PhD Student remains employee
PhD students shouldn’t be employees anymore but doctoral students. Universities want this because it saves money. After all, a grant is a lot cheaper than a salary. This would mean that Universities wouldn’t have to pay a salary including an employer’s share anymore but just a grant. Last week, the Council of State thwarted these plans.
The government seemed sensitive to the Universties’ plea. It wanted to make the ‘fellowship student’ legally possible. PhD’s who didn’t teach would be called doctoral students, in future. The Council of State is against the government’s plans on doctoral students at Universities. The cheaper doctoral students could result in a decline of the academic level. Furthermore, the Council of State says that it would make The Netherlands a less appealing place to take one’s PhD degree as one of the attractions for foreign students to take their PhD degree here is their employee status. And finally, there is the threat of a division. “Institutions who want to tie brilliant students to themselves will offer these students a position as an employed PhD student while at the same time placing less brilliant students in the doctoral students course, “ the Council predicts. “This could develop into an unintended division between first and second class PhD courses.”
Minister Jet Bussemaker will not be pursuing her plans for doctoral students after the criticism by the Council of State. For the time being, Universities are only authorized to experiment with doctoral students. What kind of an experiment this may be, isn’t clear yet.
