PhD Network Netherlands wants to abolish PhD bonus
The PhD bonus, the sum universities receive per PhD graduation, still acts as a perverse incentive for universities to create more PhD positions. And that is worrying, says the PhD Network Netherlands (PNN), because supervision often lags behind. “It is time to have a discussion about how many PhD students a university can handle.”
In 2024, the Netherlands gained 5,595 young doctors, with a record number of PhDs. This is nothing new: the number of annual PhDs in the Netherlands has almost doubled over the past twenty years. Last year, this trend continued unabated at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), as recent figures show. This growth is partly due to the PhD bonus, a financial reward of around €80,000 from the government that universities receive for each completed PhD.
According to Martijn van der Meer, chair of the Dutch PhD Network (PNN), insufficient consideration has been given to the incentive effect of this bonus. “It leads to an ever-increasing number of PhD students, while the capacity for supervision does not increase. We find this a worrying development.” It is high time to take a critical look at this bonus, says the PNN in the run-up to the committee debate on 11 March in the House of Commons on the new cabinet’s education plans.
Competition between universities
First, Van der Meer wants to clear up a misconception. “The term ‘PhD bonus’ is incorrect. It is not the case that universities receive an ‘extra’ amount of money from the government for each PhD. It works more like a distribution key for the government contribution to research.” All universities receive one large sum of money from the government, the lump sum. Part of this is money for research, and a percentage of this is distributed among the universities based on the number of completed PhDs.
So it is true that universities with more PhDs receive a larger share of the government’s research funding. This creates competition between universities to create as many PhD positions as possible. Van der Meer: “This is undesirable, because the university does not grow proportionally and supervision often lags behind. In addition, the work is sometimes more suitable for postdocs or other university employees. Even apart from the fact that there are simply no jobs at the university for the majority of PhD graduates.”
According to Van der Meer, there should be a national discussion about whether universities are able to supervise PhD students. “That varies, of course, from faculty to faculty. In some disciplines, the ratio between the number of PhD students and the available supervision capacity is structurally more under pressure than in others.”
According to Van der Meer, there are two possible options. “Either you abolish the PhD bonus if it turns out that growth is not desirable, or you revise it.” In the latter case, Van der Meer suggests aligning the number of PhD places per university with the amount of FTE available for supervision. “It is time to have a discussion about how many PhD students a university can handle.”
Disagreement
In the past, there was also regular disagreement about the PhD bonus. This was particularly the case since 2009, the year in which Education Minister Plasterk increased the “PhD bonus” to 90,000 euros per completed PhD. To prevent universities from relying too heavily on PhDs for funding, Education Minister Jet Bussemaker set a ceiling on government funding for research in 2017. From then on, a maximum of 20 per cent could be spent on PhDs.
Why is the PhD bonus still in place after all these years? “Because it hasn’t been thought through properly,” says Van der Meer. “Apparently, no one considers it urgent enough to do anything about it. But no one is happy with an incentive to train as many PhD students as possible.”
