McGill Graduate Funding Working Group

05/23/2022

❗️ McGill Graduate Funding Working Group IS RECRUITING ❗️

* Social Media Manager
* Communications & Outreach

As we are preparing the next iteration of the survey for the Fall, we need help getting the word out!

You will ROCK these positions if you ...

① Love the feeling of "likes" and "shares" for a good cause
② Find that creating content and visuals is just plain fun.
③ Have a strong hashtag & emoji game 🔥
④ Have and communication careers on your radar 😉 !

Interested? Join our team and help improve graduate funding practices & transparency at McGill!

📧 Contact Hussein: [email protected]

PGSS McGill MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill

04/26/2022

⚡️ Part V of the McGill Graduate Funding Working Group Recommendations Series! ⚡️

After surveying the financial health and data of graduate students at McGill University - Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, the McGill Graduate Funding Working Group has formulated 10 recommendations to improve practices and advocate for policies surrounding graduate funding at McGill.

ʜᴇʀᴇ'ꜱ ʀᴇᴄᴏᴍᴍᴇɴᴅᴀᴛɪᴏɴ # 5 ➡
"Advocate at all levels of administration to ensure that all external award holders receive some form of “top-up” in recognition of their success in securing external funding."

ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇxᴛ :
Applying for external funding. is extremely labor-intensive for graduate students who are already juggling courses, research, work, and personal responsibilities. When internal funds are clawed back upon securing external grants and funding, graduate students should be able to enjoy more financial flexibility after successfully winning grants. Whether at the department or faculty level, external grant winners should receive a financial top up for their efforts.

ʙᴏᴛᴛᴏᴍ ʟɪɴᴇ :
External grant winners should see a significant increase in their funding packages after having secured funds and prestige for their departments and the university.

📍 Did you ever win an external grant and see absolutely no difference in your overall funding package? Were you denied employment after winning an external grant?

🌟 Follow our page to keep up with the latest on graduate funding at McGill University.
Here's our PGSS webpage > https://pgss.mcgill.ca/en/funding-working-group


AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) PhD salary issue - Quebec Poverty Observatory Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) McGill University Faculty of Arts Fonds de recherche du Québec PGSS McGill McGill Graduate Students SSMU Equity The McGill Daily The McGill Tribune

03/24/2022

Our survey team is auditing and improving the next iteration of the McGill Graduate Funding Survey (rolling out in Fall 2022)! ⚡️

Our mission is to survey the financial health and cost of living data of graduate students McGill University.

📌Have you seen the 2020-2021 Report?
Check it out ➡️https://pgss.mcgill.ca/en/funding-working-group

📌Have a suggestion based on your experience from taking last year's survey? PM us and let us know!

AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union McGill University - Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies

12/14/2021

⚡️ Part IV of the McGill Graduate Funding Working Group Recommendations Series! ⚡️

After surveying the financial health and data of graduate students at McGill University - Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, FWG McGill has formulated 10 recommendations to improve practices and advocate for policies surrounding graduate funding at McGill.

ʜᴇʀᴇ'ꜱ ʀᴇᴄᴏᴍᴍᴇɴᴅᴀᴛɪᴏɴ # 4 ➡

"Advocate to upper administration that international students who win an FRQ award also be given a Differential Fee Waiver (DFW)."

ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇxᴛ :
International graduate students are at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to availability of external funding sources. Fonds de recherche du Québec is one of the only viable funding sources for international graduate students, and several of our survey respondents made complaints that when they won an FRQ award, their departmental internal funding was adjusted and their Differential Fee Waivers were not fulfilled in subsequent years of study, leaving them with about $2000 to live on after paying tuition, fees, and insurance.

✨ A Differential Fee Waiver (DFW) waives the additional amount of tuition that international students have to pay and lowers their tuition to the Quebec-resident rate, which at the moment is about $13,000 less than international tuition for full-time doctoral students.

From what we understand, DFWs become available and are distributed to McGill departments based on their availability from a centralized, provincial source.

ʙᴏᴛᴛᴏᴍ ʟɪɴᴇ :
McGill's administration and Canadian and Quebec external funding agencies should hold each other accountable to make sure grant funding is not footing the bill of deregulated international tuition amounts that are on the rise annually at McGill University. DFWs are an existing mechanism to give international students equal footing upon winning a competitive grant to support their graduate research.

📍 Were you promised a DFW and then had it revoked upon winning external funding? Were you expected to pay international tuition out of your grant payments?

🌟 Follow our page to keep up with the latest on data at McGill and policy proposals to make real change.

AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) PhD salary issue - Quebec Poverty Observatory Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) McGill University Faculty of Arts Iss McGill International Student Services at McGill University The McGill Daily The McGill Tribune Chronicle of Higher Education
SSMU Equity Divest McGill

12/07/2021

⚡️ Part III of the McGill Graduate Funding Working Group Recommendations Series! ⚡️

After surveying the financial health and data of graduate students at McGill University, FWG McGill has formulated 10 recommendations to improve practices and advocate for policies surrounding graduate funding at McGill.

