The cost of academic travel is often covered with upfront payments by researchers that are subsequently reimbursed by their institutions. In this post Sarah Thomson argues, that in order to develop a culture of widening participation in higher education, it is time to rethink this practice and the tacit assumption, especially with regard to PhD researchers, that they have access to the funds necessary to support this practice.
Last week, shortly after booking my first overseas PhD research trip, I found out that I’d had a paper proposal accepted by a major conference. Though both of these events were exciting, I swiftly realised that my combined travel and accommodation costs for these trips will be somewhere in the region of £1,500. Luckily, I can cover these costs through a combination of internal funding from my department (a £500 research grant and £250 conference grant) and an external award. However, none of this money will become available to me until I provide receipts for my expenses, in other words, after I’ve already paid the costs upfront and can ‘reimburse myself.’ Though I knew that academia relies on a culture of reimbursement, it wasn’t until this moment that I realised just how inaccessible certain avenues of research are to people who can’t afford to cover these sorts of costs upfront. A few months ago I wrote about widening participation and the PhD application process. This post is something of a follow up, reflecting on the barriers that ‘reimbursement culture’ creates for students from widening participation backgrounds pursuing advanced degrees.
As a PhD student researching contemporary political history, I was drawn to my thesis topic by the prospect of pursuing a project using material that’s only recently become available for research. Being one of the first people to read and interpret a source since it was boxed up and shipped out of the White House 30+ years ago is hugely exciting (to me, anyway!) but it comes with the caveat that very few of my sources have been digitised. This means that my PhD relies on a significant amount of overseas archival research. In theory, this is incredibly exciting and a great privilege. However, this sort of research comes at a cost. Even though my PhD is funded, conducting research trips means booking transatlantic flights and accommodation, then reimbursing myself months later once the trip is complete. For people who don’t have access to potentially thousands of pounds to conduct extensive archival research or fieldwork, a project like mine simply wouldn’t be feasible.
I’m incredibly fortunate to have accrued some savings through a combination of working various part-time and full-time jobs during my degrees while living at home and commuting for three years of my undergraduate degree, and so can pay these costs upfront. However, had I not received a significant amount of funding for my Masters, I wouldn’t be in this position. Though I have some savings I can draw upon, I’ve continued to work part-time alongside my PhD to continue saving up when I can. I know others who have had to turn to family members to lend them the money to cover costs associated with research, having to reassure them that they’ll be repaid (albeit potentially months down the line). It seems that conducting ambitious projects requiring fieldwork or extensive access to archives outside of your home city relies on either on some sort of familial assistance or a nest egg of savings you can draw upon as needed until funding materialises. Filling out numerous grant applications and forms to receive these reimbursements is also time consuming and stressful, particularly when funding deadlines run worryingly close to conference registration deadlines.
There are PhD students for whom reimbursing themselves after receiving funding is simply not an option. For these people, not only is the type of project they pursue limited by finances, but these people miss out on professional opportunities which are vital in the ever-more-competitive job market we all face. First generation students, those from low income backgrounds and people with financial and familial commitments are all more likely to have to think twice before accepting invitations to conferences and events that may otherwise aid their research.
Conferences are another potentially prohibitively expensive part of PhD life. Again, my department offers funding for conference expenses, but only after your abstract has been accepted by the conference, and you can only use the fund once per academic year. It feels as though there’s an assumption that we have the means to attend these events and that the funding is an ‘added extra’ rather than a deal breaker on whether we can attend at all. Once the funding has been secured, we are not reimbursed for the expenses until we can provide the receipts that show we spent the money as we said we were going to. While I completely appreciate that universities have to ensure that money is being spent wisely, surely paying the student upfront and asking them to return any overpay is preferable to having them be out of pocket for long periods of time? Conferences are a venue for networking as well as exchanging ideas, so universities and funding bodies should be doing all they can to level the playing field by removing the obstacle of reimbursement.
