Graduate Studentship Endowment Fund
Helping meet the urgent need for postgraduate funding
Postgraduate students are a vital part of Churchill College and have been since its foundation. With over 380 postgraduates from all over the world, Churchill’s postgraduate students are valued members of the College’s diverse and exciting academic community.
The rising cost of postgraduate education coupled with cuts in funding available from research councils such as the AHRC is causing a major barrier to entry for many exceptional graduate students. It is also increasingly assumed that PhD candidates will have a Masters degree, even though there is little or no central funding available at this level. As students now graduate with even more debt than in the past, postgraduate study (especially in the arts and humanities) is becoming unaffordable for all but the most privileged. Changes in fees and funding have further implications for the College, since competition for the very best postgraduate students is now truly global.
To address these challenges, the College must be able to offer the necessary funding that our extraordinary candidates deserve. We want to recruit and support the world’s best minds and talents, enabling them to benefit from what Churchill has to offer and for us to benefit from their rich range of insights in return.
How you can help
The College is currently committed to supporting a small number of graduate studentships, but funds are limited. Building a Graduate Studentship Endowment Fund that will help bridge the growing funding gap and enable more talented students to take up their postgraduate studies at Churchill is a major College priority.
“Without the match funding from Churchill I would not have been able to come to Cambridge to study for my PhD in a field whose work has not yet received much – or even any – academic attention”
Lili Pickett-Palmer (G18, Film & Screen Studies)
- Over £80,000 of additional postgraduate student support was awarded in the year 2021-22 compared with the previous year
- £619,000 was awarded in Studentships and £17,000 was awarded in Hardship grants
This level of financial support is made possible thanks to generous gifts from Trusts and Foundations, alumni and friends of the College. Donations to the Graduate Studentship Endowment Fund will be used as ‘expendable endowment’ meaning that as suitable candidates present themselves the College can spend donations as they are received and any surplus will be used to build the endowment.
Gifts of any amount are hugely valued and will make a real difference. We also welcome donors who may wish to support a graduate student for the duration of their course, or to endow a studentship in perpetuity.
