Financial Support
All full-time doctoral students in good standing in the PhD in Media Studies program will receive a funding package of $20,000 (out of which students are expected to pay their fees) per year for four years.
Funding is guaranteed pending continuous full-time enrolment, maintenance of a minimum average of 78%, and meeting the required progression benchmarks. The funding package is designed to cover a substantial portion of a student's expenses for the eligible period of funding in his/her program. Students also have access to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) for any financial need not met by their funding packages.
A typical funding package would consist of a Graduate Teaching Assistantship (involving up to 10 hours of work a week) for the fall and winter terms, followed by a Western Graduate Research Scholarship (WGRS) for the summer term. The summer WGRS frees the student from teaching responsibilities and allows him/her to work full-time on the thesis.
If the opportunity arises, a student may substitute a Research Assistantship for a TA position, with no change in the overall funding.
Other sources of funding are also available. For competitive international students, a fee waiver is available that brings the tuition paid by the international student to the amount paid by Canadian students. Students who are residents of Ontario are encouraged to apply for Ontario Graduate Scholarships and Canadian citizens may apply for Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and/or Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) fellowships.
Students who are awarded a major external scholarship (such as the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, or the Canada Graduate Doctoral Scholarship) are usually given two terms of TA work per year in addition to their scholarships. However, if there is a surplus of students eligible for TA positions, scholarship winners may only be awarded one term of TA work per year. As well, external scholarship winners usually do not receive any additional WGRS support.