Our lab director, Prof. Shen, said that our lab research grants are healthy to support 3-5 new PhD students each year in connection with home scholarship like CSC and welcome competitive PhD candidates to apply scholarship in our lab.
UNSW will lift stipends for PhD and other HDR scholarship candidates from 2023, to set the benchmark for living wage stipends in Australia.
UNSW has announced it will raise stipends for all Higher Degree Research (HDR) scholarship candidates in 2023 – and again in 2024 – to help to ease the financial stress they face due to cost-of-living pressures.
All new higher degree research scholarships will be offered at the rate of $35,000 per annum from Term 1 2023. All current scholarship holders whose stipend is below $35,000 will also receive the increased amount at the same time. The rate will be the second-highest stipend among Group of Eight universities and well above the Department of Education’s standard rate of $29,863 for 2023.
UNSW will further increase the stipend to $37,684 in 2024, which is in line with the current living wage and is expected to be one of, if not the highest, for an Australian university.
UNSW Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Attila Brungs said HDRs are not only core to the university research ecosystem, but HDR graduates are fundamental to Australia’s whole innovation system. The re-examination of the stipend level was driven by an urgent economic and moral imperative, along with a desire to support this critical community.
“UNSW acknowledges the rising cost of living, especially in Sydney, places considerable pressure on our HDR candidates,” Prof. Brungs said.
“We want to support our candidates and provide them with the opportunity to devote undistracted time and effort to their research so that they can explore, develop, and master long-term projects – then contribute to driving innovation for the benefit of all Australians.”