Stark doctoral candidate remuneration gaps across Europe
The European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc) recently presented a comprehensive overview of remuneration levels that doctoral candidates can expect in 27 European countries.
The data reveals there are huge gaps across Europe and shows that Nordic countries are on top, led by Denmark with Norway fourth, while Germany, Belgium and Switzerland respectively make up the rest of the top five.
Sweden ranks ninth, significantly lower than the Danes, and Finland 14th, with less than half the level of the Danes. Countries in the bottom 14 remunerate via scholarships, with the exception of Estonia, while those in the top 12 all remunerate via salaries.
“With the data, Eurodoc aims to support a dialogue on the importance of appropriate financial and systemic support for early-career research careers,” said Norbert Bencze, president of Eurodoc and one of the five authors behind the report.
“The data are of interest to both policymakers and individuals, not least prospective doctoral researchers,” he noted. He added that the data should serve as a reference for Eurodoc’s 31 member organisations working in 26 European countries, “particularly for those where minimum guaranteed salaries or scholarships fall far short of the average”.
Denmark pays PhD students the most, starting them on €58,013 a year, followed by Germany (€55,557), Belgium (€50,800), Norway (€49,728 to €51,118) and Switzerland (€49,675). The next five ranked countries are Austria, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Sweden and Slovenia.
At the lower end are Ukraine (€2,263, a 2026 figure), Hungary (€4,615), Bulgaria (€8,283), Romania (€8,449) and Poland (€9,623). The next ranked nations are Latvia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Portugal, Lithuania and Italy. The UK and France are not included in the survey.
Denmark’s starting rate is around 12.5 times that of Hungary and more than 25 times that of Ukraine. The middle of the table sits at roughly €22,000 to €24,000, where Ireland and Spain land.
Significantly, these are gross figures before tax and deductions; they are starting rates, and they are not adjusted for the cost of living.
Germany and Switzerland are shown at full-time equivalence, but candidates in both countries are often on part-time contracts, and in Austria 75% of contracts are common, so what people actually take home can be well below the headline.
Talent ‘brain drain’
On Eurodoc’s Facebook page “Overworked and underpaid”, several academics responded with their experiences.
Katalin Solymosi, an assistant professor at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary, said: “I think it is quite easy to see that when a doctoral candidate gets such a low stipend as in Hungary, it is very hard to attract and retain the best talent, and let them concentrate on realising their scientific dreams while they are struggling for everyday survival, and many of them have to find a job to be able to rent a flat and eat.
“And then, on the other side of Europe, you see doctoral candidates who are better paid than professors and PhD supervisors in Hungary.
“Unidirectional brain drain will never stop within Europe and will never become brain circulation until such huge disparities persist. And that will also not help with closing the innovation and other gaps between widening countries and the rest of Europe, whatever you do.”
Co-author Pil Maria Saugmann, an academic governance researcher and former Eurodoc president, said that these figures contribute to a “brain drain”, drawing talent from across Europe towards Scandinavia and the Benelux countries.
On his blog page, Marian Sauter, a postdoctoral researcher in experimental psychology at Ulm University in Germany, wrote an article titled “Is a PhD a job? It depends where you do it”, where he transferred the average salaries in Euros into purchasing power standards (PPS).
“Prices close the gap only a little. Denmark’s lead over Hungary shrinks from 12.6 times to 7.6 times. Expensive countries slide down: Switzerland goes from about €49,700 to about 28,500 PPS, and Denmark and Norway each lose more than a quarter of their value.
“Cheaper countries climb, and Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic all end up around 13,500 PPS. But Hungary stays alone at the bottom with about 5,500 PPS, less than half of the next country,” he said, although he doesn’t include Ukraine in his list.
Purchasing power
He says there is a clear geographical pattern. “Purchasing power is highest in a block that runs from the Alps through Germany and the Benelux countries up to Scandinavia. It is lowest in the east, in Italy and Portugal, and in Ireland, where a modest stipend meets some of the highest prices in Europe.
