I’m an international PhD student living in Ottawa with a stipend which is not enough for my rent and bills. Most of my stipend goes to the tuition fee! Sometimes working more than 10-12 hrs a day because of the pressure to publish lots of articles while having less money to balance my life. Doing a PhD in Canada has completely changed my mind not to pursue a career in academia.
If graduate school funding was $35,000 Canadian per year for all students, how would that change your life? Living with $35,000 would be amazing at least, I do not need to bother my family to help me with the tuition fee. Also, we can balance our stress at work by spending some money for recreation, not getting burned out by working too much in the lab. With the low stipend, there is lot of pressure to try to get myself out of here and do the real job to earn the real money, not like paying us to work in the lab and TA and at the same time the university increased the tuition fee.
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