Non-Scientific Reasons To Do A PhD In The Netherlands
nextscientist.com
nextscientist.com
I went for a walk and when I came back I found this mess. Excuses to those that could have felt offended by the comments posted by some readers.
Nasty comments have been deleted. Insults and personal fights are not acceptable in the comments section.
Please, feel free to contribute new comments to keep a useful discussion going.
Cheers, Julio
But being a foreigner living in the Netherlands, I can say that most of what is said here is true (I would put a few nuances for some points but well, everybody has a different view on things :) )
I'm not sure how it works in the Netherlands, but in the UK you can claim unemployment benefits without having to have been paying taxes (so far as I'm aware). Surely people applying to PhD positions aren't so incapable of managing their finances that they require payment monthly rather than quarterly? That's the only difference I can see between a grant system and a salaried one.
My PhD in the US was funded by NSF dollars, ie public money. I went to a state school. My stipend was taxed like regular income. On top of that, I paid Medicare and Social Security taxes (publicly funded government programs), which as a non-US citizen, I cannot use anyway. When you're making less than $20k a year in downtown Chicago, all this hurts quite a bit.
"I'm not sure how it works in the Netherlands, but in the UK you can claim unemployment benefits without having to have been paying taxes (so far as I'm aware)." No, in the UK and the Netherlands they won't hand out money to unemployed foreigners who choose to come and live there.
"That's the only difference I can see between a grant system and a salaried one." You can still get a grant. Lucky you!!
As someone who is just about to complete a PhD at Delft, I agree. If you are paid a salary, you are treated as an employee. In my opinion, this is not a good fit for the PhD process. That said, it was nice not having to scrape by.
> Is there not something rather bizarre about the government taxing the money it's giving to you to support your studies?
At least at Delft, many PhD's are partially funded by private corporations.
As to general life, it depends. In population centers you usually always find somebody who speaks English. In rural areas, it might be a bit more difficult. My recommendation is: If you don't understand or can't make yourself understood, just look for somebody below the age of 30 and you will soon enough find an ad-hoc translator.
Nonetheless, if you want to inmerse yourself in the culture and feel "at home", you have to learn the language. This, however, is the case for every place on the planet.
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