“In Germany, prices are only slightly above the EU average, so a full-time German PhD salary buys more than anything else in the table,” Sauter told University World News.
“The pull towards Scandinavia existed before. What the Eurodoc survey adds is an easy comparison. After adjusting for the cost of living, an average Danish starting salary buys about 7.6 times what a doctoral candidate in Hungary gets. For masters graduates in Hungary, Poland or Italy, that is hard to ignore, so I would expect more applications per Scandinavian position, mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe.”
The Eurodoc ranking also flatters Scandinavia a little. Denmark and Norway lose more than a quarter of their value once prices are taken into account, Sauter noted.
“Their clearer advantage over countries like Germany or Austria is the full-time employment contract, since PhD positions there are often part-time. Whether competition really rises, we will see, because payment for sure is not the only factor,” he said.
Lene Tanggaard, the vice-chair at the Danish Council for Research and Innovation Policy and a professor at Aarhus University, told University World News she welcomed the Eurodoc report for providing comparable data that helps understand how PhD students are supported across Europe.
“International comparisons are not straightforward, but it is indisputable that Denmark offers competitive conditions,” she said.
She said those conditions should not be taken as an argument that PhD students in Denmark are paid too much. Rather, they make it all the more important to examine PhD education carefully.
“As the Danish Council for Research and Innovation Policy concluded in its recent report, the structure and quality of Danish doctoral education need to be adjusted,” Tanggaard noted.
PhDs are employees, not students
Brian Arly Jacobsen, an associate professor in the department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at Copenhagen University and chair of DM University, a union for academic professionals, told University World News: “The Danish position reflects a fundamental principle that we have defended for many years in the academic trade unions: doctoral candidates are not students in the traditional sense.
“They have already completed a university degree at masters level and are qualified academics who undertake research while pursuing their PhD.
“In Denmark, we therefore regard PhD candidates as employees who should enjoy the same salary standards, employment rights and working conditions as other university graduates employed in the public sector.”
He said this is also essential for attracting and retaining the most talented graduates in academic research. If universities are to compete for highly qualified candidates, research careers must offer decent salaries, secure employment conditions and proper social protection.
“The relatively high remuneration (compared with other countries) of Danish PhD candidates is not accidental. It is the result of decades of collective bargaining and sustained efforts by Danish academic trade unions to ensure that doctoral candidates are treated as professional researchers and employees rather than as students receiving scholarships.”
Topias Tolonen-Weckström, former chairperson of the Doctorate Committee (SFS) and a PhD student in mathematics at Uppsala University, told University World News he believes that on average doctoral students in Sweden are better off than the report’s comparative data suggests.
“In the case of Sweden, the report is based on salary numbers from KTH and Stockholm University. This leaves out the fact that Stockholm is a very expensive city to live in, whereas, for example, in Luleå the starting salaries, on average, are higher yet the cost of living is low compared to Stockholm,” he said.
“In addition, the binary division between salaried and scholarship-based can be misleading as Sweden, marked as a salary-based country, also has doctoral students that are financed with scholarships, and for example in Finland, despite being marked as a salary-based country, a majority of doctoral students are scholarship-based.”
Hanne Salonen, Labour Market Director at the Finnish Education Employers Sivista, told University World News the Eurodoc survey appears to show only the minimum gross salary level set out in the Finnish Universities Collective Agreement. In practice, however, “no doctoral researchers are paid this minimum salary”.
According to the 2025 salary statistics, the average salary of doctoral researchers in Finland is approximately SEK32,500 per month. Furthermore, salaries increase as doctoral studies progress and the dissertation work advances.
According to the 2025 statistics:
• Salaries are approximately SEK 30,000 (€2,800 per month) at the beginning of doctoral studies.
• They rise to around SEK 34,000 (€3,100 per month) as the doctoral dissertation progresses.
• In the final stages of the dissertation, salaries reach approximately SEK 38,000 (€3,500 per month).
