College is currently exploring ways to attract funding to support an increase in the number of studentships and bursaries available to postgraduate students.
At a meeting of University Council on October 26th, the Dean of Graduate Studies, Prof Neville Cox, agreed to set up a sub-committee of the Graduate Student Committee to find external sources of funding to support these bursaries, which are grants awarded to prospective postgraduate students in order to allow them to study and conduct research.
In an email statement to The University Times, Dean of Development, Prof Gerard McHugh, who is a member of the committee, said “it is clear that the preference will be to raise scholarship funding for PhD students rights across the College”.
Using recent examples of the Grattan Scholars programme for social sciences and philosophy, as well as the Hamilton Scholars programme for mathematics, McHugh said that the goal of the committee “is to work hard to expand PhD scholarships, and to persuade Schools to become actively engaged in this kind of fundraising from alumni and others”.
Speaking to The University Times, Cox said that in order to attract the best students, it is increasingly important to ensure that students are able to obtain funding.
Results from a survey of postgraduate students last year revealed that 32 per cent of Trinity students are self funded. Cox explained that this cannot continue, and “if you wanted the top quality students”, Trinity needs to be competitive in the level of funding it provides to postgraduate students.
Trinity already provides financial support to some students through studentships, while many engineering, maths and science students receive support from organisations like Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).
According to Cox, using “other external sources to leverage funding” is necessary to both increase the number of postgraduate students and also to “make university education more accessible to postgraduates”.
“You can’t have a great experience if you are wondering ‘how the hell am I going to pay my rent or my fees or get a sandwich’. That’s going to eat into your psyche”, Cox said.
Shane Collins, President of the Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) welcomed the founding of the sub-committee, telling The University Times that they will help to “make postgraduate courses more affordable and attractive”.
