Stipend vs. Fellowship
April 7, 2011 7:19 PM Subscribe
Science graduate students! How does funding from fellowships affect your stipend?
I'm a Canadian third year PhD student, and I just received an institutional graduate fellowship. The amount about $500 dollars less than last year's TA salary and stipend combined.
I'm not planning on teaching in the fall, and I'm wondering if my supervisor is likely to leave the stipend at it's current setting, cancel it entirely or simply scale it back sharply (say to $1-2k). In your experience, what usually happens?
I'm a Canadian third year PhD student, and I just received an institutional graduate fellowship. The amount about $500 dollars less than last year's TA salary and stipend combined.
I'm not planning on teaching in the fall, and I'm wondering if my supervisor is likely to leave the stipend at it's current setting, cancel it entirely or simply scale it back sharply (say to $1-2k). In your experience, what usually happens?
I should also add that in my experience, my PI completely stopped paying a stipend during the time that I had my fellowship. In my case, though, the fellowship payed better than what I had been receiving previously.
posted by genekelly'srollerskates at 7:42 PM on April 7, 2011
posted by genekelly'srollerskates at 7:42 PM on April 7, 2011
This varies greatly by country and institution. I'm a science PhD student in the US. I have a fellowship which pays slightly better than the teaching stipend. Another student in my lab had a fellowship from her home country (Canada, as it happens) which paid less than our guaranteed funding, and our PI covered the difference out of grant money.
Based on my experience, you're likely to receive a supplement to the fellowship to bring you up to what you've been paid in the past, but not more. Some places give a "bonus" to students who get outside funding, but you're not bringing money into the institution (though you may be bringing money into the department -- I can never follow those financial shell games, and they're probably different in Canada anyway.)
Most substantial fellowships don't actually let you take on the kind of RAship or TAship that would earn you a substantial salary, in any case -- make sure you know the fine print.
posted by endless_forms at 7:51 PM on April 7, 2011
Based on my experience, you're likely to receive a supplement to the fellowship to bring you up to what you've been paid in the past, but not more. Some places give a "bonus" to students who get outside funding, but you're not bringing money into the institution (though you may be bringing money into the department -- I can never follow those financial shell games, and they're probably different in Canada anyway.)
Most substantial fellowships don't actually let you take on the kind of RAship or TAship that would earn you a substantial salary, in any case -- make sure you know the fine print.
posted by endless_forms at 7:51 PM on April 7, 2011
My (computer science, not sure if that counts) department more or less mandates a minimum stipend amount for graduate students, and tries to ensure that you will not ever get paid less in return for bringing in outside money. However, I don't get paid extra for TAing - every student in the department is required to TA once in their first few years.
In the case of winning a big external fellowship, the rule is that we would get the full stipend allowed by the fellowship PLUS 1% of whatever money goes to the school for my tuition each month. (Example - if I had a fellowship that provided $10K towards tuition/year, my advisor would be required to pay me $100 = 0.01*$10k a month, in addition to whatever the fellowship gives me directly to live off of)
However, I don't think this is typical - funding policies were drastically different at the different programs I looked at. Each school is free to set its own rules - so talk to your advisor!
posted by Metasyntactic at 7:52 PM on April 7, 2011
In the case of winning a big external fellowship, the rule is that we would get the full stipend allowed by the fellowship PLUS 1% of whatever money goes to the school for my tuition each month. (Example - if I had a fellowship that provided $10K towards tuition/year, my advisor would be required to pay me $100 = 0.01*$10k a month, in addition to whatever the fellowship gives me directly to live off of)
However, I don't think this is typical - funding policies were drastically different at the different programs I looked at. Each school is free to set its own rules - so talk to your advisor!
posted by Metasyntactic at 7:52 PM on April 7, 2011
Second what endless_forms said entirely.
posted by bread-eater at 8:10 PM on April 7, 2011
posted by bread-eater at 8:10 PM on April 7, 2011
Congrats on the fellowship!
In my experience the fellowship excluded me from a stipend and gave me a reduced TA assignment.
The department deducted tuition from TA/stiped paycheques automatically, but did not so do for some reason for fellowships. I had to pay my own tuition in one lump sum at the beginning of term. You may want to check to see if that is expected for you.
posted by beepbeepboopboop at 8:56 PM on April 7, 2011
In my experience the fellowship excluded me from a stipend and gave me a reduced TA assignment.
The department deducted tuition from TA/stiped paycheques automatically, but did not so do for some reason for fellowships. I had to pay my own tuition in one lump sum at the beginning of term. You may want to check to see if that is expected for you.
posted by beepbeepboopboop at 8:56 PM on April 7, 2011
Continuing with what beepbeepboopboop said: the department that I got my PhD in (in the US) was in a position to give everyone a certain amount of internal fellowships. They were not required to withhold taxes from these fellowships when they were paid to us, but the fellowships were taxable. Every year someone would be surprised by this when tax-paying time came around. I don't know what the situation is in Canada, but don't let that be you.
