Scholarship PhD’s flyer to protest their situation

Scholarship PhD’s flyer to protest their situation

As of today protesting scholarship PhD’s will flood the university with their ‘Now Hiring’ posters. By spreading their pamphlet the scholarship PhD’s want to point out their unequal work situation to potentially new PhD candidates.
5 March om 11:25 uur.
Laatst gewijzigd op 22 November 2020
om 16:19 uur.
March 5 at 11:25 AM.
Last modified on November 22, 2020
at 16:19 PM.
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Door Christien Boomsma

5 March om 11:25 uur.
Laatst gewijzigd op 22 November 2020
om 16:19 uur.
Avatar photo

By Christien Boomsma

March 5 at 11:25 AM.
Last modified on November 22, 2020
at 16:19 PM.
Avatar photo

Christien Boomsma

Achtergrondcoördinator en wetenschapsredacteur Volledig bio » Background coordinator and science editor Full bio »

Despite heavy criticism from current scholarship PhD’s and the Promovendi Netwerk Nederland (PNN) the UG just started recruiting new scholarship PhD’s.

‘This leads to dissatisfaction and agitation amongst the current scholarship PhD’s’, says Fieke Visser, one of the protesting PhD’s. ‘Many want to protect future scholarship PhD’s from this kind of contract.’

Job vacancy

The text on the posters reads like a regular job vacancy, but warns future scholarship PhD’s for the inequality of their position. ‘Would you like to earn on average 20.000 to 30.000 less over your PhD-trajectory than your fellow employee PhD? Get the honoured title ‘student’ instead of staff? Be at risk of around 38% or higher to experience serious mental health issues? (…) Yes? Then the University of Groningen is looking for YOU!’

With this campaign the PhD’s refer to a similar campaign held by PhD’s at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in 1998.

Court cases

Back then scholarship PhD’s also protested their unequal position with satirical recruitment flyers. The protests against what was then known as the ‘bursary system’ led to a series of court cases, which the UvA eventually lost in 2004.

The Dutch High Council ruled that the PhD’s were treated as employees and therefore should also be paid as such. A couple of years later the UG started working with scholarship PhD’s, which led to the current ‘experiment’ for which the Dutch minister of education allowed the university to hire PhD’s on a scholarship.

Dutch

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