If the starting grants disappear, assistant professors are back to square one
Starting grants for young scientists were supposed to ensure that they could set up their own research and that the workload finally went down a bit at the highly competitive university. But the new cabinet has decided to abolish these grants that were supposed to bring “peace and quiet” – barely two years after they were introduced. “The idea that with survival of the fittest, the best come out on top universities is long outdated.”
For seven years, working at the university was a struggle for Dutch scholar Marrigje Paijmans (42). She worked at “about every university in the Netherlands” as a temporary lecturer. She was forced to do research in her spare time. At night, she regularly had stress-induced palpitations: she was in her late thirties and had no permanent contract, no house, a partner abroad and no child.
Towards her 40s, she decided to get pregnant anyway – it was the very last moment – and it was during that pregnancy that she was offered a permanent contract as a assistant professor (AP) at the UvA. For the first time, she got paid to do research. That was in March 2022. “I totally fell head over heels. While all those years I had jumped high and low for a permanent contract, now it was just handed to me. When I then also heard that I got three tons to start my research with, I nearly fell off my chair.”
Paijmans was one of the lucky ones who – after years of budget cuts and vacancy freezes – benefited from investment in higher education. Under minister Dijkgraaf came a series of measures including 1,200 permanent contracts for assistant professors in the form of the sector plans and the starting grants: three tons that young researchers could spend as they saw fit. With these investments, the government wanted to ease the high workload at universities and bring “peace and quiet”.
But before the starting grants could get off to a good start, they have already been dropped. Around Prinsjesdag (Budget Day), new education minister Eppo Bruins announced he would scrap the starters’ scholarships from 1 January 2025. What does the starting grant mean for research and for young researchers? And what will be lost if the starting grants disappear?
Distributing
Since 2022, the UvA has received money for the starting grants from the Dutch government. The university could distribute the starting grants to its researchers how they wanted. Because the aim was to relieve the workload, the UvA chose not to impose substantive requirements on the research but to leave it up to faculty administrators and department heads where they could best use the starting grants.
At the Faculty of Humanities (FGw) and the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG), the grants were allocated to assistant professors who signed a contract from 2022.
The cuts put new scientific research at risk, three hundred young scientists wrote in a letter to education minister Eppo Bruins at the end of September. The scientists fear for the future of their work and “experience every day how challenging it is to get socially valuable research funded”. The Dutch knowledge economy and national earning power will also be directly affected by cuts, both in the short and long term, the letter states.
Paijmans chose to use the starting grant to hire a PhD student. “It didn’t feel right to put all the money into my own research time and it was difficult to find another AP with a starter scholarship, to hire a PhD together, because the names were not shared openly. Moreover, after seven years of a vacancy freeze, Dutch studies was in need of an additional young employee with fresh ideas.”
New ideas
Thanks to the starting grants, research groups could therefore be replenished with PhD students and assistant professors were given a head start to set up their own research line. Previously, this was only possible with a grant from science financier NWO or EU funds, but there the application pressure is high and success rates are low.
New, experimental research ideas were also given a chance that probably would not have passed the selection criteria of the big science financiers. There, mainly the more predictable research proposals get through that are extensively supported by previously proven theories. “My idea to use postcolonial theory for seventeenth-century literature never got through a grant application,’ Paijmans explains. “While the idea was widely accepted abroad and now also in Dutch literary studies.” The starting grant did allow Paijmans’ PhD student to start researching that combination.
Unclear
The starting grant has created space for diverse, innovative and interdisciplinary research, agrees Laura*, an assistant professor who signed a contract at the UvA in 2024 promising her a starting grant. Laura is a fictitious name because she wants to remain anonymous due to her precarious situation of years of temporary contracts. Even now, her contract at UvA is temporary. Only after the first year, provided she performs well, will her temporary contract change to permanent would she receive the starting grant.
Only after the presentation of the new government outline agreement in June, UvA deans agreed with the Executive Board (CvB) to be cautious about awarding new starting grants. However, some of the UD contracts signed in 2024 still included the starting grant. Besides, the distribution and allocation of starting grants have been different at each faculty and research group.
