Staff and students were informed of the cuts to doctoral scholarships in an email from vice-chancellor Grant Robertson this week.
"We are now in a situation where, if we continue to award scholarships using our current approach, what is set to be a tight 2026 scholarship budget ... will likely be required entirely to fund students already studying with us now or who will have started based on 2025 offers," the email says.
"A consequence of that situation would be that, to stay within budget, there would be no funding for new scholarship offers in 2026. This is a position I want to avoid. "
Mr Robertson’s email also referred to the difficult financial environment the university was facing: "Both at Otago and nationally we face tightening research funding and significant strategic shifts in the external landscape".
Otago University Students’ Association president Liam White said the announcement was "a huge shock, and frankly, disappointing".
"It seems like all of this has happened rather quickly, without a ton of notice, and I am concerned for the students that potentially have planned the next three years of their life and now, for whatever reason, aren’t able to get a scholarship."
An Otago University spokeswoman said the decision was expected to mean a reduction of about 50 doctoral scholarships in the coming months.
It still expected to award 140 of the scholarships this year.
OUSA postgraduate representative Josh Stewart said he was absolutely livid at the university’s "short-sighted decision making" and the lack of communication.
"I really feel for all the students who consistently have to deal with the university system, where the ballpark keeps changing, and they don’t get any say in the matter."
Many students he had spoken to about the changes were now considering studying elsewhere, he said.
"Otago is always having to compete with doctoral scholarships overseas ... If they, however, stay at Otago, one would think that a degree of loyalty will be rewarded, but now the rules have changed again."
Green MP Francisco Hernandez had also seen the email.
He said the announcement was the natural result of the government’s Budget decision to cut overall tertiary funding by $162 million.
"We are already experiencing a mass exodus of some of our best and brightest young people. These short-sighted cuts risk leaving communities like Dunedin as hollowed-out husks."
MPols student Lindsay Roberts was among many students concerned about their academic future at Otago University.
"I think for me and anyone considering doing a PhD in the future it kind of changes the incentive, to progress your career and progress your academic journey, you do want some kind of financial support as there is a big financial risk.
"It pushes the incentive elsewhere — I’ve discussed going to Waikato University," Mr Roberts said.
Former Otago University academic Prof Robin Gauld, now executive dean of Bond Business School at Bond University in Queensland, said he was aware of the concerns among the professoriate at his former university.
"Good PhD students are incredible. They go on to be stellar academics, and they’re incredibly productive.
"So they build reputation and they build a research pipeline. They are a pretty important piece of the university’s lifeblood, really."
Mr Robertson’s email said the September and November Graduate Research Committee doctoral scholarship panels and award rounds would be cancelled.
Students who met the academic criteria for an automatic scholarship award would still be accepted and it would follow through with offers to those approved at the most recent (June) meeting of the Graduate Research Committee and the agreed Maori and Pacific Strategic awards.
"Our budget for 2026 must continue the path to reducing our deficit and returning us to a financial surplus, as required by the Tertiary Education Commission."
A university spokeswoman said it forecast spending about $19.77m on doctoral scholarships this year, slightly above last year’s spend of $18.26m. It declined to give a projected spend for next year, other than to say it was "certainly no more " than this year.
It did not expect the change to affect its reputation.
"This is a temporary pause on new doctoral scholarship offers. We have hundreds of doctoral scholarship students studying at Otago, and we will be awarding more scholarships this year and next year."
