Win Outside Funding, school takes away fellowship

[Vorenus]

Hi everyone, I'm wondering if this has happened to anyone else at another school.

I'm a humanities PhD student at a large urban private university. The stipends aren't stellar considering the area's cost of living (15,000 per year). 

I applied for and won a huge outside fellowship of 15K. So, in my mind, I was about to become a rich grad student: outside fellowship + my current school provided fellowship = a cool 30K. However, I didn't realize that the school had its own bylaws that forbade me from stacking my school fellowship with outside funding. They are instead going to keep me at 15K, funded by the outside fellowship, and give my other 15K back to the department. 

Do other schools operate like this? I realize that money is short in humanities departments, but my acceptance letter years ago said I was guaranteed the school-provided fellowship for 5 years. It seems this rule disincentivizes applying for prestigious funding sources from outside the institution. 

Other anecdotes are welcome! Thank you. 

[fuzzylogician]

I've heard of this happening before, mostly (only?) in the Humanities. Not much you can do, I think, but the people who I know that this happened to negotiated with their departments to have the funding that would have been allocated to them put "on hold," so to speak, so they would be funded at least one year beyond the normal 5 years of their program if they wanted to. This meant that they had extra time to work on their dissertations without worrying about funding, which as far as I know was a good thing for them. I've also heard that some people try and negotiate a small "bonus" on top of their fellowship which wouldn't be the full amount of their anticipated stipend but would still be something beyond the usual amount. This all said, winning prestigious fellowships looks great on your CV, whether or not you receive an increase in your paycheck (but I am not discounting the paycheck part of it!). It's still good news, so congratulations. 

[knp]

I've seen this happen, too. A friend had a fellowship that was normal for her urban private university: not terrible, but still a stretch given the high COL. Her advisor recommended that she apply for xyz fellowship, which paid something like 5k less. She asked "Oh, does the department make up the difference?" "No," the advisor said, "but the prestige is worth getting paid $20k less over four years." She applied (I don't know why), but luckily she didn't get it!

Anyway, I hope one of fuzzy's suggestions work for you. And congratulations!

[spunky]

i do kinda second what fuzzylogician said about this happening in Humanities (a few Social Science programs?), at least from my experience with other grad students in the U.S./Canada. my assumption has always been that maybe there is less funding to go around for programs/depts like this so they need to be rational in how they allocate their resources. like, in this case, you're "taken care of" by your prestigious outside fellowship so they can use the money they offered you to help out other students who might be struggling. 

[farflung]

Yes, this is exactly the policy at my university as well (large urban private university, it's possible we're at the same institution). Anyone who accepts outside fellowship money in excess of 15k or something loses the normal graduate student fellowship. No combining allowed. I'm in the social sciences, but I believe this is the policy across departments. Of course, the dollar amount awarded for outside fellowships in social science/humanities tend to be much lower than in the natural sciences -- so the policy hurts us more! Also, accepting outside fellowship money does not extend the 5 years of funding I was promised upon entrance to graduate school. So yeah. Win lots of money because it's good for your CV / career, but you're still out the door in the same amount of time as everyone else, and probably not making much more money. 

SILVER LINING! It's not huge (I think an extra $300 per month or so), but my university does provide a bonus for those who are on outside fellowship. So I earn my outside fellowship amount + $300 each month. This is supposed to incentivize us to win fellowships. Personally, I'm with you in believing we should be able to accept all money we are awarded -- both from the university and from outside agencies. 

 

 

[TakeruK]

This happens in many fields, in both Canada and the US and also in the sciences. Every time I have won an outside fellowship, my internal sources get decreased. This is fair though, in my mind, because the internal money is not meant to be stacked with outside sources and I think it's acceptable for an internal fellowship to come with the condition that "the student may only receive this without outside funding" or something like that.

However, in every case, the student with the outside money will earn as much if not more than the original package. Many schools in the sciences (at least in Canada) will have different funding levels based on amount of outside money. For example, my MSc program pays $24,000/year for no scholarship, $27,000/year for a provincial level scholarship and $30,000/year for a national fellowship (+$5,000 one time signing bonus). I came to my MSc program with a national fellowship and also won a University-wide fellowship valued at $10,000, but that did not stack--my department sourced funding got decreased by $10,000. 

At my current US program, in my first 3 years I brought in a fellowship worth $20,000/year and our stipend is $30,000/year. I didn't get any top-up, my school just pays me the difference (and also my tuition). Now, I have a different fellowship that is $24,000/year and the deal is the same--I get paid the difference between the stipend rate and what my fellowship brings in. There are a few students that have fellowships valued above the stipend rate and only in those cases do the students get to make more money.

[Eigen]

Happened to me, definitely not just humanities. Pretty common everywhere I'm familiar with. 

