Doubtful contracts for PhD students: major differences between universities
The proportion of PhD students offered a short-term contract or part-time appointment is still not decreasing. But the differences between institutions are large, according to the Promovendi Netwerk Nederland.
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PhD students at Dutch universities should be employed full-time for four years. That was recorded in July 2018 in the collective labor agreement. *You can find the collective labor agreement for the Dutch Universities via this link.The share of contracts among PhD students where this is not the case has fluctuated between 10 and 15 percent in recent years.
Improvement
That was still no different in 2019, according to the new monitor employment conditions of the Promovendi Netwerk Nederland (PNN). More than twelve percent of the PhD students were offered a “dubious contract” that year: they have to settle for a contract term of less than four years or a part-time appointment.
More than twelve percent of the PhD students were offered a dubious contract in 2019
But the differences between universities are large, according to the PNN. At TU Eindhoven, for example, only 1,5 percent of the contracts offered are dubious. There is room for improvement at the Free University of Amsterdam (20,3 percent), the University of Groningen (20,2 percent) and Erasmus University Rotterdam (19 percent).
Fuzzy texts
In addition, the vast majority of vacancy texts for PhD candidates are still far too vague when it comes to terms of employment, the monitor shows. The PNN examined 1872 vacancies. Not all of them state how long the appointment will last, how high the salary is and whether the doctoral candidate should teach.
Also on this point, one institution scores better than another. More than 98 percent of the vacancies at TU Delft are sufficiently transparent. At the other end of the spectrum are Radboud University Nijmegen, VU University Amsterdam and Wageningen University, where no more than 15 percent of vacancies provide sufficient clarity.
Also read:
- Articles: 'A solution for researchers at universities desperately needed'
- Earlier, the AOb for an emergency fund for PhD students. You can read that article via this link.
