A group of officials wants that the University of Groningen takes part in the so-called Bursary Experiment. This would mean 850 bursary PhD-students in the upcoming 4 years, next to the regular PhD positions with employee status. Next Thursday (February 25th) your representatives at the University Council will be voting for/against the proposal to join the experiment.

Up until now, the general public has not been informed about the details of the proposal or given a forum to raise questions and get answers. For a quick overview of what this is about, you can find it in these articles (here and here). As a member of the University (PhD candidate/student, Master student, Professor, Staff, Technician, ...), you should be able to voice your opinion on whether the University of Groningen should take part in the experiment or not. Answers should be given to all members of the University who will be affected before the decision is taken.

How is this Bursary Experiment different from the one that was abandoned ten years ago for good reasons? How will the University cope with the additional supervision load? How will the the quality be ensured for all PhD students education, and how will we cover its additional costs, seeing that many Graduate Schools are already beyond their capacity? How will the University prevent a 2-class system of PhD students? How will financial and social security be ensured for bursary students?

If you think an open discussion should be held before the University Council takes any decision, make your voice heard via this petition.

This will be officially sent to your representatives in the University Council before they have the meeting to decide on the participation in the experiment (Thursday, February 25th).

Make sure you sign and share this with anyone you think should be involved in this decision process.

Groningen Graduate Interest Network (GRIN)