Currently, most PhD candidates (some candidates have foreign bursaries) are employed by the university. In return for their salary they provide some administrative services and / or do some teaching. The introduction of PhD candidates on bursaries would possibly reduce their income, but additionally they do not save for their pension, lack benefits when they’re ill and are not entitled to parental leave.

These plans do not comply with my understanding of the function of doing a PhD, as formulated in the acknowledgements of my own dissertation:

Doing a PhD represents several years of supervised training, developing oneself to become a researcher capable of independently contributing to, and participating in, a scientific discipline. Contributing to a scientific discipline means that a PhD candidate is supervised to create scientific products of the highest possible quality, and does so in an increasingly independent manner. Participating in a scientific discipline entails presenting these scientific products to others, frequently discussing these with colleagues, and collaborating with representatives of that discipline.

Dutch PhD candidates are highly regarded internationally. Hans Clevers, the current president of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, argued in an interview that PhDs from the Netherlands are well regarded internationally, because they are independent, creative and critical. That’s how we currently train PhDs: as young, independent professionals. Let’s not break that system by making students out of PhDs, or by overemphasizing on efficiency.

Dutch universities (used to) pay PhD candidates not to act like students.

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This is a series on the 10 propositions that are part of my PhD dissertation. These propositions are a Dutch tradition to highlight key findings of a dissertation and some additional insights by the author. My dissertation is titled “Family Policy Outcomes: Combining Institutional and Demographic Explanations of Women’s Employment and Earnings Inequality in OECD countries, 1975-2005″ and I will defend my dissertation on January 10 2014. So, this series is also a count down. Find out more about my dissertation.

Contributing to a scientific discipline means that a PhD candidate is supervised to create scientific products of the highest possible quality, and does so in an increasingly independent manner. Participating in a scientific discipline entails presenting these scientific products to others, frequently discussing these with colleagues, and collaborating with representatives of that discipline. Participation also means enculturation in the norms and values of a discipline. In addition, society increasingly expects scientists to be able to explain the relevance of their work to an audience outside their own discipline. A scientific discipline is not limited to a single department, nor to a single university or even to a single country. Phd candidates should operate in an internationally oriented community.

Doing your PhD is and should be a demanding challenge. Important skills are learned from dealing with this challenge; it is easy to make mistakes, but challenging to learn to recognize ones’ own mistakes. A good supervisor allows PhD candidates to independently develop and try their own solutions to problems, while reflecting on that process. A fine balance should be found between safeguarding the candidate from endangering progress and completion of the project in time, without predefining all the decisions that need to be made.

In addition to the academic development, which should be prioritized, PhD candidates and their supervisors should identify personal training needs to be inlcuded in the training and supervision plan. Participation in projects besides the thesis, in teaching, and in administrative tasks, invest in training young academics the skills required for their future careers. Phd candidates play a crucial role in university,

The scientific progress, as well as in teaching, and should therefore be regarded employees of a university. Integration into the scientific community contributes to the professional development of PhD candidates.

Skills that all PhD graduates have in common include research- and analytical skills, the conception, planning, and management of a large and long-term project, the organization and presentation of complex information, and perseverance. All PhDs are about scientific research, but the developed skills can be applied in future careers in academia, as well as in business. With PhD candidates working on fixed term projects, they should be stimulated to anticipate their future career already at early stages during the PhD. By realizing how to apply their general skills to future plans, PhD candidates should be fully prepared for the next step in their careers.

For the last two years, I have been actively involved with the PhD Network of the University of Twente (P-NUT), including the last year as president. Recently, I wrote down my vision on doing a good PhD, which will serve as a basis for the representative activities of P-NUT. It was written on a general level, and P-NUT combines this vision with concrete goals. Here, for discussion, only the general vision on doing a good PhD is presented.

Over the last few years, a great level of continuity has developed in the organization of P-NUT. An effort was made to ‘sit at the table’ where policies are made that affect PhD candidates. We have had a good number of board members, and their combined efforts have resulted in us being recognized as the official representatives of PhD candidates. In 2011, these developments towards having a more professional organization culminated in registering as an official association, and setting up a formal member structure. This way, it is much more clear who we represent. I believe that as a result of this, official bodies (like the rector magnificus, the human resources department, and the graduate school) in the university are even more willing to receive our input and to hear our opinion on an increasing number of issues.

To be part of all that, is quite the honour. I hope I can consolidate the good work P-NUT has been doing, and to finalize this professionalization process. We are doing a lot, but it would be good to have the same results with a little less effort. Now that the most important changes already are in place, I think this should be possible. In addition, we have been asked to take up a new representative role with the Twente Graduate School during 2012, which should give us very exciting new opportunities. Finally, I think we should try to increase our visibility outside the PhD community, but some interesting plans for that are in place. If we can do all that, I will be a happy president!

For those of you who do not know P-NUT: it is the official goal of P-NUT to represent, inform, and connect the PhD candidates at the University of Twente. From our website:

Representing the PhD community

• in meetings with important parties inside the UT (meetings with the Rector, Twente Graduate School, Human Resources Department)
• to PNN — the National PhD association

Informing the PhDs

• regular lunch meetings, covering various topics, such as Taxes, Housing in the Netherlands, Grant proposals, UT Optional model, thesis printing market, etc.
• information about the government decisions that might affect the PhDs

Connect the PhDs

• we organize many social activites, such as P-NUT BBQ, Cocktail Workshop, Museum Visiting, Indoor rock climbing, etc.

My main task will be to follow developments in Dutch politics, regarding the bursary system. There are several reasons against this system listed by the Dutch PhD Network:

• PhD’s teach and do other work besides their thesis, so they are employees rather than students
• With the bursary system, the legal position of PhD’s will be much weaker
• The bursary system will make getting your PhD less attractive, which is bad for science in general
• With the bursary system, PhD’s will no longer be allowed to teach, which greatly reduces the number of teachers in higher education and looses out on the opportunity for young academics to train their teaching skills.
• The Dutch government argues to aim for a knowledge economy. With the bursary system talented young academics will be more likely to ‘brain drain themselves’ by going abroad to obtain their PhD, rather than contributing to the Dutch knowledge economy

Our university newspaper (UTnieuws) interviewed our new president of the PhD Network: Giovane Moura.

This month Giovane Moura, 29, was elected by his fellow board members as president of the PhD Network of the University of Twente (P-NUT). He talked about the challenges he faces and how life in the Netherlands compares to Brazil.

When asked what the goal of the new board is, he said:

Since its inception, P-NUT has been active in representing and helping the PhD community. We organize social activities along with information sessions on a spectrum of topics. Our membership has increased and interest in our activities. The next step is for P-NUT to become a formal organization, with registered members–what we call ‘professionalization.’

The whole board is motivated and working hard on this task and we have the full support of Rector Brinksma. We believe the professionalization of P-NUT is going to give us much more visibility and recognition.

Read the whole interview on the website of UTnieuws.