[noobermin]

European countries have lower salaries in general? Although their social safety nets are better.

Also, assistant professors (or the equivalent there) generally make less but do probably make more once they get tenure. I'm assuming they meant the tenure-track position itself is ~30K USD, but making tenure usually does mean a pay increase.

[evandijk70]

In the Netherlands, 30k is the starting salary for a PhD student.

30k for a tenure track position sounds insane to me.

[maccard]

In Ireland PhD stipends are closer to 13-17k. It's not a perfect comparison because the PhD stipends are tax free, so your comparative salary would be in the 17-20k mark. That said, Postdoc research positions are much closer to 40k than 30k.

[microtonal]

That's still pretty miserable. In Germany, an assistent professor or postdoc makes 60k Euro after a few years, even when they are in the pay scale that only requires a master's degree (TVL-13).

[krageon]

I have spoken to quite a few that made minimum wage (which is not even close to 30k).

[microtonal]

The situation is a bit weird in The Netherlands. Some PhD students are paid employees (AiO), their gross salary is ~31000 to 40000 Euro per year (I think this is excluding vacation money, but including 13th month).

Then there are PhDs that get a scholarship (bursaal), that is only around 24000-25000 gross per year.

Not too long ago, there were only employee PhDs, but some universities really love the scholarship system, because they have to pay less tax, so it's a lot cheaper for the universities.

My wife had a PhD scholarship in NL and it really had some large negative effects after finishing her PhD:

- She contributed 4 years less into a pension fund, since bursary PhDs do not build up pension outside the state pension;

- In her next academic position, they didn't consider her four years of PhD work as working experience, while they did do that for me as an employee PhD. So, she was set back 4 years in salary growth.

- She finished her PhD in August and started a full time job after her PhD. Because she had an income that went over some threshold, she had to pay the taxes that the university dodged by using the scholarship system. She worked the rest of the year at a loss (the taxes were higher than the income from September-December).

The worst part of it is that many foreign PhD students do not realize that there is a two-class system.

[microtonal]

Update: today's news is that the minister of education requires that all students on a PhD scholarship will get a regular employment from 2024 onwards:

https://ukrant.nl/minister-zet-definitief-streep-door-experi...

[krageon]

That's pretty tragic, aside from the pension - which I don't expect to receive anyway (like most everyone under 40).

[noobermin]

That is a pretty disappointing situation for a country that is known for being "progressive."

[myst1]

In the us, a few years ago, my program offered a stipend of 22,000 usd per year. Provided I taught a few classes, graded homework, tests, etc. While doing research and taking my own classes.

That was very lucky, many programs do not offer stipends and require people to take out loans.