ʜᴇʀᴇ'ꜱ ʀᴇᴄᴏᴍᴍᴇɴᴅᴀᴛɪᴏɴ # 3 ➡
"Advocate to upper administration that they use their platform with external funding agencies to push for an increase in external funding amounts."

ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇxᴛ :
Since McGill University currently has no centralized funding architecture or regulations, many graduate students are encouraged or even required to apply for all eligible external funding. For Canadian residents in the Social Sciences, agencies like Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) are a fantastic source of research support, but their annual grants are nearly 10K under the poverty line for a single person in Montreal according to IRIS - Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques. Many doctoral grants offered from Fonds de recherche du Québec are also in this range of 21,000 CAD annually.

In addition, several survey participants at McGill University - Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies reported that upon securing external funding after a laborious application cycle, their departmental funding was adjusted considerably and opportunities for academic employment removed. For some international students, their funding was taken away and tuition coverage was removed without any prior notice. This essentially means that provincial and national funding is going directly into McGill's pockets in the form of tuition payment (nearly 20k including health insurance).

ʙᴏᴛᴛᴏᴍ ʟɪɴᴇ :
McGill's administration and Canadian and Quebec external funding agencies should hold each other accountable to adequately fund competitive and excellent graduate research for grant winners. Annual grant amounts should be adjusted to the rising costs of living, and McGill should guarantee tuition and fee waivers for all (international) grant winners to avoid provincial funding streaming right into deregulated tuition fees leaving graduate students with razor thin margins.

📍 Did you have any problems with your internal funding package being adjusted for external grant winnings? Were you expected to pay international tuition out of your grant payments?

🌟 Follow our page to keep up with the latest on data at McGill and policy proposals to make real change.

AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union PhD salary issue - Quebec Poverty Observatory SSMU Equity Divest McGill PGSS McGill The McGill Daily The McGill Tribune Chronicle of Higher Education Tri-Council Development Fund

12/03/2021

⚡️ Part II of the McGill Graduate Funding Working Group Recommendations Series! ⚡️

After surveying the financial health and data of graduate students at McGill University, FWG McGill has formulated 10 recommendations to improve practices and advocate for policies surrounding graduate funding at McGill University - Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.

ʜᴇʀᴇ'ꜱ ʀᴇᴄᴏᴍᴍᴇɴᴅᴀᴛɪᴏɴ # 2 ➡
"Advocate for an increase to the minimum funding, exclusive of labour wages and tuition amounts so that no student is funded below the level of the poverty line for a single individual in Montreal (currently about $29,000 according to IRIS - Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques), and that this amount be reviewed in context with the actual cost of living every other year."

ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇxᴛ :
Currently, McGill University has no universal funding policy to guarantee a living wage for graduate students who make up a significant portion of the academic labor force. Instead, it's up to individual departments or faculties to patch together funding packages that can vary significantly from student to student. This ad hoc, deregulated ethos creates precarious and ambiguous circumstances surrounding funding packages for graduate students when they win external grants, accrue labour wages, deal with rising tuition costs, and navigate a delicate supervisor relationship.

International students are especially at a disadvantage because of non-regulated international tuition fees which are on the rise annually (currently at $19,588.68 including health insurance). When they are expected to pay their tuition out of their funding package, they are effectively operating with 20K less than their peers while limited to 20 hrs of work per week as a contingency of international study permits.

ʙᴏᴛᴛᴏᴍ ʟɪɴᴇ :
By implementing a minimum funding baseline for all graduate students based on provincial cost of living data, McGill University would be operating in line with other top universities in Canada and around the world.

📍 Did you have any problems with your internal funding package being adjusted for external grant winnings? Labour wages? Were you expected to pay international tuition out of your funding package?

🌟 Follow our page to keep up with the latest on data at McGill and policy proposals to make real change.

AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union PhD salary issue - Quebec Poverty Observatory Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Fonds de recherche du Québec Divest McGill SSMU Equity The McGill Daily PGSS McGill

11/26/2021

⚡️ Introducing the McGill Graduate Funding Working Group Recommendations Series! ⚡️

After surveying the financial health and data of graduate students at McGill University, FWG McGill has formulated 10 recommendations to improve practices and advocate for policies surrounding graduate funding at McGill University - Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.

Here's Recommendation # 1 ➡
"Advocate for the use of the new funding letter template for annual funding confirmation letters."

C̲o̲n̲t̲e̲x̲t̲:̲ Funding offers and letters have been notoriously decentralized and full of fine print language that was misleading for many graduate students who took our survey.

Faculty and administrators at McGill have recognized this problem and have been working on a new template that is extremely clear and easy to read, and makes clear to potential graduate students what funding they can expect from which source, while avoiding conflating funding with labour wages for example.

It also ensures that prospective students see up front whether, and how much, their potential departments will contribute to the costs of tuition, fees, and insurance. Currently enrolled students should be given the same transparency with regards to their finances.

📍 Did you have any problems with really understanding what your funding offer / annual funding letter was offering? Did you have any unpleasant surprises as a result?

AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union McGill University Faculty of Arts PhD salary issue - Quebec Poverty Observatory Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Fonds de recherche du Québec Divest McGill SSMU Equity Chronicle of Higher Education

11/15/2021

🚨 Ready for a total shocker? 😱

⬇️ This figure* shows the average student stipend of around 19K in the Dept of AOS at McGill in the 1990s, and how that amount stands up to inflation and cost of living in 2021and beyond.

CONTEXT:
🔺 The red line is how much 19K stipend devalues against the real dollar as time goes on.
🔹 The blue line is the average PhD stipend total in AOS at McGill (1990-2010s is a broad estimate of graduate funding including wages and stipends; 2012-2021 data is based on the harmonized graduate stipend efforts of the AOS grad students and faculty).
📊 The blue, green & pink lines are scenarios of projected socioeconomic global changes in different indexation percentages

⚡️ BOTTOM LINE ⚡️ :
Anyone who told you that their 20K stipend was 'totally fine' in the 1990s was probably telling you the truth, but it's certainly not the case now. To attain a similar quality of life as that PhD student in the 90s, it would take about 10 years of drastic increases (SSP 8%) to catch up to a PhD stipend of around 45K by 2032. The tamest of future scenarios would project over 20 years to catch up to the current real-dollar Phd stipend amount in 2021 (SSP 5%).

📍 Does this look both accurate and incredibly alarming to you? Are you not even close to this annual stipend amount which is the case with many grad students? It's time to start talking about now with your colleagues, your department, McGill University & with provincial and national grant institutions.

*Figure Credit: Prof. Bruno Tremblay of Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences (AOS) at McGill

**SSP = shared socioeconomic pathways which is a fancy way of saying ‘different indexation percentages’ or scenarios of projected socioeconomic global changes.

McGill University - Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union Fonds de recherche du Québec Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) The McGill Tribune The McGill Daily Chronicle of Higher Education IRIS - Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques

11/10/2021

⚡️ UPDATE⚡️

The McGill Graduate Funding Working Group met with members of the PhD salary issue - Quebec Poverty Observatory and PGSS McGill to compare notes and strategize the best ways to move forward to implement the recommendations from the McGill Graduate Funding Survey (see posts below ⬇️ ).

🗞 Good news: We are mobilized and ready to go!
Stay tuned as we ramp up the activity on this page and on our Instagram > https://www.instagram.com/fwgmcgill/

📍 Do you have grievances about your graduate funding situation at McGill? Start here > https://pgss.mcgill.ca/en/getting-assistance



McGill University - Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies McGill University Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) IRIS - Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques Fonds de recherche du Québec The Association of McGill University Support Employees - AMUSE AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill

10/31/2021

This article describes a heartbreaking reality for course lecturers, staff, and graduate student labour that is increasingly casualized, precarious, and vulnerable to exploitation.💔

📍Do any of these cases sound familiar to you?

PhD salary issue - Quebec Poverty Observatory McGill University - Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill Fonds de recherche du Québec Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union

Higher education is one of the most casualised sectors of the UK economy, and for many it means a struggle to get by

08/03/2021

Graduate student employment IS part of , and many of us depend on that income to pay costs of living as well as tuition and insurance coverage.

The shift to Workday proved financially disastrous for numerous student employees in the middle of a global pandemic. They were left without answers and expected to work without pay for months. Some supervisors had to create work-arounds to pay students in lump sums with stipends rather than deal with WorkDay, which resulted in precarious financial verbal agreements without union representation and visibility on paper. In all of this trouble, graduate students were hit the hardest.

🌟 Thanks to AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill for their diligent coverage and advocacy over this issue.



McGill Graduate Students MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) SSMU Equity PhD salary issue - Quebec Poverty Observatory

Another Testimonial from an unpaid Grad Student Employee. For more information on Workday, check out the FAQ on the AGSEM Website

💸 🗣️ AGSEM’s Information Campaign for Workday Issues

07/06/2021

⚡️ UPDATE ⚡️

On Tuesday, June 29, The McGill Graduate Funding Working Group had a meeting with the organizing members of Tʜᴇ Dᴏᴄᴛᴏʀᴀʟ Rᴇsᴇᴀʀᴄʜᴇʀ ғᴏʀ ᴀ Lɪᴠɪɴɢ Wᴀɢᴇ Iɴɪᴛɪᴀᴛɪᴠᴇ (PhD salary issue - Quebec Poverty Observatory)

Founders of this initiative at McGill University conducted a survey on in recent weeks, and are currently compiling a report.
A majority of their respondents are coming from the McGill Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences including Medicine and Neuroscience, and complements our survey results which are majority from the McGill University Faculty of Arts.

Their goals and recommendations are similar to ours ➡️
To create a harmonized, living wage for all graduate students that is transparent and coherent with ever-rising living costs. 🌈
We are working to collaborate with data, personnel, policy proposals, and shared information moving forward. ✨

📍 Does your department have any graduate funding data that you would like to share with us such as reports, presentations, survey results?

🌟 Get in touch & don't forget to follow our page and our Instagram page >



McGill Graduate Students AGSEM - Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill MCLIU - McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) SSMU Equity McGill University - Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Fonds de recherche du Québec Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Chronicle of Higher Education The McGill Daily Divest McGill