“All of us know that graduate scholarship levels can be a barrier to study, and conversations with colleagues showed us that senior academics were often not aware of how low they had fallen compared to living costs and the minimum wage,” said Dr Lucy Stewart, a senior scientist at Toha NZ.

“We wanted to put on the record how they had stalled over the last two decades, and discuss the implications of that for students and as a barrier to entry into research.”

In a paper released this morning, she and colleagues Max Soar and Drs Sylvia Nissen, Sereana Naepi and Tara McAllister calculated the average PhD, masters and summer scholarship values across all New Zealand universities over the last 20 years, along with the maximum and minimum value.

In 2019, the average PhD scholarship was valued at just $25,424 – less than the minimum wage at the time ($30,841) and more than $11,000 below the living wage ($36,662).