Doctoral students funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will see their annual stipend increase by 8% from October. UKRI says it’s the largest real terms uplift since 2003 and comes alongside changes to widen access and provide better support to students, including those who are disabled. Students will be able to take up to 28 weeks medical leave and it will be easier for those who do to get an extension to their studentship.
UKRI, which funds around 20% of all postgraduate research students, said it did not plan to reduce student recruitment in the coming academic year to compensate for the stipend increase.
Postgraduates who’ve been campaigning for better pay welcomed the rise but are disappointed it will only match the take-home pay of the national living wage, rather than the higher real living wage, as calculated by the Living Wage Foundation.
Ansh Bhatnagar, a physics PhD student and co-founder of the PGRs Against Low Pay campaign, says the increase in stipends ‘doesn’t even compensate for the decades of real terms pay cuts’. He says the new stipend of £20,780 will be almost a thousand pounds lower in real terms than it was 22 years ago.
The University and College Union, which has also been campaigning for doctoral students to be treated as staff, called on other funders to confirm they will match the new UKRI minimum.
UKRI’s own research suggests that over half of research organisations and training grant holders do not think its minimum stipend meets students’ living costs and that it disadvantages people with caring responsibilities, children or those with a low socio-economic status. However, only around 21% of students receive a stipend higher than the minimum and, in some cases, such as owing to sick leave, students could receive less. Its survey suggests broad support for aligning the minimum stipend with the national living wage and that increasing the minimum stipend would increase study time, as well as completion and submission rates. Almost 40% of training grant holders said they were aware of people who had not taken up doctoral training because the stipend was too low.
Overall, PhD starts have been falling steadily since 2017–18. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, a significant funder of chemistry research, reports the biggest fall in the number of active students, although this is complicated by the impact of extensions owing to the Covid pandemic and extra funding from the National Productivity Innovation Fund (NPIF) in 2017–2018 and 2018–19. Since then, the number of UK students starting PhDs has fallen by almost 30% and EU students by 33%.
UKRI told Chemistry World that it continues to monitor PhD numbers and has ‘reallocated a significant £85 million of additional funding over the current spending review to mitigate the impact of inflation, ensure students are appropriately supported and maintain councils’ doctoral investment plans’.
UKRI is carrying out a review of the full economic cost of doctoral training and will report back later this year.
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