Canadian university to fully cover international PhD fees

A Canadian university has announced that it will fully cover tuition fees for international PhD students.

Brock University in Ontario said that it will increase international doctoral fellowships to match the tuition costs for overseas students who are enrolled in a PhD programme.

The announcement comes just weeks after the institution said that it would freeze tuition for international students in research-based master’s and PhD programmes. The new initiatives will take effect from May.

Brock is the second university in Ontario to announce new financial support for international doctoral students in recent weeks. Last month, the University of Toronto announced that it would reduce tuition fees for overseas PhD students to the same level as that of domestic students.

The moves come in the wake of changes to provincial funding that allow universities to use some of the grants they each receive for domestic graduate students to cover the costs of enrolling more international students. 

Brock currently has just 27 international students enrolled in doctoral studies and said that it would like to see this cohort increase across all faculties that offer PhD programmes.

Diane Dupont, interim dean of graduate studies at Brock, said that the institution’s recruitment efforts “tell us that some of the best young minds in various countries would love to pursue their graduate studies at a North American institution”.

“It is known that students who earn graduate degrees often settle in the country where they studied, so attracting the best and brightest represents a great intellectual gain for Niagara,” she added.

Jamie Mandigo, Brock’s vice-provost for enrolment management and international, said that the move “reflects our ongoing commitment to cutting-edge research, but also to the scientific pursuit of ideas and knowledge that criss-cross international boundaries and borders”.

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com