Letter Ius Promovendi

8/16/2019 Letter Ius Promovendi

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To Prof. Karen MaexRector MagnificusUniversity of Amsterdam

Amsterdam, 1 June 2016Esteemed Professor Maex, dear Karen,

We, the undersigned academic members of staff of the Institute for Logic, Language andComputation (ILLC), are addressing this open letter to you on the day of your appointmentas Rector Magnificus at the UvA regarding a matter that is very close to our hearts and of the utmost importance for every working academic. We ask that the regulations governingwho may act as promotor of a doctoral thesis at the UvA be modernised, so as to bringthem in line with international standards.

Under the current regulations, only a Full Professor (HL) can take on the role of promotor and thus assume ultimate responsibility for the supervision of a doctoral thesis. This isnot an accurate reflection of everyday practice at the university. Certainly at our institute,very often it is an Assistant Professor (UD) or an Associate Professor (UHD) who is theleading expert in the field a given doctoral thesis is contributing to, and this person thusmust—and does—take responsibility for that thesis. However, under current regulationsthey cannot be accurately credited for their contribution. Not giving credit where credit isdue is fundamentally unfair and creates a number of problems. For instance, it damages theinternational standing of the researcher in question, who has to compete in an internationalenvironment where most of their peers are not held back in this manner.

Besides being unfair, the current system raises serious concerns regarding quality control.While one might argue that restricting the pool of potential promotores to a fairly small andselective group, namely the Full Professors, constitutes some form of quality control, thisargument does not stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, there is little or no quality control involvedwhen selecting a promotor from this pool for a specific PhD project. The Doctorate Board(College voor Promoties ), which appoints the promotor , currently does not have the meansto verify actual expertise. Thus, the implicit assumption is that everyone belonging to thepool of potential promotores —currently all the Full Professors—automatically has thecapacity to supervise any given PhD project. This assumption clearly is false. Sometimes,in fact quite often, there will be no Full Professor qualified to be promotor . Indeed, many

PhD projects are financed with money that has been brought in by either an Assistant or anAssociate Professor, often in domains where there simply is no Full Professor available whocould credibly take responsibility for the content of the thesis. A system that neverthelessforces a Full Professor to take responsibility in such a case places unnecessary pressures onthat Full Professor and raises questions regarding quality control.

Indeed, the regulations currently in place at the UvA do not live up to internationalstandards. Top universities outside of the Netherlands, such as Harvard and Oxford, donot have anything resembling these regulations in place. Instead, every suitably qualifiedAssistant or Associate Professor can take full responsibility for a PhD project. In thoseplaces, the kind of hierarchical system reinforced by the UvA regulations would be seen

as hopelessly outdated and as actively obstructing high-quality research. The operationsof the all-important funding agencies also are out of sync with UvA regulations. Every


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Assistant or Associate Professor at a Dutch university can apply for funding to the Eu-ropean Commission, including the ERC, to create a PhD position. Whether or not thereis a Full Professor available who is qualified to act as promotor is irrelevant for thosefunding decisions. Even the NWO—at least for its most prestigious funding programme,the Vernieuwingsimpuls —does not require the applicant to specify the name of a formal

promotor before awarding hundreds of thousands of euros for PhD positions to Assistantand Associate Professors obtaining Vidi and Vici grants.

Maybe thirty years ago it was still possible to argue that a single Full Professor was themain expert in a given research area and thus capable of overseeing the supervisory work of “their” Assistant and Associate Professors working as copromotores . But given the greatdiversification of science and scholarship in recent decades, this has ceased to be the casea long time ago. Also, back then, it was much less common than it is now for Assistantand Associate Professors to have to shoulder the responsibility of bringing in the fundingrequired to create PhD positions in the first place. Finally, back then, competition withother, more modern systems of research infrastructure abroad was less of an issue than it isnow. Thus, the traditional system of granting the ius promovendi only to Full Professorsmay well have had some justification in the past and it may have been less unfair andbetter able to ensure quality then than it is now.

