PrOUt is concerned by the recent debate on the implementation of a bursary PhD student system in the Netherlands. In contrast to previous political views, the current government seeks to legally enable Dutch universities to facilitate Dutch bursary PhD students. Although this could possibly lead to an increase in cost efficiency for universities and hence to a larger number of PhD students, PrOUt believes the introduction of bursary PhD students is a bad idea. We wrote a charter that was offered to the University Council (U-raad [Dutch]), the University Board (CvB) and the rector magnificus.
Also, the national PhD candidates network (PNN) calls upon all PhD candidates to sign a petition on www.promovendus.org, which also contains a list of arguments (NB: the website is in Dutch). So let’s all join our forces!