In the Netherlands research assistants have a four year contract, earn an entry salary of just over €2000 before tax and have a pension plan and pregnancy leave. All this maybe about to change, writes Trouw.

Junior education minister Halbe Zijlstra and university association VSNU are planning to introduce a different type of research assistant: one who doesn’t get paid but instead pays the university and who will be classified as a student, not an employee.
The paper cites a number of research assistants who describe the advantages of their present situation. Mathias van Rossum is a social historian and researches the cultural differences of life on the VOC ships. He aims to finish his research in four years’ time. ‘I’m doing it in a much shorter time than, say, PhD students in Germany or the States. It’s around seven years there, mainly because we have good working conditions. We don’t need second jobs to get to the end of the month.’
‘We are being taken seriously as scientists. We do independent research and give presentations at congresses’, says another research assistant.
Wealthy parents
Under the new scheme, an independent research assistant will get a €934 grant. What with a university fee of €1730 and the cost of books, it is clear that anyone wanting to become a research assistant will have either have to have a large piggy bank or wealthy parents.
According to the association of research assistants PNN, the VSNU wants a similar system to foreign universities who also work with PhD students in order to facilitate international research cooperation. It would also mean universities would have to spend less although, the paper writes, Zijlstra does not have the figures to back this up.
Food bank
The introduction of the new scheme will mean a change in the law although some universities, Groningen and Delft among them, are already offering grants instead of work contracts to student research assistants, a practice which was deemed illegal by the court.
‘I cannot get married or work part-time during my time as a research assistant or I will lose my fiscal advantages. Groningen does provide reasonable grants. But in Delft it’s €800 a month and it was only upped when some Chinese research assistants had to resort to a food bank’, one student research assistant says.
Harm
The PNN thinks the new scheme will harm the scientific climate in the Netherlands. ‘Foreign scientists like to come here because they are paid well and can teach. They have a real job with all the social contacts that entails. If you don’t have a proper salary and the social advantages of having a job you are not going to achieve anything here.’