Today, however, changes are urgently needed and long overdue. We therefore very muchwelcome the recent governmental proposal for a change in the relevant law ( Wet op het Hoger Onderwijs en Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek ). According to this proposal, in thefuture it will be up to each individual university in the Netherlands to decide who shouldhave the right to take on the role of promotor . The text supporting the proposed changementions similar arguments as we have given here, and it particularly emphasises the issue

of international competitiveness. It clearly suggests that universities should make activeuse of this new opportunity. It is our understanding that it is likely that the proposedchange of the law will come into force sometime in late 2016. The UvA must welcomethis opportunity to modernise and it must implement significant changes to the currentregulations. In the remainder of this letter, we sketch a proposal for how this may be done.

According to the current doctorate regulations (promotiereglement ), the tasks of a promo-tor can be divided into three major groups. First, the promotor supervises or oversees thesupervision of the PhD candidate. Second, the promotor is responsible for the approvalof the manuscript. And third, the promotor is in charge of organisational and ceremonialmatters surrounding the thesis defense. In doing so, the promotor should guarantee thequality of both content and process. But there is no rational reason for linking any of thesetasks to a specific job title. Rather, in a fair system that is driven only by quality concerns,everyone who is qualified to take on this kind of responsibility should have the right to doso, independently of their job title. So what are the relevant qualifications? A doctoraldegree clearly is a minimum requirement for any promotor . Beyond this, comparison withinternational practice suggests that Assistant and Associate Professors must be part of thepool of potential promotores . In those cases where someone in this group does not have apermanent position, they must hold a contract until at least the foreseen end of the PhDproject in question.

At the same time as we are enlarging the pool of potential promotores , we must sharpenthe procedure for appointing a specific individual from this pool to a specific PhD project.


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We suggest the following measures, which are in line with international standards. First,every PhD project should have two promotores , at least one of which must have previ-ously supervised a PhD project to completion. One of the two may be designated primarypromotor , and the other secondary promotor . Importantly, there is no need for the moreexperienced promotor to always be the primary promotor . For instance, if a new Assistant

Professor brings in a large grant, they should be primary promotor for the PhD candidatesworking on that grant, but there needs to be appropriate support from a more senior col-league. Second, the two promotores —collectively—need to have the expertise required tosupervise the PhD project. Expertise can be verified by the Doctorate Board in consulta-tion with the departmental chair (afdelingsvoorzitter ) or, better, a committee installed atthe level of a department or a research institute. In summary, besides satisfying the basiccriteria associated with belonging to the pool of potential promotores , actual promotores must meet strict requirements regarding experience and expertise, and they must shareresponsibility with a colleague.

Of course, the process of selecting promotores does not occur in a vacuum. Departmentsand research institutes should provide adequate mentoring for less experienced promotores ,but such mentoring can take place outside of the supervisory arrangements for a specificPhD project, and there is no reason why the mentor of the junior PhD supervisor shouldbe referred to as the “promotor ” of the PhD candidate.

As an aside, we note that the role of copromotor need not change in principle, althoughin practice it will become less common. A team of promotores may still choose to appointa copromotor on a given PhD project to assist them with specific supervision tasks. Justas under the current regulations, the only requirements for a copromotor are that theyhold a PhD and that the promotores in charge consider them capable of performing the

supervision tasks assigned to them.

We urge you to push for a change of culture as well as regulations at the UvA along theselines, and we would like to see new regulations that meet the requirements sketched aboveto come into force in the course of 2017. Wherever possible, we are willing to help inbringing about this change. Finally, we must stress most emphatically that a half-heartedchange that merely extends the ius promovendi to also include Associate Professors wouldbe insufficient, as it would not address the shortcomings of the current system, nor wouldit bring the advantages of the alternative we propose.

We are looking forward to hearing your own views on the matter in the near future.

