Concerns over new brain drain as research funding stagnates

As funding for graduate students, postdocs and research-granting councils stagnates, Canada could lose a generation of talent, warn scientists. And the risk is that such a brain drain wouldn’t just be the result of students leaving the country – but scientific research altogether, writes Joe Friesen for The Globe and Mail.

Many graduate students and postdoctoral researchers are living on stipends that pay near the poverty line, according to Support our Science, a grassroots group that is organising a national student walkout on 1 May, which it hopes will get the attention of decision makers in Ottawa.

Last year, the government commissioned an advisory panel on the federal research support system, led by Frederic Bouchard, the dean of arts and science at the University of Montreal. The report, released to the public in March, called for a boost to federal grants for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, as well as steady increases in the budgets of the three national research-granting councils.
Full report on The Globe and Mail site