Student Salaries/Stipends

It is important to decide whether you wish to fund students via a salary or a stipend. If you wish to fund a student to work part-time on your project, then it is appropriate to pay the student a salary. A graduate student can receive a stipend from a grant if the work they are doing is part of the student's training and comprises a thesis or a cognate academic requirement.

Rates:

Student Stipends - SSHRC

SSHRC does not dictate the amount of Master's, Doctoral, or Post-doctoral stipends; rather, the stipends must be in accordance with University of Saskatchewan policies. (Note: the following are minimum stipend values; however, you may choose to request higher stipends to attract top graduate students.)

• Master's Stipend - $15,000 minimum + 8.06% benefits
• PhD Stipend - $18,000 minimum + 8.06% benefits

The current rate on stipends for the University of Saskatchewan is 8.06%. It is advisable to include benefits in your budget because, if you don't, the University will take the money to pay for benefits out of your grant anyway. Please note that the benefit rate changes every January. With the benefits, your budget should include the following stipends for any graduate students you wish to fund:

• Master's Stipend - $16,209 [$15,000 + 8.06% benefits]
• PhD Stipend - $19,548 [$18,000 minimum + 8.06% benefits]

Please note that SSHRC does not allow students who already hold a master's scholarship, a doctoral award, or a postdoctoral fellowship from any of the Tri-Agencies to be awarded a stipend from a grant as well. These students can, however, be paid a salary from your grant.

Student Stipends - CIHR

Master's Stipend - $17,850 minimum*
PhD Stipend - $17,850 minimum
Postdoctoral Fellow Stipend - $36,750

*These minimums from CIHR are the maximum amount you can request from CIHR for student stipends. They are described as minimums because CIHR does permit additional funding from other sources to supplement student stipends.

Student Salaries

If you wish to hire a student as a research assistant as opposed to funding their scholarships, what follows are the rates at which you must hire students. Please note that graduate students can work at most 12 hours a week to still be listed as a full time graduate student. These rates of pay are adjusted every May 1 and will be updated here on that date.

Effective May 1, 2013
Undergraduate (year 1) - $11.02/hour + benefits
Undergraduate (year 2) - $11.48/hour + benefits
Undergraduate (year 3) - $12.78/hour + benefits
Undergraduate (year 4) - $13.96/hour + benefits
Undergraduate (year 5) - $14.85/hour + benefits
Graduate student - $18.51/hour + benefits

CIHR specifies that undergraduate summer students should be paid a minimum monthly stipend of $1313 paid in whole or in part from a CIHR grant.

To calculate the benefits, use the following numbers and equations:

Mandatory Benefits	Rate
Canada Pension Plan (CPP)	4.95%
Workers' Compensation (WC)	0.49%
Employment Insurance (EI)	2.63%
Vacation Pay - 3/52 (VP)	5.769%
Statutory Holiday Pay	3.8%

Note: When paying students an hourly wage, you must include all 5 benefits (total of 17.63%), and to calculate the total benefits, you need to how many hours of work you wish your student to work.

Something to note for your budget justification:

Make sure you justify why employing a student at a particular level is necessary. If the work can be done by an undergraduate, do not indicate that a graduate student will do the work.