No researchers with scholarships on TiU

It’s time to raise the flag, the battle is over. There will be no researchers with scholarships on Tilburg University. This was confirmed by Rector Emiel Aarts during the commission Education and Research. Doctoral students will keep working under a labour contract, so there will be no doctoral students who will only receive a scholarship.

Aarts informed that the national enthousiasm concerning the scholarship system has decreased. The only university that will stick to the scholarship system is the university of Groningen. Even the tax authorities criticize the system. For them, a scholarship is only a commission, which means they can tax it. “For us, this system only comes with drawbacks”, Aarts explained.

It has been a long battle for just an experiment. During the first proposals from the Executive Board to introduce the system, only the fraction of Internationals were positive. Marinus Verhagen, member of the AbvaKabo promised to thwart the scholarship system in every way possible.

Doctoral students are considerably cheaper than doctoral employees: the students don’t receive any salary, only a scholarship. That saves the universities money, which is favourable in a time where the amount of students grow, and the money is short. Universities don’t have to build up a pension for the doctoral students. They do have to do so for employees. On the other hand, doctoral students don’t have to teach. They have one more year to write their thesis, and they have a wider variety in their subject choice. Only three countries in the world purely use an employee system for doctoral students: Bosnia, Denmark and (so far) the Netherlands.

Want to read more about this two year battle? (Dutch articles only): First no. Then yes. Yes again. Marinus strikes. Delay.

_Advertentie.