In addition, she said the Eurodoc figures do not account for differences in social security contribution systems. For example, in Denmark employees contribute to pension schemes in a way that results in a higher overall tax burden.
“When differences in living costs and taxation are taken into account, the salary gap between the Nordic countries appears considerably smaller,” Salonen said.
Chief Human Resources Officer at Helsinki University TIIa Tuomi told University World News: “the University of Helsinki follows the minuted note of the collective agreement, which recommends that doctoral researchers should primarily be placed at position demand level 2 at the beginning of their first employment relationship.
“This currently corresponds to a minimum starting salary of €2,470 per month, or approximately €30,800 per year including the holiday bonus (which is paid to every employee after one full year on employment, appr. 50% of the monthly salary). The average starting salary is approximately €35,000 per year (Sivista’s statistics). Doctoral researcher positions are typically full-time.”
The comparative data is uncomfortable reading for some countries, such as Italy.
Picking up the Italian low placement, Debuglies News published an article highlighting “Italy’s doctoral compensation crisis”, stating that the data exposes a substantial disparity between Italy and several countries competing for advanced scientific talent.
“Against Italy’s annual gross doctoral remuneration of €16,243, Denmark reports €58,014, Germany €55,557, Belgium €50,800, Switzerland €49,675, the Netherlands €36,708, France €26,400 and Spain €24,360. Germany’s reported amount is 3.42 times the Italian benchmark. Even Spain offers approximately 50% more,” Debuglies News stated.
Professor of economics at the University of Bergamo, Michele Meoli, told University World News: “The Eurodoc data provide a valuable reminder that doctoral education is part of an international market for talent. From an Italian perspective, this is a crucial point: policymakers cannot assess the adequacy of doctoral funding solely by comparing it with local income levels.
“Talented graduates can choose where to pursue their doctorate, and they compare opportunities across countries.”
He said competition between research systems is healthy. International mobility allows researchers to develop new skills, build networks and exchange ideas, and Europe benefits when its universities compete to offer attractive research environments.
Persistent disparities
“But competition must not lead us to overlook the long-term consequences of persistent disparities. If countries with lower income levels are unable to attract and retain talented early-career researchers, they risk losing research capacity and falling further behind.”
He said remuneration matters, particularly at the beginning of a career, but it is only one part of the picture. “The quality of the research environment, access to resources, openness to international candidates and credible career prospects also shape researchers’ decisions. Our research comparing European academic systems suggests that these conditions need to be considered together.”
He said the question for policymakers, both nationally and at the European level, is therefore how to sustain a competitive and open research area while ensuring that research potential can flourish across the whole of Europe.
“Otherwise, mobility risks becoming a predominantly one-way flow of talent, rather than a genuine circulation of people and ideas”, Michele Meoli said.
The Coimbra Group Doctoral Studies Working Group’s Adriana Zait (chair) and Elise Pinta (vice-chair) told University World News that doctoral researchers should be treated as researchers, receiving not only fair remuneration for their work but also stable funding, strong institutional support and opportunities for diverse forms of international cooperation.
“While the level of remuneration is clearly an important factor, the attractiveness of a research career depends on a broader set of working conditions.
“Equally important are the security and continuity of funding, including whether support for the entire doctoral project is guaranteed from the very beginning, the length of the contract, and the overall quality of the employment package.”
They said it was important to note that significant differences in remuneration do not encourage international mobilities in all directions – especially for researchers moving from countries with a lower cost of living and lower salary towards countries with a higher cost of living.
“We might need to consider, as well, the extent to which related expenses, such as health insurance or other benefits, are covered.
“We believe that the HR Excellence in Research Award (Human Resources Excellence in Research Award) plays an important role in the continuous improvement of researchers’ working conditions on a broader, more structural, scale.”
Also, research is rarely conducted in isolation, and, when researchers are driven by the pursuit of high-quality science, they will find other ways to cooperate with international partners, even if they cannot afford to relocate to a specific country, they said.
“And above all, we wish to highlight the importance of diverse forms of cooperation across Europe, complementing rather than competing with one another.”