Starting grants for groups?

Starting grants for groups?

Several Dutch universities want to award the new starting grants not to individuals but to groups. In the coming years, universities themselves may award a new type of grant of 300 thousand euros to young university lecturers who get a permanent contract. But according to UNL, there are universities that want to construct the payment differently.

Minister Dijkgraaf is allocating 156 million euros for the new starting grants in the coming years. From the beginning, there were reservations. Young Academy, the society of relatively young top scientists, announced in June that it was happy with the extra investment, but wondered how universities would distribute those grants. “A new competition, with accompanying workload, is inevitable in that case”, the members wrote.

Research financier NWO chairman Marcel Levi had warned about this earlier, and the Lower House also had questions at the end of June. “Do researchers really have to compete less hard with each other?”, GroenLinks, for example, wanted to know from minister Dijkgraaf. Protest movement WOinAction suggested distributing the grants among all scientists. They could then decide together what to do with it, for example, four of them hiring a new university lecturer.

Without naming names, UNL now informs that some universities are indeed considering a different implementation. “The situation may vary from one faculty to another, so we would like universities to be given the space to respond accordingly”, the spokesperson writes. ‘To see what is possible’ discussions are taking place with the Ministry. The latter confirms this, but is not willing to comment at this time. (HOP, HC)