Graduate students face significant amounts of financial stress during their studies. One of the primary ways to bolster finances during graduate education is to compete for scholarship funding. However, scholarships have seen little change over the last few decades resulting in a compounding decrease in financial support after accounting for the cost of living and tuition. The Ottawa Science Policy Network (OSPN) collected data from news articles, Ontario reports and submitted a FIPPA request in 2023 to obtain metrics on the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) and the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology (QEII-GSST).

 

We found that the number of OGS/QEII-GSST awarded since 2012 has fallen slightly and remained stagnant since 2014. The number of available awards cover a low percentage of the student population. Most notably, the nominal value of the scholarships has remained at $15,000 for 2 decades , which when adjusted to the 2024 valuation results in an ~35% decrease in award value. The raw data that we’ve collected can be found below.

 

We urge there to be a better investment in universities to be able to better support graduate students. The OPSN proposes a need to increase the value of the OGS and QEII-GSST awards to $25,000 and to increase the number of awards provided to graduate students by 50%.