The minimum stipend for PhD students funded by UK Research and Innovation is set to increase for the next academic year. 

Doctoral candidates will receive a minimum of £21,805 – almost a 5 per cent rise on the current £20,780 – from 1 October. For students in London, the stipend will increase from £22,780 to £23,805, a rise of 4.5 per cent.

The national funder also increased the minimum fee for a UKRI student, which is paid to a student’s university from the UKRI grant, by 4.6 per cent, from £5,006 to £5,238.

Late last year students’ unions in London demanded a £2,500 increase in the stipend, which they said was needed to prevent doctoral study in the capital becoming “accessible only to the most privileged”.

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The increase follows the biggest real-terms increase in the tax-free stipend last year of 8 per cent as UKRI looked to bring take-home income for PhD students in line with the national living wage. 

Last year UKRI also announced changes to allow students 28 weeks of medical leave, in a bid to make it easier for students undertaking medical leave to receive extensions to their studies and remove barriers that might hinder disabled students from receiving support.

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The government promised to review PhD access in last year’s skills White Paper, with ministers noting that the financial barriers to postdoctoral studies were “still too high” for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, adding that the “proportion of home PhDs is declining”.

The paper said that the government would “explore the challenges that lead to disparities in access to PhD programmes and the declining proportion of UK doctoral student applicants in some fields”.

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com