Above is the message of a letter written to the Minister and Assistant Secretaries of Education and to members of the Lower House by the PhD Network of the Netherlands (PNN), an organization that promotes the interests of PhD students in the Netherlands. `Doing PhD work is an important step towards a scientific career, but one that is becoming less and less attractive for talented students. This is mainly caused by the poor career prospects of researchers holding a doctorate degree. At the moment, even excellent researchers with innovative ideas have difficulty pursuing a scientific career and developing their ideas,' or so the PhD Network claims. The network thinks talent is being wasted by chasing researchers with a doctorate degree off to corporations or to foreign countries, where job prospects are much better. `However, we desperately need these researchers at Dutch universities, because the Netherlands are running several years behind on innovation and research, compared to other European countries.'
Trans. Jeroen Latour
