The UWA – Cuts Hurt campaign was launched on the 4th of May 2015, in response to the announcement through the Graduate Research School at the University of Western Australia (UWA) that the Completion Scholarships would be cut.
The aim of the campaign is to demonstrate to UWA that the cuts being made to financial support for postgraduate research students are having a significant detrimental affect on the research students’ mental and physical wellbeing. Whilst these cuts may save the university money in the long term, they cause significant long-term harm to the students and the university’s research output and reputation.
We hoped to raise the university’s awareness of the difference that appropriate funding makes to the lives of students by sharing the success stories of completed research students. We saved the Completion scholarships – for now. But we are yet to see restoration of other funding.
The campaign has generalised over the year, as UWA makes further cuts to a wide variety of areas in the university. We supported the Lomborg campaign, the UWA Major Cuts campaign, and the Who are the 300? campaign, as well as sharing research on the benefits of postgraduate students and support literature for those affected.
Until now, our work has been exclusively through our two social media channels: Facebook and Twitter. We benefited from the support of postgraduate community networks in spreading the word about the implications of the cuts to funding. More recently, as we address more complex issues and arguments we have found Facebook does not give us sufficient space to make out points.
Welcome to our new website, we hope to continue to have your support in asking UWA to support the wellbeing of the postgraduate research students.
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