More financial aid for graduate students

Significant improvements to the University of Ottawa’s Graduate Awards and Financial Assistance Program will allow an increasing number of students to complete graduate studies at the master’s and PhD levels, but with fewer concerns about their financial situation.

The changes to the program for Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be effective in May 2006.

The University’s promise of financial support is a package including the value of tuition fees, teaching and research assistantships, internal scholarships and a lump-sum payment. Several programs are able to offer even more to their students.

“The scholarship program represents the minimum funding guaranteed by the University,” says Gary Slater, dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. “Each program is free to offer more. In fact, not only do we strongly encourage this, but we want to assist programs in doing it!”

“We estimate that at the master’s level approximately one out of every three students will benefit from the new scholarship program, as opposed to one in five at present, while at the PhD level four out of five students will benefit,” Slater explains.

A second type of assistance is being introduced in the form of the Dean’s Scholarships to be distributed at the time of graduation to students who complete their program within specific time limits. All students registered full-time for the duration of their studies in an eligible program, whether they are recipients of an admission scholarship or not, will be eligible for the scholarships. The amount of the scholarship will vary between $500 and $1,500 at the master’s level and $2,500 and $4,000 at the PhD level. “We believe this initiative is a first in Ontario,” Slater says.

Another innovative measure is the Student Mobility Bursary, which will provide $4,000 to a PhD student to conduct research for at least one session at a foreign institution.

To be eligible for a graduate award, an applicant must have an admission grade point average of 8.0.

Financial support

For master’s programs with a thesis, the University will provide financial assistance of at least $8,500 per year for two years, in addition to tuition fee support. This is the first time that the University can guarantee funding for its students in the second year of a master’s degree.
The University will also guarantee financial assistance of at least $9,500 for one year for students in “non-professional type master’s” programs, over and above the bursary that covers tuition fees. That category includes certain master’s programs with a dissertation and others without a thesis, including those that are part of the Consortium national de formation en santé.

These amounts (at the master's level) include assistantships (or soft-funded scholarships) worth $7,500 for one year or two, depending on the program, along with a lump-sum payment of $2,000 upon admission.

At the PhD level, the University will provide financial assistance of at least $9,500 a year for four years (going up to $11,500 in 2007), in addition to covering tuition fees during that period. Any student who has received at least three years of competitive external scholarships will be eligible for a fifth year of tuition fee support.

Specifically, these amounts include assistantships (or soft-funded scholarships) worth $7,000 a year in the humanities and $8,000 a year in sciences, for four years. Starting in the 2007-2008 academic year, the amount will rise to $9,000 in both sectors.

A lump-sum payment of $2,500 a year for four years will also be awarded at the PhD level, and the University will provide up to $500 in moving fees for doctoral students from outside the region.