Important Notice: AIS payment has been stopped. There will be no AIS payment unless further announcement is made. 

                                                                                                                                              Sept. 2011
AIS Information

An Brief Overview of AIS - What you can expect and how it works

What is AIS and when do I get it?

AIS is short for Academic Income Supplement and is distributed to eligible students once per term; once in the Winter, Summer and Spring. To be eligible for AIS to you need "have matching funds", which means you need to be working TA or RA for each term you are to be eligible. In short, you will receive AIS for each term you are being paid as an RA or a TA.

How much AIS will I receive and should I expect this every term?

The amount of each AIS payment is determined dynamically: it varies from term-to-term and year-to-year. The department receives a certain amount of money from the Faculty o Graduate Studies each year to go towards Fellowships (applicable to a student's first year only) and AIS. This money gets split based on a variety of operational considerations for the year. Once the amount of available AIS for the year has been determined, this value gets divided into 3 equal amounts; one for each term. After TA assignments have been completed and all students working as RAs are identified, the money for the term is divided by that number of students. Therefore each AIS payment is dependant on the amount of money put towards the total AIS each year, and the number of students acting as TAs and RAs each term. The amount will vary term-to-term based on how many other people are being paid from the AIS funding pool for the term and how many TA's the Department needs for any given term which, in turn, depends on the number of undergraduate students registered in courses requiring TA's.

In other words, let's assume there is $30,000 available for AIS each term. In the Spring term, if there are 100 TA/RAs, each student gets $300. The Summer term ends up having 150 TA/RAs assigned, so now each student gets $30,000 ÷ 150 which is $200 each.

Summary

Obviously, the there is a very complicated formula for how much money goes into AIS each year, so it is impossible to tell a student how much they should expect in a year, let alone each term. What you can expect, though, is the following:
  • If you are a TA or RA being paid for a term, you should be recieving AIS in that term;
  • The amount of funding could vary largely year-to-year depending on funding. While there is no guarantee, we are currently operating under the assumption that a graduate students, who has and TA and/or RA appointment in every term, will receive - over the years - an average of $1000 per year.

I hope this clears up how AIS works for everybody. If you have more questions about AIS or funding, please ask your graduate representative. E-mail Scott Miller at smiller@ece.uvic.ca.