The Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) wants to pay research institutes a lower bonus if PhD students take longer than five years to complete their PhD.
Fast promotions, on the other hand, can count on a bonus. The action is intended to cause a culture change within the faculty.
Right now, only 47 per cent of all PhD students graduate within five years. This costs the faculty extra money on supervision and accommodations. Moreover, some PhD students never finish their dissertations, resulting in the faculty missing out on the PhD bonus.
No appointment
It doesn’t benefit the PhD students themselves either, since they’re still at the research institute when they have long since lost their appointments.
‘We need a culture change’, dean Joost Frenken told the FSE faculty council. ‘Too many supervisors think that a PhD is only worthwhile if it has five chapters, or five publications. But that is not what the law says about this.’
Exhortations
Because previous exhortations have not worked, the faculty is now moving to stricter measures. If a PhD student finishes between 4.5 years and 5 years after they started, the institute will receive the standard promotion bonus.
Promotions taking place within 4.5 years of commencement will get a higher amount. If the promotion takes longer than five years, a lower amount applies. The PhD defence will then be taken as a benchmark.
The faculty board still has to work out the plans in more detail. For instance, they might also take the moment of approval of the dissertation as a benchmark. If that happens, the classification will also be adjusted, Frenken said.