Protest gathering Hospital de St. Pau

This Thursday, 21st of October, the “Forum de Investigacion Biomedica UAB-CEI” will be held in the “Casa de la Convalescencia” which is part of the UAB on the grounds of the Hospital de St. Pau in Barcelona. Participants are the Minister of Health of the Generalitat de Catalunya (Marina Geli) and the Minister of Innovation of Universities and Enterprises (Josep Huguet).

In order to reinforce the manifest, there will be a protest gathering from 12h to 13h which will be timed with the presence of Mr. Huguet. The assisting people are asked to wear orange clothing (the colour represents the precarious scientist). The plan is to read out loud the manifest and hand a copy to Mr. Huguet. Furthermore, a basket with oranges and a juice squeezer will be given to the Minister as representation of the current situation of the PhD students working as researchers.

Everybody willing to attend is invited to participate, preferably wearing orange clothing.

Please check back for updated time before going there.

Informative Meeting Parc Científic

There will be an informal and informative meeting on Wednesday, October 20th, opened to the whole PCB Community. It will take place at the IRB Terrace, from 10:30am. Past and future actions will be discussed, and the collection of signatures to support the Manifest will begin.

Also, there is another meeting called for tomorrow, Tuesday, at 1pm at Aula 22 of the Faculty of Biology, UB.

We hope to see you all there!

The UPF letter sent

The collective at Universitat Pompeu Fabra has finally sent today its complaint letter, which they have been preparing lately and about which this blog informed in its Spanish version -the English translation is in preparation and will be posted for the record.

A hundred and twenty seven members of the Biomedicine Doctorate Programme at UPF have adhered to the text, representing only one of the multiple research centers with an active collective opposing the rise of thesis supervision fees and other problems of predoctoral research at Catalonia.

This blog will follow closely the effects of this UPF text, which is being used as a model at many other centers and the contents of which will predictably be included in any collective complaint of predoctoral researchers as a whole.

D-Recerca gets explanations from DIUE

Here is linked the mailing list on our theme at D-Recerca, the Association of Graduate Students and Research Fellows of Catalonia. Readers are encouraged to check it and participate in its activities; it must not be forgotten that D-Recerca is the association representing most predoctoral researchers in Catalonia.

This post's highlight goes to a meeting between a representation of D-Recerca and the Generalitat de Catalunya Department for Innovation, Universities and Enterprise (DIUE) Director General, Josep Rives.

About the rise of the thesis supervision fees, the meeting report states:

The reason given to explain this rise of 300% in doctorate fees is the adaptation to the European Higher Education Area. Since this year is the first in which the Bologna Accord is implemented in studies from the first course, they have wanted to update the third degree as well. They state that this price of 400€ is to cover expenses of the supervision service and bibliographical fonts access. We complained about the supervision service being symbolic in all cases and hence it is not justifiable to charge so much money giving nothing in exchange*. We were told then that we would have to address the vice-chancellery for research at each university and demand there the services corresponding to the degree, like a better offer of teachings and advisory services.
But yes, students registered for PhD. programmes previous to the new plan will be charged just the previous fees.

Readers are encouraged to question if they use these services as predoctoral researchers, if they want to have to claim them and if they are willing to pay more today than they did yesterday for something that they have to make a claim to get improved, but mainly for something that they probably didn't ask to improve, least to become so expensive.

About what is paid in each programme, it seems that students in the DEA pathway are in a better position, although there's some contradictory information running around about this point. Any readers registered for a DEA programme and being charged the 400€ fee are welcome to report that in the comments section.

* A comment in the Spanish version reveals yet another contradiction in the explanation of the fee as covering bibliographical access and the actual reduction of bibliographical access for Spanish universities by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology in purchasing a cheaper license for ISI Web of Knowledge this year.

Spreading the word with Humour

 TRANSLATION - THESIS SUPERVISION FEE GOES UP TO 380%. JUMPING THROUGH HOOPS. 'CAUSE YOU DON'T MIND PAYING FOR WORKING.

Predoctoral researchers at the Barcelona Science Park have decided to express their disagreement with the increase of thesis supervision fees to 400€ with a parody motivational poster.

This icon of the situtation is reproduced here for the readers to do whatever they consider with it. Have you seen any other similar posters? Have you made any you want to share? You can send it to this blog's feedback e-mail:

colectivo.doctorandos.catalunya@gmail.com

The case at UPC

Pre-doctoral researchers at UPC started reacting somewhat before the alarm over this blog's topic was general. They contacted the vice-chancellor for Scientific Policies, Xavier Gil Mur and the assistant vice-chancellor for Research, Ana Isabel Pérez Neira expressing their unrest over the rise of the thesis supervision fee up to 400€.

