Increase in Doctoral Scholarships: Funding Rates to Rise for Gifted Organizations

Those who want to deepen their research questions even after their master’s thesis usually toy with the idea of ​​a doctorate. The question of financing then decides whether you really take this path as a graduate. Since positions for employees who are pursuing a doctorate are rare for professors, other sources of money often have to be found: some are placed in third-party funded projects, others receive a doctoral scholarship from a gifted organization.

For everyone who is doing their doctorate individually, i.e. with a scholarship, or planning to do so, there is news from the Federal Ministry of Research (BMBF), as the university journal “Research and Teaching” has now reported. Under pressure from the 13 gifted organizations – including the German National Academic Foundation or the party-affiliated foundations – the funding rates will be increased from October until autumn 2025 in view of the inflation.

These have remained the same since 2016, the rate is currently 1350 euros. The money is not taxed, and some sponsors add a lump sum for research costs of 100 euros, which can be used freely, so that the monthly income here is 1450 euros.

The scholarships will now be increased in three stages by 300 euros, until the doctoral students will have 1650 or 1750 euros per month at their disposal in autumn 2025. Another advantage: The funding commitments apply immediately for three years, so far you have to apply for an extension after the second year – albeit usually without much effort. After the third year, an extension of six months can follow in the future.

There are also many so-called individual doctorates at the Berlin universities: often in research programs and associations in which third-party funding has expired, but whose concept and structure should be retained. One example is the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School for Literary Studies at the Free University, which allocates some funded places, but also places where the doctoral students have to apply for funding themselves.

However: The federal subsidy to the funding agencies will not be increased. According to the blog of the Tagesspiegel author Jan-Martin Wiardas, it should be 342.9 million euros in 2023 and 2024. Overall, fewer people interested in doing a doctorate should therefore receive a scholarship every year. If the current approaches remain, the organizations for the promotion of gifted students will have to reduce the number of their sponsored persons by 15 to 20 percent in the next three years, says Annette Julius, General Secretary of the German National Academic Foundation.

Christoph Schneider, Vice President for Research at Humboldt University, would of course support a higher budget for the funding agencies. Nevertheless, he emphasizes: “The stagnating budget must not be at the expense of those who are doing a doctorate.” If the budget remains the same, “poorly financed doctorates are even more detrimental than a slightly smaller number of doctorates”.

In metropolitan regions like Berlin, scholarships have to be “competitive”.

Scholarships have to be competitive, especially in a metropolitan region like Berlin, says Schneider. The argument of “competitiveness” is also heard from funding organizations: If the conditions for doing a doctorate individually and with foundation funding are simply too bad, soon no one would apply anymore.

And so the Heinrich Böll Foundation also welcomes the increase, “even if an even more far-reaching reform would have been desirable, for example with a view to extending the term”, as it says on request. Scholarship holders are financially secure again so that they can do their doctorate without other obligations.

The Vice President of Freie Universität, Verena Blechinger-Talcott, sees it in a similarly positive light: Finally, something is being done to counteract the discrimination against scholarship holders compared to other doctoral positions. It is regrettable if the budget problem “leads to a reduction in funding figures”, but due to the small proportion of scholarship holders overall, she does not fear any “serious effects on the doctoral programs” at the Free University.

Nevertheless, the path to a doctorate via scholarships is still associated with disadvantages: Although these offer a lot of freedom, they are a special case because you do not pay into social security. Anyone who does not find a job immediately after completing their doctorate can only receive unemployment benefit II. Employers, especially in the public sector, often do not count the time for an individual doctorate as work experience, but as additional years of study. Many former scholarship holders start at a lower salary level than colleagues who were employed as doctoral students at the university.

Both Schneider and Blechinger-Talcott point out that scholarships are increasingly viewed critically because they do not include social security. The DFG therefore no longer provides grants for doctorates as part of its projects, but rather doctorates in employment.

For the FU Vice-President, however, one advantage remains: that organizations that support the gifted can also offer “access to career-related networks”.