From next year all scholarships will be $35 000, 15 per cent above the Commonwealth funded rate

And in ’24 the university will hike HDR schols again, to $37 680, which it expects to be one of the highest, “if not the highest” in the country.

The new rate means that after paying annual rent on a two-bedroom flat near UNSW a postgrad would still have $4000 left from their scholarship. But there is nothing the university can do about eastern Sydney property prices and as DVC R Nicholas Fisk puts it, “with 2 per cent of Australians now holding a PhD, impoverishing stipend rates can no longer be ignored.”