The Dutch government will stop paying out starting grants in 2025. “I am no longer counting on getting the scholarship,” Laura says. “That’s a big disappointment. And part of the frustration is that a lot is still unclear. What I hear about it comes mainly from rumours, from the media and here and there something in the newsletter of the department and the FMG faculty. Nothing has been communicated directly yet to the people who are going to lose the starting grant.”
The research ideas she had for next year can be put on hold for a while. Last week, she had to disappoint the PhD student with whom she was already talking about the research project. “I will of course try to get funding for this research in another way, but there is a good chance that I will have to divert to more ‘fundable’ research proposals, instead of the research I would really like to do.”
Even the UvA does not know at the end of September which starting grants they can still disburse. The APs who signed a contract in 2022 and 2023 are guaranteed a scholarship, but for the 2024 batch – despite earlier promises – this is not yet the case.
Lottery
Most likely, the 2024 batch of APs will spend more time applying for funding. And that creates stress for assistant professors, observes Ioana Ilie, president of the national network for assistant professors (APNet). “As a young researcher, you juggle many things at once: you have to build up your own research group, apply for your own research funding and teach a lot as well. With the cutting of the starting grants, the workload will increase again. The quality of research and teaching will eventually suffer. As well as the health of assistant professors: some colleagues are considering resigning. Burnout will also become a bigger problem.”
At the same time, the elimination of starting grants will increase the application pressure on the NWO. At the same time, the NWO also has to make cuts. Ilie: “Applying for research funding will become even more of a lottery than it already was.”
Patchwork
With the cuts, assistant professors are back to square one, Ilie warns. “By cutting provisions for young researchers, we are no longer investing in the future. We may not notice it immediately, but in a few years’ time there will be a gap, a void in the university system. Fewer PhD students and postdocs will be trained, eventually leading to a shortage of assistant professors. And in the long run, that will also be at the expense of contributing to society.”
At the request of young researchers in the Netherlands, Ingrid Robeyns of the action group WOinActie made a list of ten ways to revolt against the cuts. Like joining a union, making yourself recognisable by wearing a red felt patch and going to protest. Read all the tips here.
Paijmans also sees this in Dutch studies. “Despite the investments of recent years, there is still a big gap between established and young researchers. This will only widen with the new cuts. For me, the starting grant felt like an unprecedented luxury, but if you look at the overall picture, it has rather been a kind of patchwork, which – before it could really do its job – has already been undone.”
According to Paijmans, the neoliberal idea of natural selection in universities has gone too far. “The idea that with survival of the fittest , the best come out on top at university is long outdated. The fittest or the fittest are already by the skin of their teeth. What remains is a very specific type of researcher: a type of lichen that is the only one who can survive in these extremely academic-unfriendly conditions.”
Laura feels mostly misled by the university. “I was promised something that probably cannot be fulfilled. I would prefer to get clarity soon so that I know where I stand. If the UvA cannot compensate us financially then extra time to apply for funding could be an option.”
Laura does not expect the cuts to be reversed yet. “It is a cleverly chosen cut because it affects only a few of us, and then also the newest staff. I don’t estimate that colleagues - who would never get the grant – will strike for this.”
*Laura’s real name is known by the editors.
Transition policy
In total, the UvA granted and promised 160 starting grants to UvA researchers. Assuming day each starting grant amounted to 3 tonnes, this amounts to 48 million euros. But, when the government contribution ends from 1 January 2025, only 36.6 million euros of that will have been paid to the UvA, based on the state contribution letters to the UvA. So the UvA will be left with a huge budget gap if it does not want to break its promises to its researchers.
Together with the other Dutch universities, the UvA first wants to go to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) to hold them accountable for the broken promises. At the same time, the UvA spokesperson emphasised, it should be clear that the UvA is also working on a solution for the awarded and promised starting grants - such as that of assistant professor Laura in this article.
Currently, the UvA is calculating the consequences of the announced cuts in a new long-term budget for each faculty. Based on this, the UvA plans to institute a so called “transition policy”. With the intention to use the granted scholarships as much as possible in the short term and phase them out for the longer term, the spokesperson writes. In doing so, faculties will be given room for custom-made solutions.
The new budget is expected to be published on 9 October. From then on, it will become clear, per faculty, what compensation arrangements are possible for university lecturers.
*Laura’s real name is known by the editors.
