TORONTO - The University of Toronto is about to enter a new era of education with a major innovation in 21st-century doctoral programming, backed by historic financial-funding.
The institution has announced a $100-million scholarship fund as it looks to attract the brightest minds, during a time when science and research programs at U.S. Universities are under attack by the Trump administration with cuts to funding.
“This is an opportunity because top talent is quite mobile right now.” said University of Toronto President Melanie Woodin. She added that it is a massive opportunity for the institution to gain ground and innovate PhD education.
“So we are harnessing that opportunity right now, where many top thinkers are looking about coming to Canada for their next step in their career.”
The Presidents’ Impact Scholarship Program aims to recruit roughly a dozen PhD students annually from within Canada or abroad. Scholars will conduct cross-disciplinary research on themes such as artificial intelligence, health, or sovereignty and the Arctic.
“Canada and the world are facing so many complex challenges, and there’s a real recognition that we need to be producing leaders who have the interdisciplinary experience in order to tackle these complex problems.” Woodin said.
Scholars will receive $80,000 per year over four years, doubling the current minimum PhD funding at U of T.
The amount puts the university on a level playing field with top Ivy League packages and sets the school in a category of its own in Canada, which administrators hope will attract talent from around the world.
“Often those applicants may not currently be in an educational setting” Woodin said.
“They might have gone out and started in the workplace and want to come back and take that experience into their PhD program, and we need to be able to be as competitive as we can with other top peer institutions to recruit them into this program.” Wooden added that it ranks above Harvard and Oxford.
The $100-million program is supported by a $50 million anonymous donation from a Canadian family foundation, said to have deep ties to U of T and other post-secondary institutions. The university is providing the other half of the funding.
It is more than just the historic funding that sets this program aside though. An excerpt from the website says this classifies it as transforming doctoral education:
“The unique model will emphasize complex problem-solving skills, experiential learning, collaboration and cross-sector engagement.”
Woodin noted students will have multiple supervisors compared to a typical program with just one primary oversight. They will be looking at a problem from different disciplinary angles and have a connection beyond the academic walls with external engagements and internships.
The launch of this new program follows a massive recruitment campaign by the Liberal government which promised $1.7 billion over 12 years for academic researchers. The government recently confirmed more than 60 professors have come to Canada under this program.
“Canada’s doing better than it was a year or two ago in attracting graduate student talent and that’s because we’ve started with the government rebuilding Canada’s ability to compete particularly on the graduate level” said Gabriel Miller, president and CEO of Universities Canada.
Miller said the momentum needs to continue because “our schools need good students, and our economy needs great talent.”
He called the program a reminder of the essential role universities play in the nation’s economic agenda, in a race to diversify our economy. Miller added the country needs world class talent and it is going to be developed in these institutions.
While funding is a critical component of recruiting programs, Miller says the government must support these endeavours by making it easier for talent, both undergraduate and graduate levels to choose Canada.
“Let’s be clear, there’s no replacement for making a major (financial) investment in talent,” Miller said. “But talent is looking for other signals as well, that the country wants them, that there will be opportunities for them to contribute to growing industries and that their abilities to have applications processed in a speedy way is going to be supported.”
The University of Toronto says it will put out a call for applications soon, with the first group of students scheduled to begin in September 2027.
