Dear All,
Just to add further to the note of gloom over pension arrangements, those of us lucky enough to get a job after taking a
doctorate have found that we have to pay into our occupational pension schemes for forty years in order to recieve a
full pension entitlement when we retire. Clearly, if you get a job in your late twenties after doing a PhD you are not
going to be able to make forty years worth of contributions, and so you have to pay extra contributions if you want to
make up the missing years. Not only do you lose out on the state pension then (small though it may be in any case), but
you also lose out on your occupational pension because you have spent so long in training.
I think I heard somewhere that there is a campaign/lobby to get the PhD made pensionable, this seems to me to be an
excellent idea, since you could accrue a fund which you could then take with you into your pension fund when you got
a job. It may not seem like the most important thing when you're actually studying (some people might prefer more of a
grant for example, although not everyone gets grants anyway), but in retrospect it would be very useful, since you have
nearly forty years on which to accrue interest on this money, to keep you in your dotage. Maybe it's less of an
incentive but more of an insurance/safety-net.
Is this an area where the NPC is campaigning?
Best wishes, Chris.
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Dr Christopher Humphrey
British Academy Research Fellow
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York,
King's Manor, Exhibition Square, York, YO1 7EP.
Tel: (01904) 433956 (work) (01937) 557620 (home)
Fax: (01904) 433918 E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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