Scholarship PhDs poorly compensated
Side jobs to make ends meet
Yu Liu’s Christmas went a little differently than she’d imagined. There were no presents under the tree or a lavish dinner with friends and family. Instead, she spent her holiday working in the kitchen at a sushi restaurant. ‘I needed a way to make extra money’, she says. ‘When you come to the Netherlands, the first months are really hard. Especially if you have no family that helps you out with extra funds.’
Yu, originally from China, started a PhD position at the UG in November. She came to the Netherlands on a Chinese CSC scholarship of 1,350 euros a month to get her PhD for her research on manipulating yeast cells to turn formate – a salt derived from formic acid – into food.
The official acceptance letter from the Graduate School of Science and Engineering, which UKrant has seen, said that she could expect to get around 2,000 euros a month. ‘That is a lot of money to support my life here. More than I would get in other countries or other cities in the Netherlands.’
But several months later, she received the definitive contract, and it mentioned a much lower number. The UG was going to top up Yu’s scholarship to a maximum of 1,875 euros. It wasn’t going to be corrected for inflation, either, so she had to take it or leave it.
She couldn’t refuse to sign the contract; she was in the middle of moving out. And so she came.
Top-up
There are dozens of PhDs at the UG in the same situation as Yu. Since September, ninety-six PhDs have come to Groningen from China, Indonesia, India, Africa, or South America to get their degree here, financed by a scholarship from back home. Unfortunately, these scholarships usually aren’t enough to actually live on.
I declined a full scholarship at the University of Leicester to come here
Because the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) requires someone to earn at least 1,657 euros a month before they extend a visa, the UG has been providing a top-up to allow these young researchers to come here. This not only helps the researchers, but the UG as well. They get scientific research in return and when the candidate gets their degree, the university gets a doctorate premium of more than 80,000 euros.
But the top-up is now causing problems. In September, it was lowered by nearly 400 euros. With prices in the Netherlands rising steadily, the PhDs are negatively affected. Yu’s rent alone is 900 euros a month.
‘So it’s hard’, she says. ‘There’s another CSC scholarship student in my lab, who told me that I need not worry, because I’d have enough. But I don’t get the same amount of money as they do, even though I do the same work.’
Promises of more
It’s not fair, say the international scholarship PhDs, who’ve started a petition to change their financial situation. Especially for those who were told, just a few months before coming to the Netherlands, that they were going to get more.
Like Indonesia-born Yadi Mohammad, who had been promised an amount around 2,000 euros. Or Rui Li, from China, who came to Groningen on a CSC scholarship just like Yu. ‘I expected to get an amount around 2,200 euros.’
In his case, the correspondence he received before signing the contract didn’t mention any specific amounts. Just that he would be getting a top-up. But the UG website said that scholarship PhDs could expect to earn around 2,200 euros, corrected for inflation. ‘But around January or February of 2024, they changed their website and it said: we have to wait until the decision from the university and the UMCG.’
It wasn’t until July that he received word that he would have to live off of 1,875 euros a month, and that it wouldn’t be corrected for inflation. ‘I had an offer from a German university. And I even declined a full scholarship at the University of Leicester’, he says. ‘I would not even have needed a CSC scholarship. But I really wanted to come here, because I had been following the research of this lab for three years already.’
No status
But money isn’t the only reason Rui and his fellow PhDs are up in arms. Another, almost equally as important issue is the fact that the scholarship PhDs haven’t had an official status at the university since September. ‘Former scholarship students were called students’, he says. ‘Currently, we are “guests”. But that’s ridiculous. We’ve been staying here and working in the labs every day for four years!’
Who is going to take care of our interests?
Since they’re guests, they’re also not represented in official co-determination bodies like the university council or the specific faculty councils. ‘Who is going to take care of our interests?’ Rui wonders. They get support from PhD councils and Groningen interest group GRIN, but there is no official representation. ‘It makes you feel like you are an outsider’, says Yu.
As guests, they can’t even attend the free courses at ACLO, which their predecessors who were marked as students could.
Experiment
But dean of Graduate Studies Petra Rolf says there’s little she can do about the situation. After all, universities were legally banned from calling their PhD candidates students in September of 2024. ‘Of course I understand that it’s annoying that someone who started in August is working under different conditions than someone who started in September. But there’s nothing we can do about that.’
During the PhD Scholarship Experiment, which ran from 2016 to 2024, the government allowed universities the possibility to give PhDs the status of student and pay them with a scholarship, instead of hiring them as employees. This made the PhDs cheaper for the universities. To prevent any sort of unfairness, the UG paid the international scholarship PhDs a top-up so they would get the same amount of money as the other scholarship PhDs.
The UG hired a total of 1,500 student PhDs as part of the experiment. But it was cancelled because of the increasing unease about the fact that scholarship PhDs were earning much less than their employed colleagues, when they were doing the same work. Since the experiment, PhDs in the Netherlands are back to being employees.
