Support for PhD Students

This note outlines the intellectual, financial and physical resources available to PhD students enrolled full time in the Division of Economics, RSPAS.

The Division has a large and active student community and, within the resources available, it seeks to provide all necessary support for its students.

While students come to the Division under a variety of financial and scholarship arrangements, the Division seeks to ensure that all students are provided with at least the necessary minimum support.

The Division's policy is determined by University requirements, the needs of students, and the Division's resources.

As a guide the ANU's minimum resources policy for all full time research students is as follows:

• Sufficient office space, including a desk, and chair in a secure area, within reasonable proximity of the host department and with internal access to toilets and wash room.
• A lockable filing cabinet or drawer.
• Reasonable access to computing and relevant software facilities.
• Reasonable provision for stationary, postage and receipt of mail, access to photocopying, fax and telephone. The terms of any of these items can and should be clearly defined at the time of induction.
• Minimum fieldwork and/or conference resources to be defined at admission to the degree course, with provision for later applications to amend the project and apply to increase these resources, subject to available funds.

Support for full-time students in Economics, RSPAS includes the following:

(1) Supervision

Students will spend most of their time in the Division working on 'Part B' of the program, ie, writing their dissertation. Thus the most important support the Division can offer is high-quality supervision. The Division takes this obligation very seriously. Students typically have a committee consisting of a supervisor and two committee members. Primary supervision will be provided from within the Division, though where it is judged appropriate, committee members may be drawn from outside. Students are located in close proximity to their supervisor(s), and are expected to participate fully in the Division's intellectual life.

The Division participates fully in the campus-wide PhD course-work program in Economics (it is the only Division within RSPAS to participate fully in such a program). Supporting this course-work requirement is a major priority of the Division. Thus, the first year - and sometimes also the second - of students' programs involves course-work. The Division is required to 'buy in' these services (often without reimbursement).

The Division provides essential IT and data base support for students. In many cases, the standard software packages available to all members of the Division are sufficient. In special cases, and on the recommendation of a student's supervisor, requests for additional IT support will be considered.

A modest contribution towards the cost of fieldwork will be provided where it is regarded as an essential component of the dissertation.

Note: If students applying for admission to the Division are likely to require particularly intensive IT and/or fieldwork support, they should indicate this in their application to the extent that they are able to. In certain cases - hopefully few in number - the Division may have to decide that it does not have the resources to provide such support. Or it may grant admission conditional on the student and/or supervisor obtaining external support for such work.

AUSAID students should be aware that some support is available from AUSAID for essential fieldwork.

The Division will consider applications for support to enable papers to be presented at international conferences. It will also support the participation of at least one student at the annual PhD conference organized by the University of Western Australia.

Students seeking approval for international conference attendance will need their supervisor’s written confirmation that they are well on track to submit before their course end date.

There is no automatic entitlement to support for conference participation. Such support will be determined in part by budgetary considerations. In addition, the following factors are relevant:

• A paper would have to be accepted by the conference organizers. This in turn implies that the student is at quite an advanced stage of the dissertation.
• The paper for the conference has been presented to a Division seminar, and been well received.
• The student has made good progress throughout the PhD program.
• There is strong support from the supervisor.
• The quality of the conference. For example, it is a 'first tier' conference such as the American Economic Association, the Royal Economic Society, a major Australasian conference, or at least the broad equivalent of these.
• A demonstration that the student has made every effort to secure external funding sources.

Finally, priority will be given to students who have not already received extensive supplementary IT and fieldwork support, or who have not already been supported to attend a conference