With our warmest regards,

Signatories (in alphabetical order)

Dr. Maria Aloni, UD @ ILLC/FGWProf. dr. Krzysztof R. Apt, HL Emeritus @ ILLC/FNWI & Fellow @ CWIProf. dr. Jos Baeten, HL @ ILLC/FNWI & CWIDr. Alexandru Baltag, UHD @ ILLC/FNWIDr. Benno van den Berg, UD @ ILLC/FNWIDr. Hein van den Berg, UD @ ILLC/FGW

Prof. dr. Franz Berto, HL @ ILLC/FGWProf. dr. Arianna Betti, HL @ILLC/FGW


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Dr. Nick Bezhanishvili, UD @ ILLC/FNWIProf. dr. Rens Bod, HL @ ILLC/FGW/FNWIProf. dr. Harry Buhrman, HL @ QuSoft & ILLC/FNWI & CWIDr. Paul Dekker, UD @ ILLC/FGWDr. Tejaswini Deoskar, UD @ ILLC/FNWI

Prof. dr. Jan van Eijck, HL @ ILLC/FNWI & CWIDr. Ulle Endriss, UHD @ ILLC/FNWIDr. Raquel Fernández, UHD @ ILLC/FNWIProf. dr. Jeroen Groenendijk, HL Emeritus @ ILLC/FGWDr. Luca Incurvati, UD @ ILLC/FGWProf. dr. Dick de Jongh, HL Emeritus @ ILLC/FNWIDr. ir. Jaap Kamps, UHD @ ILLC/FGWProf. dr. Michiel van Lambalgen, HL & ILLC/FGWDr. Floris Roelofsen, UHD @ ILLC/FNWIProf. dr. ing. Robert van Rooij, HL @ ILLC/FNWI

Dr. Federica Russo, UD @ ILLC / FGWDr. Makiko Sadakata, UD @ ILLC/FGWDr. Christian Schaffner, UD @ ILLC/FNWIDr. Katrin Schulz, UD @ ILLC/FGWProf. dr. Khalil Sima’an, HL @ ILLC/FNWIProf. dr. Sonja Smets, HL @ ILLC/FGW/FNWIProf. dr. Martin Stokhof, HL Emeritus @ ILLC/FGWDr. Jakub Szymanik, UHD @ ILLC/FGWDr. Ivan Titov, UHD @ ILLC/FNWIDr. Leen Torenvliet, UHD @ ILLC/FNWIProf. dr. Frank Veltman, HL Emeritus @ ILLC/FNWIProf. dr. Yde Venema, HL @ ILLC/FNWIDr. Daniel Wiechmann, UD @ ILLC/FGWProf. dr. Ronald de Wolf, HL @ ILLC/FNWI & CWIDr. Henk Zeevat, UHD @ ILLC/FGW & Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Dr. Willem Zuidema, UD @ ILLC/FNWI

A copy of this letter is available online at http://tinyurl.com/uva-ius-promovendi. Itis an open letter, which we would like to see disseminated broadly, and which we hopewill be useful to others who may also wish to take a position on how the UvA and otherDutch universities should take advantage of the expected changes in the legal frameworkin which they are operating. Those who are not familiar with the relevant documents canfind the current doctorate regulations (promotiereglement ) of the UvA and the text of theproposed change of law at the following addresses:

• http://www.uva.nl/onderzoek/promoveren/promotietraject/

• http://tinyurl.com/wetsvoorstel-whw-2015
http://tinyurl.com/uva-ius-promovendihttp://tinyurl.com/uva-ius-promovendihttp://www.uva.nl/onderzoek/promoveren/promotietraject/http://tinyurl.com/wetsvoorstel-whw-2015http://tinyurl.com/wetsvoorstel-whw-2015http://www.uva.nl/onderzoek/promoveren/promotietraject/http://tinyurl.com/uva-ius-promovendi

Documents

Letter Ius Promovendi