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Maxim Buckley studies how leukaemia cells communicate with each other. It’s critical research but as a PhD student he’s paid just $18.50 an hour, a rate that’s just above the poverty line.

The 29-year-old is in his final months of research at University of Adelaide on acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, which predominantly affects children, research that will help future treatments of the cancer.

Buckley rents a room in a share house with four others and takes on university tutoring and paper marking to make ends meet beyond the minimum 38 hours he spends per week on his PhD. His salary is below the minimum wage, which will hit $26.44 an hour from 1 July.

“If you ask just about anyone do they think they’d be able to live on $36,000 a year, working a full-time-and-more job, I think most people would balk at the proposition,” Buckley says.

“People might start off thinking you’re just choosing to do this, you’re just doing lectures all the time, but whenever you explain what it’s like to someone, they’re shocked.”

The minimum research training program (RTP) scholarship – at $34,315 – sank below the Henderson Poverty Line in September 2025. The last significant boost was under former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2009.

The government has been sitting on a report it commissioned by an independent expert panel, including Tesla chair Robyn Denholm and former chief scientist Ian Chubb, that recommended urgently increasing the stipend.

Handed to the government in December, it recommended a base rate of $50,000 – first for students researching in areas deemed “national innovation pillars”, including health, medical, scientific and energy fields, and then to all other areas.

The stipend is tax free for students who study full-time, but not for those who study part-time – which the panel also recommended fixing – and does not contribute to superannuation. It is indexed yearly to inflation.

A report from January 2025 found the number of Australian students enrolling in PhDs declined by almost 10% in a decade, with skyrocketing living costs and a lack of government support as major deterrents for potential candidates – almost 60% of whom are women.

Jesse Gardner-Russell, a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and head of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations, says the low stipend is a critical barrier for some wanting to do research, and many students doing it are taking on second or third jobs.

“Let’s say you pick up a tutoring gig or you’re working in a fast food place, you’re adding that on top of your full-time job, your PhD. It’s a huge emotional and physical drain on candidates trying to support themselves whilst doing quality research,” he says.

“And the part-time students are those who are young mothers, might have a disability, have a chronic illness … they’re just getting punished by the government.”

Gardner-Russell is in his final few months of research into how to restore vision to patients after a stroke, work that could contribute to curing blindness.

He argues increasing the stipend and encouraging new PhD entrants would increase Australia’s flatlining productivity rate.

“The latest ABS data says that we’re [PhD students] doing 54% of all the research in the university and higher education sector, so our capacity to do the work directly drives the amount of research the country can do,” Gardner-Russell says.

“Lower stipend rates mean there’s less people doing the work, so instead of producing 3% of global research, we could go backwards.”

Universities can pay the stipend between minimum $34,315 and maximum $53,608. There are 16 universities that paid below the poverty line of $36,446.26 for the December 2025 quarter. The University of Adelaide, where Buckley studies, paid $36,500 for 2026 – just above the line. The average stipend for the university sector is just $681 above the line, with the University of Sydney paying the highest, at $42,754, as of January.

But where universities offer more than the base rate, it can mean they take on fewer PhD students.

The education minister, Jason Clare, has said candidates do invaluable work supporting research and innovation, but would not commit to accepting the panel’s recommendation and lift the rate.

“It is up to universities to determine how much individual students receive. This can vary, although several universities choose to pay above the minimum rate,” he said.

Independent MP Monique Ryan said the low pay has become a serious equity issue with long-term implications.

“If pursuing a PhD is only possible for those with family support or independent wealth, we’re shutting out talented Australians from diverse backgrounds,” Ryan said.

The Greens deputy leader, Mehreen Faruqi, said the recommendations of the report were the bare minimum, and called the situation a “disgrace”.

“If the government cannot even commit to lifting stipends above the poverty line and extending tax-free support to part-time researchers, they are effectively saying poverty is an acceptable condition of higher education.”