Stefano Volpe 17h ago
If any PhD students are following your account, boosting would be appreciated.

Fellow PhD student: hello! ​​ I hope you had a good Monday.

0) In which country are you pursuing your PhD?
1) What is the official duration of your PhD programme? Does it assume you already have a Master's?
2) How many academic credits (e.g., ECTS) are you required to get in order to complete your PhD?
3) If you are paid for TAing, can you estimate the number of teaching contact hours you need in order to supplement other sources of funding?

My union and Ph.D. committee have been asking for feedback, and I have a theory I'd like to test. Feel free to use private mentions if you want.

Edit: I am now using "academic credits" to make myself more understandable to non-EU people.
Show threadDr. Sobek
@foxy Are you interested by answer from PhD holders that have graduated somewhat recently ?
7:19pmWeb
Show threadStefano Volpe 13h ago
@Sobex Yes, please! Unless the PhD system in the country in question got a complete makeover right after your defence.
Show threadDr. Sobek13h ago

@foxy
0) France, PhD in CS, defended in 2023.

1) 3 years after Master's degree (some rare school have PhD programs that package in the MS, for 2 extra years, but unusual afaik)

2) I don't believe there's an ECTS requirement, but there's a quota of 100h of trainings (with byzantine local rules, swith BS like entrepreneurship, a mandatory ethics training of dubious quality, PhD defences you attend may count, summer schools, etc).

3) PhD student are supposed to get a salary with minimum set by law (around 2k€/mo I do not have the exact figure by heart, IT IS A FULL-TIME JOB), no funding no grad school registration. My funding came with no builtin teaching load, I was paid by the "Vacation" regime, around 40€/h of eqTD (gross), typical yearly teaching loads tend to represent up to 64h of eqTD (TD == Tutorial == Recitation, Lectures are counted 1.5 eqTD).

However, while in STEM PhD rarely last longer than 3 years, with extensions being usually limited to a few month, or no more than a year, and funded, some humanity fields do have unreasonable stuff happening, where student spend 3 years doing research, and then 2 years (un-funded) writing their manuscript, and usually reduced to living from short-term teaching positions (ATER, Vacations, etc). I do not have first hand data on this though.

Always happy to answer more questions on France ridiculous system.

Show threadStefano Volpe 12h ago
@Sobex would you say that your funding de facto required you to take on some teaching just to make ends meet? If so, could you estimate the number of contact hours (not sure if "TDs" only cover the time spent in class for the tutorial, or also the time spent to prepare for it)?
Show threadDr. Sobek11h ago

@foxy So, in my case, not at all, (I'm going to hide my non-representative payslips). I was way better paid than average PhD student, I taught because I liked it (and teaching during the PhD is kind of a requirement to be allowed to apply to a good chunk of faculty jobs).

And the hour counting is only student facing, prep time is not accounted for. (Apart from the 1.5 multiplier for lectures, which most PhD student don't ever got to do).

Show threadDr. Sobek11h ago
@foxy In the general case, I'd say that the teaching rounding up for those who don't have teaching as part of their job, usually ends up adding +10% to their salary.