Minimum Funding

Last updated: July 2025

Current Minimum Funding

The UVic Physics and Astronomy department provides a minimum funding breakdown. This is an important step towards transparency and consistency across the department that is not standard across Universities (or even departments here at UVic).

We do not repeat the minimum funding outline here, as your up-to-date minimum funding should always be from the department website. This website does provide the prior year’s funding chart for reference. Minimum funding might increase every year but is not guaranteed to increase. This is heavily dependent on the department/school’s yearly budget.

Other Things to Note

There are several important things to note:

  • Your minimum funding does not include tuition, which you will need to pay each semester (including the Summer semester). Indeed, UVic is not up front about this, but as of 2024 it’s approximately 3200 in the Fall, 2500 in the Spring and 2500 in the Summer (for Canadian students). Classes do not cost extra or change your tuition in any way. Make sure to include these costs in your budget accordingly.
  • Tuition is more expensive for international students, though the department pays international students extra in grad awards/fellowships to account for most of the difference in tuition.
  • If you have a UVic award, it is guaranteed for your first year at UVic and your funding will normally then go to the minimum funding level unless your supervisor agrees to boost your research assistantship (RA) to match the difference. Have this discussion with your supervisor in the summer before the following term.
  • Students funded by external sources such as TRIUMF, ATLAS, etc. will receive their funding from this source. It is worth noting that these funding sources pay students either the minimum funding or more. Students will never be paid less than the minimum funding. For TRIUMF students, more info can be found here.

TA Union

If you choose to TA and this is included in your yearly funding, you are automatically part of CUPE 4163, the UVic TA union. Other than collectively bargaining for safe working conditions and fair wages, there are other benefits such as the travel fund and hardship fund, of which we encourage you to take advantage. For more information, click here.

RA Union

There is a movement across Canada to unionize RA payments to establish consistent and liveable wages for all graduate students. RAs at UVic have expressed interest in unionizing, including a card signing campaign. For more information, click here.

NSERC Scholarships

NSERC offers the Canada Graduate Research Scholarship (CGRS) awards for MSc and PhD students (and Post-Doctoral fellows!). Explicit information on these awards can be found here for MSc students and here for PhD students.

Please note: the CGRS awards are fairly new as a replacement to the CGS-M and CGS-D awards; please read the NSERC websites carefully. Here are some key changes to note though:

  • There are now more awards available!
  • The award amounts are now higher than they used to be!
    • CGRS-M: $27,000 for 1 year
    • CGRS-D: $40,000/year for 3 years.
  • For the CGRS-D, the eligibility timeline has now been extended from 24 months to 36 months. As before, the number of months are counted from the start of your doctoral program to December 31st of the year you are applying.
  • International students are now eligible to apply for the CGRS-D! Up to 15% of awards will be available for international students enrolled at a Canadian institution.