(Also, every year somebody would say that they couldn't figure out how much money to put away from each monthly stipend check for their taxes. Simple formula: take the amount you're going to need to put away, divide by the number of months. My PhD, by the way, is in math.)
posted by madcaptenor at 9:14 PM on April 7, 2011
(Also, every year somebody would say that they couldn't figure out how much money to put away from each monthly stipend check for their taxes. Simple formula: take the amount you're going to need to put away, divide by the number of months. My PhD, by the way, is in math.)
posted by madcaptenor at 9:14 PM on April 7, 2011
It depends on your institution's policy... when I received a CGS-SSHRC fellowship, my institution clawed back every last cent of the funding package they had previously offered me, since the fellowship was quite a bit higher.
posted by modernnomad at 5:41 AM on April 8, 2011
posted by modernnomad at 5:41 AM on April 8, 2011
(also, SSHRC scholarships and other kinds of bursaries, grants, etc are all tax-free).
posted by modernnomad at 5:42 AM on April 8, 2011
posted by modernnomad at 5:42 AM on April 8, 2011
When I was in the US and got outside funding as a graduate student, my department and PI made up the difference (NIH maxed at less than what the dept guaranteed). It's a soft money place, so that was no problem. Of course your mileage may vary, but few places want to put incentives out there for students to not try and get funded.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 6:19 AM on April 8, 2011
posted by a robot made out of meat at 6:19 AM on April 8, 2011
Given a few sources of income (professor, department merit fellowship, graduate school merit fellowship, external by project, external as fellowship) every department/school handles it differently.
My grad school (in the US) had a minimum stipend that it considered "cost of living" and that's what the TAs or the research assistants paid by professors got, in addition to a tuition waver and student health care, etc, as negotiated by the TA union. The graduate school's (the institution, as opposed to the department) merit fellowships were slightly larger, about $1000 more than the TA salary, basically to give you a little bonus, and that was the maximum standard grad student pay. So, if a student won an external fellowship that was less than the standard stipend, or if you made a project grant that brought in extra money, you'd still be doing RA work, and there was some metric that combined your outside funding with money from the prof and gave you something in-between the base TA and the "max" fellowship. I don't know how much choice the prof had in that decision. I think there was some sort of cap system where if you won a huge external fellowship you didn't end up keeping it all because the school would start siphoning your "excess" to make up for normally provide healthcare and waive tuition etc. or maybe the granting organizations would scale the grant back to prevent that happening. Not somethingI was ever blessed to deal with.
My point being, there are a ton of hypothetical rule systems that could be out there, there's some metric for combining RA and fellowship stipends, which could result in pay higher or lower than a straight RA depending on what your research commitment to the professor is and what your school's policies are. Or whether your supervising professor is the kind to try to weasel out of paying you a research stipend if s/he possibly can vs. trying to find a way to supplement your pay so that you're not accidentally punished for getting external funding. Best way to find out is to ask somebody. If you're not comfortable asking your prof about money, ask the student services desk in your department office what the standard policy is.
posted by aimedwander at 8:54 AM on April 8, 2011
My grad school (in the US) had a minimum stipend that it considered "cost of living" and that's what the TAs or the research assistants paid by professors got, in addition to a tuition waver and student health care, etc, as negotiated by the TA union. The graduate school's (the institution, as opposed to the department) merit fellowships were slightly larger, about $1000 more than the TA salary, basically to give you a little bonus, and that was the maximum standard grad student pay. So, if a student won an external fellowship that was less than the standard stipend, or if you made a project grant that brought in extra money, you'd still be doing RA work, and there was some metric that combined your outside funding with money from the prof and gave you something in-between the base TA and the "max" fellowship. I don't know how much choice the prof had in that decision. I think there was some sort of cap system where if you won a huge external fellowship you didn't end up keeping it all because the school would start siphoning your "excess" to make up for normally provide healthcare and waive tuition etc. or maybe the granting organizations would scale the grant back to prevent that happening. Not something
My point being, there are a ton of hypothetical rule systems that could be out there, there's some metric for combining RA and fellowship stipends, which could result in pay higher or lower than a straight RA depending on what your research commitment to the professor is and what your school's policies are. Or whether your supervising professor is the kind to try to weasel out of paying you a research stipend if s/he possibly can vs. trying to find a way to supplement your pay so that you're not accidentally punished for getting external funding. Best way to find out is to ask somebody. If you're not comfortable asking your prof about money, ask the student services desk in your department office what the standard policy is.
posted by aimedwander at 8:54 AM on April 8, 2011
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posted by genekelly'srollerskates at 7:39 PM on April 7, 2011