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Only eight per cent of students at Czech universities complete their doctoral studies in due course. The scholarship they have to live on is only CZK 11,000. And their supervisors often do not even have time to meet them, let alone take them to the dissertation defence. 

The list of ills afflicting Czech doctoral studies has many more points, but this March the government approved an amendment to the law that should correct most of them. The amendment to the Higher Education Act, which has been pending for years in the Czech Republic, and if the aforementioned amendment passes the approval process, the changes it contains could affect those who start their studies in the 2025/2026 academic year, aims primarily to increase the success rate of completing doctoral studies. This is ideally so that learners obtain their doctoral degree within the standard five years of study. 

The main change should be the introduction of a guaranteed income for doctoral students of at least 1.2 times the minimum wage from September 2025. This is approximately CZK 23 000 per month, instead of the current CZK 11 250 that the state sends for scholarships today, while the minimum wage is CZK 18 900. In addition, this income will be made up of wages or salary and the scholarship. 

Doctoral students will finally be able to apply for a mortgage and become eligible for a pension or maternity allowance. At the same time, the forthcoming proposal abolishes final examinations. And it should also improve the quality of the studies themselves: supervisors and supervisees will, for example, have a prescribed standard of how to guide students properly. However, education experts do not like the fact that the money should also be distributed according to graduation rates. This is because challenging programmes have a lower rate and would be disadvantaged. 

Read more on the Universitas magazine website.