Salary development for doctoral candidates

Unlike other employees, doctoral candidates in the state sector are not part of the individual pay setting process. Salaries for employed doctoral candidates vary between different higher education institutions and between different subject areas. To counteract excessively low doctoral student salaries, SULF, as part of Saco-S, has signed local collective agreements at a number of higher education institutions. These agreements usually stipulate a minimum starting salary and set out the salary development applicable over the duration of doctoral candidate employment. Salary development is generally linked to either number of years of employment or academic performance. The ‘doctoral pay scales’ that are often mentioned in this context refer to these agreements.

SULF recommends salary development based on duration of employment rather than academic performance. This is partly because it avoids situations that are difficult to assess – which may also vary even within a single higher education institution – and partly because performance-based salary development can disadvantage certain groups, such as women, (due to higher take-up of parental leave), and doctoral candidates with extensive teaching responsibilities. Furthermore, salary adjustments are generally made in conjunction with regular salary reviews.

In most cases, the agreements also allow for the option of setting a higher salary level than the specified minimum, provided that clear reasons can be cited and accepted by the employer. Such reasons may include relevant professional experience, previous achievements of the kind recognised for lecturers and researchers, a specific educational background, (e.g. a medical degree or a licence to practice medicine), or the current market situation, such as difficulties in recruiting doctoral candidates.

SULF has compiled a list of local collective agreements here (in Swedish). You can use this to search for the doctoral pay scale and the higher education institution you are interested in. You can also access SULF’s salary statistics for doctoral candidates if you logging in to our website.