Next there is a translation of the answer letter they got:

Dear Jordi,

In reference to your letter about the increase in the thesis supervision fee, we agree in that the increase of the fee has been high. In front of this fact, I must tell you that the Social Council of the UPC approved for the academic year 2010-2011 a fee of 400 euros in concept of thesis supervision, defense and evaluation altogether. At other universities the interpetation was to apply 400 euros for each one of these concepts, so anyone registering only for thesis defense and evaluation will be charged another 400 euros. This is not true for UPC.

We thank you for your letter. Xavier Gil will complain to Generalitat both about the increase in the fee and the fact that FPU or FPI fellows have to pay while UPC, FI or contracted by UPC don't.

Kind regards,

Ana Pérez Neira
Vre. Adj. investigación

Xavier Gil
Vre. Política Científica

One has to be thankful for the UPC vice-chancellors agreeing in objective facts, as that the increase in the tax has been high. It can be trusted that they will also agree in other obvious facts in which it is impossible to disagree without falling in an evident mistake.

Besides, it is sold as something good that UPC has not pushed into the domains of the dubious in the application of the decree that lifts the fees, making some pay double of what already seems a senseless amount. It is said that other universities have done so. It seems logical to wonder which are those universities that don't show even the scarce solidarity with predoctoral researchers that the social council of UPC has displayed. If any reader of this blog knows which are they, communicating it in the comments will be welcome.

The vice-chancellor for Scientific Policies at UPC will carry the complaint of the predoctoral researchers to the Generalitat. There's no doubt that the eyes of the world will be put on that complaint and its consequences. This blog will inform on any news about this matter.

Thesis supervision fees on the rise

It is the time of the year for PhD. registration at Catalan universities and predoctoral researchers are being asked to pay a thesis supervision fee of 400 euros. These prices are fixed autonomously by the Generalitat de Catalunya - the Catalan autonomous government - and it has decided to increase them to a 380,95% of last year's fees (from 105€ payed last year to the current 400€).

Besides the obvious and most serious economic inconvenience this is going to cause for many if not all predoctoral researchers, these fees are absolutely unjustified, unjustifiable and abusive. On one hand they are abusive because the price of a service is being raised arbitrarily with no improvement of the service at all. On the other hand they are the last straw in the story of charging for a service that many consider almost non-existent.

Furthermore, since such high fees are being introduced only in Catalonia, they constitute an unfair disadvantage of the predoctoral researchers in Catalonia in front of the ones in the rest of Spain.

Also, these fees contribute to put annual registration out of the reach of the average predoctoral researcher and come to represent the fact that formal public postgraduate education is being reserved by the Generalitat, with an aid in the passivity of Catalan universities, for the economically privilegiate.

Even more, these fees are but a direct aggression to research, given that many candidates considering to pursue a PhD. will choose other options coming without a "droit de signeur" that in practice translates into paying for working, for carrying out a valuable work that contributes to the benefit and financial resources of research groups.

It is enough already of  unfairly charging highly qualified workers that have invested their time, effort and money in being able to work for the good of society and in most cases with remarkably low incomes. Are predoctoral researchers being punished for giving their best to science and society?

Since all this has been carried out discreetly by the Generalitat and the Catalan universities, the only - though with absolute credibility - information about this matter is the DOGC - the official journal of the Generalitat de Catalunya, in its Catalan acronym. The editions that set the fees for this year and the past year are linked here, for the information and fair indignation of every predoctoral researcher.

The collective of predoctoral researchers of Catalonia has in this blog a place to centralize information from the different local groups that have started to express their disconformity with this government action and their adhesion to the initiatives that are starting to come from groups as D-Recerca and the diverse predoctoral researchers collectives of research institutes and universities.

Readers are encouraged to think about these questions:

How much does it cost for universities to keep predoctoral researchers academic files?

What do predoctoral researchers get in exchange for the newly introduced payment of 400€?

Will they get what they are suppoused to? With wich warranties?

Is this imposed fee fair?

What is that money used for in the end?

D-Recerca Informative Meeting

A meeting with the aim of deciding the steps to take in trying to stop the rise of registration fees approved by Generalitat de Catalunya has been planned for tomorrow thursday, October the 14th.

The meeting has been organized by the collective D-recerca and will be held at the "Estudiantil" pub, at Plaça Universitat (metro Universitat) from 19h.

This blog supports this event and all readers are encouraged to attend. It will be a nice occasion to get informed about the current situation and how to contribute to its change.