure that they can focus on their research while at the University. In January 2009, the department enacted policy that raised the minimum stipend to $22,000 per year for domestic students and $28,000 per year for international students.

A second change to the policy, which will come into effect in January 2010, will ensure that financial aid is distributed more equally to all students by capping financial compensation at $30,000 per year.

The cap, however, takes into account scholarships received by students in addition to stipends from the department.

If a student receives a scholarship in an amount that puts them over the cap, they will only receive enough financial support through the departmental stipend to take them to their maximum funding allowance.

Fraser Forbes, the department’s chair, stated that all students are guaranteed a minimum income on which to live in order to conduct their thesis work.

The policy coming forth will allow for departmental funding to be more evenly distributed among students.

“The only feedback I’ve gotten from students has been thanking us for increasing the minimum support levels to more livable standards. I think what you’re seeing is an unhappy few; they fundamentally do not understand that they are receiving financial support to conduct their research,” Forbes said.

The money for student financial support comes from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. NSERC sets their maximum support levels at $16,500 for master’s students and $19,000 for doctoral students, but U of A students receive a minimum stipend that is much higher than that. Forbes said that many students are not aware of this.

“We have to work really hard to find the excess money, which could be as much as $8,500 a year. It takes a lot of effort to get past those maximum pay levels so that every student is advantaged to the maximum degree that we can,” Forbes said.

Hector De la Hoz, the president of the Chemical and Materials Engineering Graduate Students’ Association, said that some students have approached his group with concerns.

“There have been sort of mixed reactions; some people are OK with the new structure, some people are a little angry about that,” De la Hoz said. “The group of people that have really high value scholarships are those that really get affected by this policy.”

De la Hoz said that his concern is for current students who already have been receiving income over the cap because of previous payment agreements.

“If, before coming here, they talk to their supervisors, and let’s say they agree on something, but it was just a conversation, and they agree ‘I’m going to get this payment plus any scholarship I make,’ and they make their decision to come here based on that — this could be a change to their common-law contract,” he said.

De la Hoz also expressed concern that this policy could make the department less attractive to incoming scholarship students.

“My concern is that that can [deter] those students that get scholarships to not come to the department, because at other universities, they can get more money. So there is some potential to affect the top students,” he said.

Even after bringing these concerns to the department, De la Hoz says that for this year, nothing much can be done; but if there are any substantial changes to enrolment, he says the department did say they may review the policy next year.

Dan Manolescu, vice president of labour relations in the U of A’s Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) stated that the Engineering department’s policy adheres to the association’s collective agreement.

“We have a collective agreement, and as long as their maximum [amount of funding] is above our minimum, we have no problem,” he said.

Manolescu also said that the GSA would move to ensure that now grandfathering occurs. He echoed De la Hoz’s concern that if a student chooses the U of A because of a specific rationale, their program should remain the same throughout their studies.