External and scholarship-funded PhD candidates who start their PhD track at the Faculty of Humanities after 1 September will be required to pay a fee. For external PhD candidates (who do their PhD in their own time alongside a job), the fee will be 400 euros a year. If they wish to have a workplace at the university, the amount increases considerably: to 2800 euros. PhD candidates with a scholarship (international PhD candidates funded by scholarship providers from their country of origin) will also have to pay an annual fee of 2800 euros. Employed PhD candidates, who have an employment contract with the university, will only be required to pay a fee – the 400-euro fee – if they exceed the duration of their contract by more than a year. The faculty is allowed to do so because at that point, the PhD candidates are no longer employed by the university but fall into the category of external PhD candidates. PhD candidates who have already started their PhD track and are working at an institute that did not previously charge a fee will not have to pay anything for the next four years.
Last autumn, the Faculty Council approved the plan. Some institutes within the Law School also charge a fee for external PhD candidates and the Faculty of Archaeology is considering introducing a fee as well.
One of the reasons for introducing the fee is to reduce inequality within the faculty, explains the director of the Graduate School of Humanities Marian Klamer. The Institute for History, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics and Leiden Institute for Area Studies were already charging fees, while PhD candidates elsewhere in the faculty did not have to pay anything.
Another reason for the fees is to encourage PhD candidates to complete their tracks faster, according to a memo. Supervision of PhD candidates requires a lot of time and money, as does administration and registration. The latter is mainly a problem with external PhD candidates, which the faculty has an excessive number of and who often take a long time to complete a PhD track.
‘In 2021, 67 percent of the 650 PhD candidates were external PhD candidates’, says Klamer. ‘A significant number of them have been working on their PhD for eight to fifteen years now. The institutes suspect that some of them will never finish. Year after year, they burden the administration with extra work while not making much progress. Plus: they reduce the PhD completion rate, which is important for official assessments and thus detrimental to our faculty. So the fee also serves as a signal to make them aware that their registration costs money. If they don’t want to pay the fee because they don’t plan on finishing their PhD, I suggest they de-register.’
An e-mail was sent to PhD candidates with a list of what the fee will cover: among other things, a ULCN account, library card, mandatory training courses, visa costs and registration fees. In the past, however, these things were provided to PhD candidates at no cost. Does it bring them any additional benefits? The short answer is no. ‘This is to show that there are costs incurred on your behalf,’ Klamer explains. ‘And that doesn’t even include the supervision time.’
But the Faculty of Science, for example, does not charge fees. Is that fair? ‘Each PhD candidate generates 83,000 euros,’ Klamer explains.
‘But while almost 100 percent of that money goes to the institutes at the Faculty of Science, here, it’s only 34,000 euros. 15,000 euros go the faculty and the remaining 34,000 to the university. That’s the university’s own policy. If you look at how many hours of supervision that 34,000 euros can cover, aside from the workplace costs, it’s quite straightforward: we’re incurring losses. So, this fee is a small step to bridge that gap, but it’s far from cost-effective. PhD candidates who never had to pay for this all these years are actually the lucky guys. The costs and benefits are out of balance.’
On top of that, the humanities are disadvantaged by the government. ‘The large funding pots go to the medical faculty and mathematics and physics. Apparently, those are considered more relevant. And we also receive less funding per student. All in all, it’s very lopsided.’
Is the faculty not afraid that the fee will lead to fewer PhD candidates? ‘At the institutes that have already imposed a fee, it had absolutely no effect,’ responds Klamer. ‘The PhD candidates with a scholarship won’t have to pay those 2800 euros themselves because their scholarship provider will cover it. There are no indications that this will deter them. And the 400-euro fee for external PhD candidates seems to be reasonable too, because in all those years, we’ve only had to waive it once. Besides, it’s also possible to get an exemption, which can be requested from your institute’s management team.’
But external PhD candidates who would like their own workplace will have to pay a hefty fee of 2800 euros. And they will have to pay it out of their own pocket. ‘Not having a workplace at the university doesn’t stop you from doing research,’ says Klamer. ‘They can also work in the library or from home. Some institutes don’t even have space at all for external PhD candidates, because they’re already very cramped.’
CRITICISM
The introduction of the fee has been met with criticism. University Council member Max van Haastrecht of staff party PhDoc: ‘This doesn’t seem like a good strategy to retain people at your university. There is already a lot of financial stress and uncertainty among PhD candidates.’
He also thinks imposing a fee is not the way to accelerate PhD candidates’ progress. ‘This can never be the sole responsibility of the PhD candidate. Instead, work together with the person to see how it can be completed within the stipulated time frame and don’t put the entire financial responsibility on the PhD candidate.’
Lotte Weedage of Promovendi Netwerk Nederland agrees. ‘It’s often not the PhD candidate’s fault that they are unable to write a dissertation within the allotted time frame. It could be due to the supervisor, illness, pregnancy or other external factors, so it’s a bit odd that the PhD candidate then has to pay.’
Van Haastrecht also thinks the high fee for external PhD candidates who want their own workplace is unacceptable. ‘A workplace forms the basis for working at the university. It’s a huge amount of money to pay out of pocket.’
Moreover, he finds it ‘uncomfortable’ that external PhD candidates at the university do not have the right to vote (see text box), but are still required to pay a fee. ‘You impose something on them but refuse to give them a say. They have had no influence on this decision at all.’
External and scholarship-funded PhD candidates do not get voting rights because it could lead to them being considered employees under the law, allowing them to enforce an employment contract in court.
That was the response from the Executive Board on Monday to questions from the University Council. According to the Board, granting voting rights to external and scholarship-funded PhD candidates entails too many risks.
If it would allow them to enforce an employment contract, there would be major consequences. The university would then have to pay back wages and back employer’s contributions and provide dismissal protection.
Rector Hester Bijl said it was ‘unfortunate’ that PhD candidates will not be given voting rights. ‘We would like to hear from the Council what we can do to give them more influence.’
According to Max van Haastrecht of staff party PhDoc, the solution was very simple: ‘Grant voting rights.’ He wanted the Board to provide a more detailed explanation of why that is not desirable.
‘Looking at the accumulation of certain decisions regarding external and scholarship-funded PhD candidates, that is not possible at the moment’, Bijl responded somewhat cryptically. Van Haastrecht: ‘At Utrecht University and Tilburg University, for example, PhD candidates with a scholarship do have voting rights. It’s odd that this is not possible in Leiden. Are scholarship-funded PhD candidates different there?’
Bijl explained that there are indeed differences. In Leiden, foreign PhD candidates with a scholarship who do not meet the income standard of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service can get a top-up scholarship from the university to supplement their income. ‘I don’t think PhD candidates receive those at other universities.’ Because of measures like this, there is a legal ‘case to be made’ that they have an employment contract with the university. Granting voting rights would strengthen that claim.
The Board’s explanation about the scholarship left Van Haastrecht somewhat puzzled. ‘I don’t see what that decision has to do with it.’ ‘I don’t know the entire case but Utrecht, for example, has no top-ups’, Bijl responded.
Van Haastrecht was still unconvinced. ‘In earlier arguments by the Board, those top-ups didn’t come up at all. Does that mean it would have been possible to grant voting rights last year, when we didn’t have that arrangement yet?’ ‘It would have been easier, yes’, Bijl acknowledged.
The Council and the Board are currently looking for another way to increase the influence of external and scholarship-funded PhD candidates within the participation body.
Vincent Bongers