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Funding for PhD students in Canada, redux

Brian Leiter

Canadian philosophy PhD student Charles Bakker writes:

Some time ago now you kindly allowed my fellow philosophy graduate students and I to voice our concerns about the cost of a post-secondary education at universities here in Ontario. In light of this, I am asking if you would be willing to solicit feedback on this important issue on your website, as I suspect that circumstances have not improved for most. (See this concerning the lack of OSAP funding.) In particular, I would be curious to know whether most philosophy graduate students in Ontario/Canada are finding it difficult to keep up with the cost of living in their respective cities, given their funding packages and the rising cost of tuition. This, it seems to me, is precisely the sort of information that prospective graduate students should have as they deliberate.

Comments are open. If you post anonymously, you must include a valid university email, and please identify your school in your comment (e.g., Ph.D. student at Western, Ph.D. student at York, etc.). Post the comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

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One response to “Funding for PhD students in Canada, redux”

  1. Charles Bakker

    I guess I am not too surprised by the lack of comments so far. This is a sensitive issue. I will share this about my own story in the hopes of getting the ball rolling.

    I am in my 7th year of my PhD at the University of Western Ontario. I specialize in the philosophy of science, and with respect to at least that field, my department is very highly regarded. Moreover, I am a member of the Rotman Institute which is an interdisciplinary organization that encourages philosophers and scientists to work together. That is rare, so I realize how incredibly fortunate I am. And I haven’t even mentioned the faculty, who have been nothing but kind to me in my time here. All this to say, I have had a wonderful time studying at a top notch institution and I have no complaints… except for the financial burden.

    Here at Western the philosophy department does not have control of the purse strings, so my criticisms are not directed at my colleagues. It is directed against the current government of Ontario as well as against the university administration, which continues to build more and more buildings, instead of increasing financial support to students.

    My funding period ended after my fourth year, so I have essentially been working without pay for two and almost a half years. (I recently received a TA position for this semester, so that helps.) As a result, my wife and I have spent most of our savings. On top of this, we now owe over $100,000 (CAD) in student debt, since even before the Ford government switched the OSAP loan/grant proportions it still worked out to about a ratio of 50/50 in our case. The guaranteed funding package that I received from Western (which, again, was not in my department’s control) was not even close to covering the cost of both tuition (which we still have to pay at Western) and Western’s own estimated cost of living in the city of London, Ontario. So not only have I been working without pay for over two years, but even when I was receiving compensation it did not cover the cost of living. I happen to be a licensed carpenter, so effectively what I have now done is give up close to a decade of my prime earning years to pursue a degree in a field that I love for next to nothing, in the increasingly foolish hope that I might one day find a job in academia. I am not bitter, I am realistic. I have no regrets. These have been (very) hard but fruitful years. I am glad I chose to study philosophy instead of maximizing my earning potential. However, if, when we were deciding whether I should do my PhD, we had known how hard it would be financially, I do not think we would have made the same decision. For what I have come to realize is that, in Ontario, only the independently wealthy can afford to study philosophy at the graduate level.

    Here are two responses that I anticipate:

    This first comes from the philosophy professor who also had a hard time paying for graduate school. I imagine that they might say something like, “Well yeah, graduate school is hard and expensive. When I was doing my PhD I practically lived off ramen noodles. Stop complaining.” To this scholar I would say that the issue here isn’t that life is rather spartan for the philosophy graduate student – of course it is – it is that I wasn’t told just how hard it would be before I signed up. Worse still, as tough as the job market may have been for you 20, or maybe even 30 years ago, I’m sure we can both agree that it is even tougher now. So it is not like I have much hope of finding a high paying academic job that can help me to pay back the student debt I have accrued. Not only did my family and I eat more than our fair share of macaroni and cheese, but it is exceedingly unlikely that our situation will improve until years from now.

    The second comes from my fellow Ontarians. “Why should education be free? Stop complaining. Stop asking for hand outs.” To my fellow tax paying citizens I would respond as follows – “The reason it is important that we make higher education affordable to Ontarians is so that we can continue to produce citizens who are not only competent to work in various professions, but who are also able to think critically and hold our governments to account at the ballot box. And the reason it is important that we make access to higher education equitable is because we do not want a province in which only the wealthy are educated.”

    I hope that by sharing something of my own situation there will be other philosophy graduate students who feel brave enough to share how things are going for them.

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