Scholarship

Scholarships are the most common form of financing without employment.

In most cases scholarships are only to be used for one year. After one year you can ask the university for employment and the university should hire you for the remaining three years of full time study. There are exceptions to this, where scholarships may be used for more than a year, in foreign aid programmes and capacity building programmes (HEO, CH5, section 4a). If you have started your studies with financing through a scholarship, you should contact the administration or HR office of your university about employment. If any problems arise, you can ask your student union, the ombudsperson for doctoral students, or the trade union for help. 

It is the university’s responsibility to check that there will be adequate financing for you for the entire duration of the studies, that you will be able to devote enough time to your studies, and that you will have the necessary resources. Adequate financing means that the amount of scholarship you receive monthly should be comparable to the net salary of doctoral students employed by the university. 

As a doctoral student on a scholarship, some of the protections of labor law in Sweden, such as those referring to holidays for example, will not apply to you. There should exist an agreement between you and the source of financing, containing some regulations of your conditions. In some cases, there exists an  agreement between the university and the scholarship provider.

As a doctoral student on scholarship, you have workplace insurance, as well as insurance for sick leave and parental leave through Kammarkollegiet.