And what about the start-up grants and incentives that Minister Dajgraf put in place for scientists? He also seeks advice from his harshest critics.
Minister Robert Dekgraff wanted to create peace and space in science. One of his proposals: to award new associate professors (UD) on a permanent contract a start-up grant of €300,000.
In addition, there will also be incentive grants of varying amounts for other scholars. The minister allocated 300 million euros for these grants.
Although the minister could count on a great deal of sympathy among scholars, the plans were quickly criticized. A committee with some of these pundits might now give him advice: How should stock markets progress?
The chair of that committee wouldn’t be a surprise to those involved. This is Professor Bert Weckhausen in Utrecht, who is deputizing for the KNAW science community Advice He wrote about the importance of “working capital” to scientists. Grant Dijkgraaf was inspired by this.
WOinAction
Other names are more surprising. For example, one of the panelists is Remco Breuker from WOinActie. The business team sees this little in the plans and I suggested in favor of merely distributing the money to all the scholars, which is about €25,000 per year per scientist.
Another member is Thejas Paul, Vice President of the Youth Academy. That Association of Senior Young Scientists also expressed reservations. Members afraid that the fairs would provide a new competition, “with an associated workload”.
The universities themselves are also concerned. Why does every assistant professor charge the same amount, regardless of major? Don’t you make your eyes roll when new assistant professors get money and their colleagues don’t? Some colleges prefer to split available funds among teams.
So the Director of Human Resources (Mariska Brzozyk from Eindhoven University of Technology) will contribute ideas, as will Rector Magnificus Pamela Habibovic (Maastricht University), Pancras Hoogendoorn (Vice-Chancellor of LUMC Leiden Hospital) and Mladen Popović (Dean of Theology Groningen).
two UDs
Also on the panel are two university lecturers who are not afraid to give their opinion. One of them is Fimke Niebuhr from the University of Twente, who is also a columnist for the university magazine U-Today. The other is Sirin Bekdemir of Maastricht University. In September, she led the “Real Opening” of the academic year, a protest meeting against the many temporary contracts in the sciences.
The first recommendations are expected at the end of March, but the committee will remain in place for at least two years. At the same time, a panel of NWO research funders is examining the question of how new grants and stimulus grants relate to existing research funding.
The committee was formed in consultation with a range of interest groups and working groups: the Universities Association UNL, the Academic Hospitals Association NFU, the research funder NWO, the scientific association KNAW, the De Jonge Akademie, the union AOb and WOinActie.
