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/ Cursor nummer 2 nummer 6

jaargang 43, 22 maart 2001


English page

Untitled Document

"Foreign PhD Students Have a Harder Time"
Late Dissertation Means Loss of Income for Dutch PhD Students
The scrapping of redundancy pay for PhD students in 2001 has led to a complete loss of income for people who don't finish their thesis within the official four-year period. Thousands of students in the Netherlands are in trouble now unemployment benefits are not replacing civil service redundancy pay as was first believed. At TU/e only about 15 per cent of PhD students finish their theses in four years, nationally the figure is 12 per cent.

Foreign PhD students are often in less trouble, but sometimes in even more trouble than their Dutch colleagues. Foreign students lose their residency permits if their contracts expire, and are sometimes forced to leave the country. Until now, some foreign students were eligible for redundancy pay or unemployment benefits under certain conditions. TU/e often extends contracts by three months to a year to give foreign PhD students the chance to finish their theses.
This is more difficult with scholarships. One student at Electrical Engineering had to go home to Brazil before finishing his PhD when his scholarship ended, and his colleagues haven't heard from him since. Another graduate student from Africa was given an extension of his scholarship and should now receive his PhD at the end of the year.

Collective Extension
Dutch PhD student organisation LAIOO has asked minister Hermans to make funds available to universities for a collective extension of PhD contracts by a full year. They also want changes in the funding system itself. At the moment TU/e receives a bonus of about 100,000 guilders for every finished thesis. This disappears into the university's lump sum financing. LAIOO has therefore asked the minister to give professors some sort of incentive to make sure students finish their dissertations on time. Until now, PhD students who were writing their theses after their four-year contract were almost always given redundancy pay, so the consequences of finishing late were limited for both the university and the PhD student.
Executive Board member Te Beest told Cursor that supervision of PhD students at TU/e is quite adequate and no changes are anticipated. This opinion is not undisputed by PhD students themselves. Stories about people working on their own for years are not unusual.
LAIOO has also asked minister Hermans to provide solutions for foreign PhD students who find themselves with no income, an unfinished dissertation and a residency status of 'illegal alien' or 'tourist'.

Three-year PhD
According to BIA head Leo Robben, foreign PhD students often have a harder time than their Dutch colleagues. "In general, I think foreign PhD students don't finish faster than the Dutch. It's often more difficult for them to get their research started, due to communication problems. Some projects even include an introduction year because of this problem. But we can't use this as a general solution because it takes only three years to get a PhD at a foreign graduate school."
The University of Amsterdam announced this week that it is switching to a three-year system with improved pay and closer supervision for PhD students. The term 'AIO' will be replaced by 'junior researcher'. This is in connection with the introduction of the Anglo-Saxon Bachelor/Master system. Other Dutch universities may conceivably follow UvA's lead. Te Beest howover has declared the TU/e will not follow this system.
Chairman of AIO-overleg at TU/e Willem-Paul Brinkman says his organisation wants a real solution to the problem, not some compromise. "It's in the university's interest that both foreign and Dutch students finish their PhDs. Many of us can already get jobs with outside companies. Why should we stay if that gets us into trouble financially? Or even with the police in the case of foreign students?"
Next week Cursor talks to foreign fourth year PhD students about graduating on time./.

Untitled Document

Network Down Next Weekend
The computers in the LaPlace building computer room are being moved to the basement in the weekend of March 23. Network traffic will therefore not be possible at or with TU/e after 5 p.m. on Friday March 23. This situation will continue until Saturday evening. Calling in will not be possible.
It may be necessary to continue the job on Sunday March 24, so it is likely that there will be no network activity on this date. Preparations for this large-scale operation have started on Wednesday March 21.
The job will start with the re-welding of glass optics fibres to the backbone of TU/e's network. Most buildings on the campus are connected to this. This first job should be done by 1 a.m. Saturday morning. SARA will then continue at 7 p.m. with the dismantling of Surfnet equipment. At eight, KPN will start re-welding Surfnet's fibre optics cables and the equipment will be moved and reinstalled. At the same time, Telfort will be re-welding the Gigaport fibre optics cables and moving the equipment that goes with it to the ICT room.
UPC will also be adapting a number of connections, including the link to the Energis network. Energis supplies the call-in facilities.
Links to student housing through the UPC network will be interrupted. A number of teams of movers will start work on Saturday morning to move 50 PC Lan servers and 30 UNIX servers and systems. All services will be off the air during this operation./.

New ATM
As of tomorrow (Friday), it will again be possible to withdraw money from your account at an automatic teller machine (ATM) on campus. The new house banker, Rabobank, has installed an ATM at ground floor level in the hall of the main building, opposite the hairdresser. The bank is not planning to open an actual office on campus.

Accessibility Laplace Building
The first phase in the renovation of the Laplace building is almost complete, namely the moving of ICTS's central computer room to the basement. The second phase starts in April. The ground floor will be cleared, except for EESI. The accessibility of the building will also change on this date. The main entrance to the building will be closed and visitors will be routed through Traverse (level 1) to the Laplace building. Visitors to lecture hall in the basement will have to walk around the building to the basement entrance. The lift will remain in operation, but will no longer stop on the ground floor. EESI access to De Zaale will be unchanged. Escape routes will be marked in case of an emergency. Footbridges from level 1 to E-hoog and Traverse will remain in use. The Laplace canteen will also continue as usual.
Heavy demolition work will take place on evenings and weekends to minimise problems due to noise. The job should be finished by November 1. Any questions or comments on the renovation should be directed to S.Dekkers.Mutsaers@tue.nl.

Water in Pool
The taps at TU/e will be turned to full blast this week to fill the new pool. Some 800 to 900 cubic metres of water will be needed, which should take about five days of 8 hours. The first of the water sprayed into the 25 metre long pool this Monday. The pool should be full by the end of the week and the water will be heated to three degrees higher each day until 25 degree Celsius point is reached. In April, a team of divers will install the movable floor in the pool. This floor floats on the water and will be manipulated using enormous cables and jacks. The whole complex will be completed on April 12 by bouwmaatschappij Wijnen from Someren. The company started building last summer. The official opening of the pool is planned for May 10. A week later, the 'Grote Nederlandse Studenten Kampioenschappen' will start in Eindhoven. And the pool will be put to its first real use.

The English Page is written by Paula van der Riet. She can be reached at engcur@stud.tue.nl.

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