Salary rates for ETH doctoral students to be adjusted

Up until Christmas, it was unclear if doctoral students at ETH Zurich would receive a cost-of-living adjustment as ETH’s other employees have. At the Executive Board townhall meeting in January, Julia Dannath, Vice President for Personnel Development and Leadership, reiterated that the Executive Board was unhappy with this state of affairs. Now there are signs of movement in this matter.

Because in the meantime, the external page Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has decided that the research staff it finances will receive a cost-of-living adjustment to prevent a deterioration in working conditions. This will come into effect on 1 March 2023.

Adjustment requested for all doctoral students

For doctoral students at ETH Zurich, this means that their salary rates are to be increased by 2.5 percent on the same date. The Executive Board will consider a request to this effect from the HR Consulting department at one of its next meetings. On that occasion, the Executive Board will decide whether to adjust the salary rates for all ETH doctoral students, since de facto only 25 percent of the doctoral students at ETH are paid directly by the SNSF.

The salary model for doctoral students at ETH defines five rates. The minimum rate corresponds to the Swiss National Science Foundation’s rate. The use of salary rates varies across departments because the economic environment differs across research disciplines.

At the same time, a working group convened by Julia Dannath, with representation from both the scientific staff and the departments, has begun its work. This working group is to determine long-term solutions as to how ETH will set up its salary model in the future and whether, for example, doctoral students’ salaries should continue to be linked to the SNSF or not.