How can we begin to resolve these issues? I can’t profess to have all the answers to an issue that’s been much debated and discussed by scholars and #twitterstorians more senior and knowledgeable than me, but anecdotal evidence from fellow PhDs (including the rest of the Pubs and Pubs team) has suggested a few avenues. For starters, there are vast disparities between how different conference and travel funds allocate and dispense funding. Offering funding upfront and having rolling deadlines goes a long way to alleviating some of the stresses associated with financing conference and research expenses. At the very least, allowing students to request reimbursement upon booking travel and accommodation, rather than after the event, would help to reduce the risk of interest accruing on students’ credit cards while they await their funding. Unfortunately, until there is an overhaul of academia’s culture of reimbursement, certain avenues of research are going to remain inaccessible to students who lack the financial means to cope with these challenges.
This blog post originally appeared on Pubs and Publications and is reposted with the author’s permission.
Image Credit, Christine Roy, via Unsplash (Licensed under a CC0 1.0 licence)
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the LSE Impact Blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our comments policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.
About the author
Sarah Thomson is an AHRC-funded PhD student in History at the University of Edinburgh, researching the crafting of Ronald Reagan’s political legacy in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. In addition to being a Contributions Editor for Pubs and Publications, she is also the current Postgraduate Secretary for the Scottish Association for the Study of America.
Having an expense account, even a complicated one, is much better than taking a tax break (above the line) and will draw researchers of a certain caliber, perhaps causing competition over positions which offer this perk.
“First generation students, those from low income backgrounds and people with financial and familial commitments are all more likely to have to think twice before accepting invitations to conferences and events that may otherwise aid their research.”
I thought twice because most academic conferences are a waste of time – I stopped attending about a decade ago and if it has made any difference to my career – I cannot detect it – plus it is better for the planet.
This culture is also at odds with the culture in many other professional occupations. Lawyers, doctors, civil servants, and those in business do not typically work this way. Their office will book and pay for business travel and accommodation directly. They can claim an advance on their per diem expenses and reconcile with receipts later.
This issue is CRUCIAL for widening participation but is also something that academics at all levels have been putting up with for far too long. Universities are large organisations. They should not be relying on their staff for this kind of cash flow issue.
Everyone traveling on university funds should be asking either for a travel advance or for another way to pay for the costs upfront. I’ve worked at a few different universities in the U.S. and have also asked colleagues about this issue. We have never heard of a university that won’t give a travel advance. My current university pays for airfare and registration for the traveler and will give travel advances for lodging and per diem. My last university gave everyone a travel credit card – an interest-free Diner’s Club card (later Mastercard) – for all of their travel costs to go on until they could turn in their receipts. Unfortunately, not every traveler knows or asks about the travel advance policies. I have to wonder if this a problem of a reimbursement culture or one of people not being assertive enough when addressing their academic needs.
But the paperwork is definitely and stressful, because every institution is heavily audited and the paper trail will be scrutinized later. I don’t think there’s any way around that.
Has anyone reading this ever asked for a travel advance for academic travel and been denied? I’m certainly going to make sure, now that I’ve read the comments above, that everyone in my division knows that travel advances are available. I absolutely agree that it is crucial for widening participation in academia.
Sarah, ask for a travel advance.
I was skeptical that a university as large and renowned as yours wouldn’t give travel advances so I wrote to the travel office to ask if they do. And yes, they will give you an advance for the costs of your trip. Or, if they’re like the universities I’ve worked for in the States, they will give you an advance for most of the costs and will pay for the airfare/train-fare upfront, through a departmental account. I got this response from your travel office:
Dear Connie.
The University of Edinburgh runs an advance system for everyone who wishes to travel. It’s quite a simple system nearly identical to your description below.
Kind regards
Richard
It’s not as bad as you think, but you do need to be very assertive in making sure your academic needs are met. Go get ’em!
I am baffled by this. As a Head of Department (and previously in a similar position in another University) we pay upfront for all obvious expenses such as travel, hotel and conference fee. Indeed it was only under exceptional circumstances that my University would allow retrospective claims for those items against personal expenditure.