[seydor]

> OpenEuroLLM has a total budget of €37.4 million of which €20.6 million comes from the Digital Europe Programme.

So on average 1.87 million per participating institution which might amount to funding ~5 PhD students per institution. Not bad for a training program.

The project has been awarded the Sovereignity Seal, an EU mark of Excellence before it even started. This is truly in accordance with european values, where we reward participation and proclamation. I don't think we will ever hear again from this project.

Congratulations to the participants of the consortium for receiving this large EU grant. Thoughts and prayers to the students who will be writing the deliverable progress reports.

[huijzer]

> This is truly in accordance with european values, where we reward participation and proclamation.

Yes. In my experience the government is happy with "looks good doesn't work" as long as it truly looks good.

[bee_rider]

Thank goodness we have startup culture in the US, instead we can have “looks bad, doesn’t work, but Microsoft bought it so…”

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

and "actively erodes human community and democratic society"

[TeMPOraL]

That's the ones that don't get bought.

Unicorns are carnivores that prey on the people.

[aubanel]

Microsoft is certainly much better at judging the value of a software than any european administration.

[bee_rider]

I dunno, every software product I use in the US has been getting worse over time. Even if Europe is doing nothing, at least they aren’t accelerating in the negative direction.

[amarcheschi]

Of all the software companies, Microsoft really makes me feel the ick every time I have to interact with their suite. I started using again teams after months and I didn't remember it was so bad, it's like a reverse course on ux

[aubanel]

Then please switch for a product made by the EU. Call me when you've read through 300 pages of documentation to discover there was no product.

[FranzFerdiNaN]

Lol yeah unlike corporationd who are happy with “makes life intentionally worse but brings in money”.

Jesus the ideology in this place runs so thick with some people.

[solid_fuel]

It’s truly absurd the ways some people here twist logic. “Government did it” means it MUST be bad, of course. It takes a willful ignorance, pretending that all government efforts are bad and all corporate efforts are therefore good.

As if ARPAnet just sprang from a group of MBAs sitting around unemployed.

When I read 1984 in high school, I didn’t really get the scariest bit: a lot of people are PROUD to shout that 2 + 2 = 5 as long as it makes a poor person somewhere else sad.

[gman83]

Sovereignity Seal -- https://strategic-technologies.europa.eu/investors_en is just a fund for investing in strategic technologies, it's meant for projects that are getting started.

[ta12653421]

for 1.87m per project, you get in EU rather 15 - 20 people :) (salaries are low here)

[dagenleg]

At least in France, where they have PhDs which last only 3 years, a years of PhD would cost ~45K EUR in gross salary (granted the student gets around half of that after tax), then let's say ~10K travel and consumables costs, then add up the inevitable 20% overhead costs and now you're looking at around 200K for the shortest possible frugal 3 year PhD.

[rhubarbtree]

At least in the UK, overheads are usually over 100%.

[dagenleg]

This sounds like quite an outlandish figure, could you please elaborate? For example, an ERC grant would allow for a maximum of 25% of the so called "indirect costs", that is, one fourths of all the the direct costs (gross salaries, materiel, travel, etc) gets paid as a lump sum, and this usually goes to the institution. How do you end up with over 100% overheads?

[rhubarbtree]

I recall putting a grant proposal together. An RA salary of £40K was charged to the project at £110K. Those numbers are roughly accurate, might actually have been slightly higher.

I’m not sure how that gets accounted in different schemes, perhaps it is somehow impossible in ERC grants, but it is certainly the case in some grants.

25% cap would I think make most universities bankrupt overnight.

[dagenleg]

I suspect a large part of that 110K would be the government's cut. Again, coming back to the french system, an employee getting 40K after taxes costs ~80K to the institution there. I didn't think of the salary taxes as overheads, we count them as direct costs.

[p-a_58213]

....at best :( - more in certain universities.

[selfmodruntime]

I agree, in Germany companies PhD funding seems to be between 200 and 300k.

[ta12653421]

Show me any source of a German company funding a PhD role with 200.000 EUR or 300.000 EUR salary

Sorry, this is just not true

[dagenleg]

These are gross overall costs for the full PhD, not yearly salary.

[selfmodruntime]

I mean gross salary, for all 3-4 years for your employer. You‘d be surprised how much money is spent on paying your salary (as well as other expenses like traveling to conferences and equipment). No one is talking salary.

[ta12653421]

the math is quite simple:

as PhD ("Doktorand") Student/Finisher, you will get around 45.000 EUR - 60.000 EUR in most jobs, maybe there are some mega corps like BMW or Siemens which will pay more (or consulting or IB etc.), but the vast majority of jobs with a "research background" in Germany will NEVER land you near 100.000 or more

[ta12653421]

so the math is:

1.800.000 / 50.000 (avg) is 36 persons, somewhere in the ballpark range i mentioned

[dagenleg]

Well, no. That money is the total grant sum, to be spent over multiple years, and PhDs are usually funded in full - in Germany a PhD takes around 5 years. Moreover, the money a PhD student gets after tax, is not the same as the money spent overall from the grant, see my other comment below.

In Europe a PhD student is a multiyear commitment, with a bunch of externalities, they are much simpler to manage as discrete units, and thus are funded as such.

[seydor]

I assume the largest portion will be consumables, travel, meetings etc.