What’s happening now, says Rudolf, are the consequences of this decision. The university simply isn’t allowed to mark the PhDs as students. Since co-determination is only for staff and students, this also means they’re not allowed to take part in the university council or faculty council elections. ‘We did everything we could to get it included in the legislation’, says Rudolf. ‘Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do that.’
But, she emphasises, the scholarship PhDs can join GRIN or any of the PhD councils. ‘So it’s not like they’re actually invisible.’
Serious issue
Concerning the top-up, which ultimately nets the PhDs a monthly stipend that’s lower than the minimum wage, she thinks Groningen isn’t doing too bad. ‘Some universities have stopped paying out top-ups altogether, because they think it’s too expensive’, says Rudolf. ‘Others aren’t even allowed to pay them. During the experiment, we worked hard to reach certain agreements with the tax service so we could keep doing it. But not everyone has.’
It’s not much, she admits. ‘They do need to adjust their standard of living and get roommates, for instance. The alternative is hiring fewer people. That’s ultimately what a lot of universities have decided to do.’
The alternative is hiring fewer people, which a lot of unis have decided to do
Personnel faction member Björn de Kruijf, however, himself a PhD student, thinks the scholarship PhDs’ position is a serious issue and that it should be tackled. ‘I think they should be able to represent themselves on our co-determination bodies. I also think the promises that were made should be kept’, he says.
He understands the need for cutbacks, especially since universities are in financial dire straits. ‘But they’re taking a pretty serious hit in a time where everything is becoming more expensive’, he says. ‘The scholarships these PhDs are getting are simply much too low. The universities and the scholarship agencies are jointly responsible for making sure people can actually cover the cost of living.’
GRIN board member Thijs de Vroet couldn’t agree more. ‘I understand the need for cutbacks, but why does this particularly vulnerable group have to suffer under them? These people come from abroad. It’s difficult for them to estimate how much money they’ll have left over after taxes or whether that’s enough for them to live on.’
Expensive food
In the meantime, the scholarship PhDs are trying to make the best of it. They’ve realised that life here is expensive. ‘Electronics, like headphones, are really expensive’, says Rui. Eating out is costly, too. ‘Back home, we hardly cook ourselves’, he says. ‘We eat out or in the canteens. But here, we cannot afford that every day.’
‘We are getting to be very professional cooks’, Yu adds.
She has since quit her job at the sushi restaurant. ‘I really have to focus on my research now’, she says.
Yadi has also tried to find a side job, but hasn’t had any luck. Now, he’s trying to survive without one. ‘I have to measure the load of my study’, he says. Perhaps he’ll try again later, when he’s been at the university for a while. ‘Because it is financially really tight.’
The board’s response
In a response, the board of directors says that current legislation is hampering the conditions for scholarship PhDs. ‘The board regrets the situation these people are in. After all, they, too, are part of the UG community. That’s why the board would like to keep talking to them in an informal manner. Overarching university organisation UNL is representing Dutch universities in talking to scholarship organisations abroad – CSC in particular – to improve the conditions for scholarship PhDs in the Netherlands.’
The 2,000 euros mentioned in the letters of acceptance was a ‘reference amount’. ‘The UG has always stated that the definitive amount had not been determined yet.’
Click here to read and/or sign the scholarship PhDs’ manifesto.
Scholarship PhDs in the Netherlands
Scholarship PhDs at the UG earn less than minimum wage every month. But Groningen still gives them the highest top-up out of all the universities in the country.
In 2023, five out of eleven universities paid out a top-up – all lower than the one the UG paid out – but today, only three do. Last year, the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Leiden even announced that they would be charging scholarship and international PhDs with certain fees. For supervision, they charge 400 euros a year. Office space even costs 2,800 euros a year.
In 2023, CDA MPs Harry van der Molen and Inge van Dijk tabled a motion asking for uniform regulations for the top-ups. Then minister Dijkgraaf said in his response on December 20, 2023, that this wasn’t possible. But the minister did say he would talk to Universities of the Netherlands about improving scholarship PhDs’ situation. He expressly mentioned giving them access to co-determination.
Top-up scholarships international PhDs
Leiden University | No top-up |
Wageningen University & Research | no top-up |
University of Amsterdam | Faculty can supplement up to €1,650 |
Radboud University Nijmegen | Supplemented up to €1,700 |
University of Groninge | Supplemented up to €1,875 |
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | Department or faculty provides top-up |
Maastricht University | No top-up |
Utrecht University | No top-up |
Delft University of Technology | No top-up |
Eindhoven University of Technology | No top-up |
University of Twente | No top-up |
Erasmus University Rotterdam | No top-up |
Tilburg University | No top-up |
University of Humanistic Studies | No scholarship PhDs |
Open University | No scholarship PhDs |