UK to lift minimal PhD stipend to £21,805 from October
The UK will improve the minimal stipend paid to PhD college students from October 1, elevating annual help to £21,805 for the following tutorial 12 months.
That is in keeping with an announcement by UK Analysis and Innovation, the nation’s nationwide analysis funding physique.
The rise represents one other above-inflation uplift and is geared toward easing cost-of-living pressures dealing with doctoral researchers throughout the UK.
Based on UK Analysis and Innovation, the brand new price raises the minimal stipend from £20,780 to £21,805 for PhD college students exterior London.
Past {financial} help, UKRI has additionally launched reforms to pupil welfare insurance policies. These embrace permitting doctoral researchers to take as much as 28 weeks of medical go away, a change designed to make it simpler for college students to increase their research when crucial and scale back boundaries for disabled PhD candidates.
The choice follows sustained strain from pupil {groups}, significantly in London, over the affordability of doctoral examine.
Based on a report, college students’ unions within the capital final 12 months known as for a £2,500 improve in stipends, warning that with out stronger {financial} help, PhD programmes danger turning into accessible solely to college students from extra privileged backgrounds.
UKRI had already applied a big improve within the earlier tutorial 12 months, elevating the tax-free stipend by 8% in actual phrases. On the time, the funding physique mentioned the transfer was meant to carry PhD take-home pay nearer to the nationwide dwelling wage.
Final 12 months, authorities advisers within the UK really helpful ending visa wage reductions for PhD holders beneath the Expert Employee visa system, arguing that there isn’t a proof that doctorate holders are paid lower than different expert staff.
Recall that in 2023, the Engineering and Bodily Sciences Analysis Council and the Wellcome Belief in the reduction of on funding for PhD programmes, lowering the variety of Centres for Doctoral Coaching supported by EPSRC from 75 to round 40 and reducing general funding from about £441 million in 2018 to roughly £324 million.
The Wellcome Belief additionally discontinued institutional PhD funding to focus its technique on longer grants for early‑ and mid‑profession researchers