[rising_star]

Agreed. I think this is pretty common. The only way to keep this from happening is if there's provisions in the fellowship/scholarship which prevent this from happening. Such provisions are rare and, where they do exist, they tend to address tuition and tuition waivers, rather than the overall stipend paid to the award recipient.

[Horb]

Someone had mentioned no getting extra years/time of funding when winning a scholarship (i.e. if you win a year's worth of extra funding, it replaces a year of funding, it does not add a year and thus fund you for 6 instead of 5 years). If you aren't in your coursework phase and are doing  research that doesn't require school equipment/resources, you may look into taking a leave of absence or something similar, which can pause your funding. At my school, if I won a scholarship (that didn't require enrollment as part of its distribution requirements) I could go on leave for up to a year before I'd lose my funding. Thus, if I left and year 4 and spent year 5 doing the scholarship, I'd come back (in terms of funding) as a year 5 student instead of year 6 student. 

[Eigen]

I should say that the tacit understanding from my University was that it would add to my funding time. Not that we're a department that particularly limits years of funding, but the intent was that getting the fellowship meant they would commit to me for that much longer.

[TakeruK]

At my Masters program at the time I was enrolled, the only legally binding guarantee of funding was TA assignments, up to a set number of years, even though TAship is only 1/3 of the total funding package (the department just awards fellowships so that we make more than the minimum stipend on campus, which is set by full time TA work). So, winning additional fellowships does not extend your funding guarantee, unless the fellowship was high enough that you got excused from TAing. However, after I left, the school is petitioning to set an upper limit on time in a degree program so with this hard upper limit, you will not be able to get funding of any kind after reaching this limit (not sure if this resolution passed though, but many people, including myself, were very much against a hard upper limit without proper support to ensure students can finish).

At my current PhD program, we are all promised full funding for the entire length of our degree as long as we remain in good standing, no matter how long it takes. To remain in good standing, we must 1) not fail out of the program and 2) each student in their 7th year or beyond must petition for an extension every single year---the process is meant to be an audit/checkup that your program/advisor isn't holding you back and that you are indeed making progress towards a degree. So, getting additional awards does not mean an extension of guaranteed funding, since we are guaranteed funding as long as we are here.

I also want to point out there are tons of great benefits to being funded by outside sources even if it's not a direct increase in your stipend. You have much more freedom in choosing what you work on instead of having to work on projects your supervisors have grants for. Your supervisor has a lot of spare money now to spend on you for conference travel or other expenses. And these awards carry prestige, as usually winning previous awards is often a factor in future award applications. There are also indirect monetary benefits sometimes. There was one year where we had a severe financial hardship and when I mentioned it to an administrator, they went ahead and approved a needs-based award to cover part of the financial hardship. They were able to find the money and make a strong case for me because the department agreed to pay for a portion of it since I had an outside fellowship that brought in external money. It was very nice and made a huge difference, especially since it was something I was not expecting at all.

So, I think it's definitely worth the time and effort to apply for money/fellowships that don't make a difference in your stipend!!

[genderboi]

I agree generally with what has been said here but would also note the importance of leveraging external funding when applying to potential programs. I have found programs willing to move and adjust 'external funding' policies if they have the chance of recruiting you. 

[TakeruK]

I agree generally with what has been said here but would also note the importance of leveraging external funding when applying to potential programs. I have found programs willing to move and adjust 'external funding' policies if they have the chance of recruiting you. 

Yes, definitely true and from talking to people and my own experiences, much more feasible in Canada than the United States! Canadian schools generally offer a one-time bonus when you come in with a big national fellowship too. I think there are two main reasons for the differences:

a. Canadian graduate students are treated more like employees and the overall process feels a lot more like negotiating your salary package / benefits like you would when accepting a job offer. In Canada, it's often possible to ask your supervisor to promise or put aside a certain amount of their grant money to pay for certain things (like computers, trips to conferences etc.) as a condition for coming with an outside award.

b. Your award value is a much bigger part of the total cost to the professor/department in Canada than the United States. Stipends in Canada are paid with the expectation that you have to pay tuition out of it. In Canada, the total cost of a student to a department, if they have no external funding would be on the order of $25,000 per year. Big awards have values around $15,000 to $35,000 per year, so this is a huge chunk of the cost removed when the student picks up an external award.

However, in the United States, tuition can cost a lot more--$10,000/year if you're an instate student at a big public school and up to $50,000/year at private schools. I would say the average total cost for a graduate student is something like $50,000-$80,000 per year, not counting overheads. So, bringing in an award valued around $20,000-$30,000 per year is only a small fraction of the total cost. 

[Eigen]

For a comparison, at my school, an NSF fellowship, including the cost of education allowance to the school and my stipend together covers about 50% of my "cost" to the school.

It's a benefit, but they're still having to outlay a significant chunk of money to get me there.