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Comment by zupatol | Hacker News Reader

The swiss university had advised the student to be enrolled only China in order to make it easier for him to complete his PhD at the swiss university afterwards. The swiss university is now evading their moral responsibility by hiding behind the convenient legal situation.

The professor explicitly cut ties with the student because she was afraid to lose her ability to get a visa for China. It's unclear how she came to this conclusion, but I don't see how she can conclude this just from a message she got from a student in Canada. Chinese authorities must have made it clear at some point that they are ready to punish either this or any slightest misstep like this. And it's really an insignificant incident: someone who is not officially her student, has basically no followers because he just created his account, tweets a little and deletes everything as soon as the professor finds a problem with it.

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Probably this also saved the student some fees as well.

Could be true. Unlike in Germany and many other European countries university studies are not free of charge in Switzerland. No idea about PhD.

I'm not familiar with universities outside the ETH rules (ETHZ/EPFL only) but students are paid a salary at these universities and hold dual status as employees and students. I'm not sure if their tuition is waived. Even if they pay the same tuition as masters or bachelors students this is usually around 800-900 CHF per semester, the cost of 2-3 months health insurance. Not money you want to pay if you don't have to, but it isn't UK or US fees.

However there are definitely time limits. You would find it hard to be enrolled on a doctoral programme for 6 years or more especially if you aren't about to imminently graduate, and this is likely the main motivation behind the advice given the proposed 3 year break in China.

> students are paid a salary at these universities and hold dual status as employees and students

OT: How much? Undergraduates too?

In Swiss federal institutes grad students are paid but it's free for undergrads.

Free for undergrads here meaning that they attend school for free (no tuition), or that they are not paid? Or both?

For undergrads, no tuition fees and they are not paid

I'm afraid it isn't free for undergrads, even outside the federal domain. Actually St Gallen is more expensive than ETH! https://www.unisg.ch/en/studium/informationsangebote/gebuehr...

Only PhDs are paid. I think the salary scale starts at around 51,000 CHF. That's a lot for other countries but it isn't for Switzerland. The exact amount is public knowledge and you can find it if you look. It is slightly higher for ETHZ, but not much.

Bachelors and masters pay fees according to: https://www.epfl.ch/education/studies/en/rules-and-procedure... or https://ethz.ch/en/studies/financial/tuition-fees.html

Tuition is definitely not free, but also not extortionate.

Here you go: the salaries of PhD students at ETH Zürich: https://ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/working-teaching-and-resea...

> Even if they pay the same tuition as masters or bachelors students this is usually around 800-900 CHF per semester,

AFAIK, as long as you are registered as a PhD student, you have to pay the fees.

That's easy to pay if you are an ETH employee with a normal salary.

It might not be that easy to pay if you are in Wuhan university, with a Wuhan PhD student "salary".

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