Philosophy also ends scholarship PhD positions
Another faculty changes its mind
Philosophy also ends scholarship PhD positions
Door Christien Boomsma
By Christien Boomsma
Christien Boomsma
Christien is sinds 2016 achtergrondcoördinator bij UKrant. Ze plant de achtergrondverhalen en begeleidt de auteurs. Bij haar eigen verhalen ligt de focus op wetenschap en academisch leven. Daarnaast schrijft ze veel over onderwerpen als sociale veiligheid en maakt ze graag persoonlijke interviews. In haar vrije tijd schrijft ze jeugdboeken en geeft schrijftrainingen.For 2020, philosophy only has to PhD positions available instead of the four they had previously. Both positions are for employees, not scholarship PhDs.
‘It’s a deliberate decision’, says director of the Graduate School of Philosophy Han Thomas Adriaenssen. ‘We felt it was no longer acceptable for there to be a difference between our PhD candidates.’
NWO norm
Since research financier NWO only provides employee positions for PhDs, the faculty has decided to follow their norm, since ‘we’ll always have employed PhDs’. Unfortunately, this meant that the faculty had fewer positions available; employed PhDs are more expensive.
Philosophy will not be exploring how to compensate the current scholarship PhDs. ‘That is currently not something we’re talking about.’
The national experiment that pays PhDs a scholarship rather than salary has been met with much criticism. The scholarship PhDs earn several hundred euros less a month than employed PhDs. They also don’t earn a pension, get no vacation pay or year-end bonus.
Manifesto
Last December, Groningen PhD candidates published a manifesto in which they demanded an immediate end to the experiment. This manifesto has since been translated nine hundred times. 236 of the signatures are from scholarship PhDs.
In spite of the criticism, the RUG has decided to recruit 650 scholarship PhDs over the next few years.