Funding Issues for International PhD Students at Canadian Universities

According to Western News, six philosophy Ph.D. students at the University of Western Ontario have recently raised concerns about funding for students who take more than four years to complete the degree. Western guarantees funding for all doctoral students for four years, or five for those who have been admitted directly from a n undergraduate program. This benchmark is based on criteria set by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities’ (MTCU). As a result of recent federal policy changes, international student applicants who formerly qualified for the Federal Skilled Worker program will not longer be eligible. These changes restrict international students from applying for permanent residency status while on a study permit, and those students who do not complete their degree within four years risk being deported. Previously, PhD students who qualified for permanent residency status could pay domestic tuition fees, which at Western are less than half of what international students pay. It is being argued that this is not only an international issue. Both Canadian and international students sometimes require more than four years to complete the Ph.D. But while Canadian students are eligible for government funding programs such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), international students are not. The Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty of Arts at Western notes that there has been an issue of slow completion that the university is working to improve. Nonetheless, Western, along with other Canadian universities, has brought its concerns about the policy revisions to the federal government.