Survivor39 said:
According to several German and Swedish exchange students in our lab at the moment, they get a scholarship similar to a salary of an RA at their home country. I am not sure of the exact amount. Now our APA is no where near a salary of an RA here, which is currently about 49-50K for a first year RA, even after tax it is still higher than the current rate for APA.
It comes down to the difference between governments and how much they want to support and develop the R&D sector of their respective countries and as I said, the Australian government is notorious for not supporting its scientists.
I'm not familiar with the tax system in the European countries but are you saying the PhD students there receive tax-free stipends equivalent to a salaried and taxed RA, meaning the PhD students will come out financially better than the RA because they are not taxed?
Further, I would argue there are other factors such as differences in standard of living that need to be brought into the discussion if talking about differences in scholarship amount.
I personally think that PhD students are
students, they require supervision and guidance as they progress through the three or four years of research (forgetting for a moment that some scrupulous supervisors use their PhD students as if they were RAs), notwithstanding they have a personal long term stake in their undertakings and will graduate with a PhD at the end of 3-4 years. The current average stipend of approximately $20k is a bare minimum, the ideal amount I think should be around $25k tax-free. As I described above, the PhD student has the potential to earn a further $4k p.a. on top of that. If a potential applicant still considers these conditions to be a major part of the deal-breaker, I would be questioning other aspects of the applicant's real motivation and commitment, amongst other things.