Mark Lautens is a J.B. Jones Distinguished Professor at the University of Toronto and AstraZeneca Professor of Organic Chemistry.
There was so much I did not understand about academia when I began my educational journey nearly a half-century ago. I did not appreciate that professors did so much more than teach, for instance; I suspect the same is true for many of our newly arrived undergraduates today.
Later, I learned about the life of graduate students, who work directly with professors and play a central role in the scientific and engineering research ecosystem. I was overjoyed to find I could collect a stipend to do research while working toward a PhD. Even with a weak Canadian dollar, I survived on graduate and postdoctoral scholarships from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) while living in Boston and Madison, Wis.
But the times, they were a-changin’. Stipends have not kept up with the cost of living since those halcyon days. And consequently, there are now peaceful protests afoot to increase the stipends of all graduate students and postdoctoral fellows working in academic laboratories, whether or not they have a scholarship. Canada, which offers meagre funding relative to its peers, needs to up its game.
Having our national research councils simply increase the value of graduate and postdoctoral scholarships is one solution, but sadly, those holding scholarships from the research councils are but a fraction of the total number of students undertaking research in STEM fields. While scholarship recipients might be viewed as the “best of the best,” so few awards are available that many graduate students fail to secure continuous support over the five-plus years of their PhD journeys. Increasing the stipend gap between scholarship and non-scholarship holders wouldn’t do much to maintain the broader esprit de corps that is essential to a functioning research laboratory.
Grad students are called “students.” That’s misleading, however; they are actually creating knowledge. Traditional students learn what is already known, but graduate students expand our base of knowledge in ways that translate into measurable outcomes.
I am fortunate that of the 90 graduate students to have passed through my labs over the past 35 years, more than half were able to secure a federal or provincial scholarship for a portion, though not all, of their degree. Still, scholarship stipends are too low.
Meanwhile, more than 100 postdocs have worked in my lab, many from abroad. About 75 per cent had financial support from research agencies in their home country. Postdoctoral fellowships from granting agencies in Germany, Switzerland and Austria were far more generous, as were the scholarships of my Canadian doctoral graduates who did postdocs in Europe.
The international grants were also tax-free, and successful applicants could request funds for travel (including to attend a conference), as support for an accompanying spouse or children, and, in some cases, to offset the high costs of open-access publication of their results. This extra funding makes all the difference for a competitive research program.
To put the finances into perspective, the average NSERC Discovery Grant, which funds most faculty who conduct studies in fundamental research, is insufficient to cover the stipend of a single postdoc, never mind the consumables and scientific services required to do the experiments themselves.
Why are international postdocs paid more than we pay in Canada? It seems that their governments and granting agencies value the skills and talents they acquire in Canada, and as such they are willing to invest to attract people to the field. Nearly all my visitors did return home, so those countries got good returns on their investments. Meanwhile, Canadian science was the beneficiary of this external support.
Increasing the stipends at both the graduate and postdoctoral level is certainly warranted. But where will the money to make up the shortfall come from? The cupboards of Canada’s cash-strapped granting agencies are bare. They are currently unable to provide research grants that are competitive on the world stage. Leaving faculty members to pay more out-of-grants to those not holding a scholarship is not a solution. The change needs to come from the top.
Research science in Canada is currently operating in a zero-sum funding environment. If agencies only increase the stipend to each person, we will wind up supporting fewer people. Research grants as a whole must dramatically increase in size. In my field of organic synthetic chemistry, there is a shortage of trained people, so we need to increase capacity, not decrease it.
In 2017, Canada’s Fundamental Science Review clearly outlined the need to increase funding to our granting councils. The Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry has just struck another panel to evaluate the research support system. I will bet that panel will come to similar conclusions: namely, that grad students and postdocs need far more support.
Significant increases in the value of grants could come with a requirement to pay higher stipends. I believe that path would be met with broad approval.
Politicians put away their partisan hats when they supported the creation of a standing committee in the House of Commons on science and research. Doing so again, to support students and the future of our country, does not seem too big of an ask.