"The main problem we face is that we have been on the wrong track from the beginning," says Alberto Fernandez-Soto, a third-year Ramón y Cajal researcher at the University of Valencia. Traditionally, Fernandez-Soto explains, Ph.D. students in Spanish
universities have been given nonpermanent academic
positions that don’t require any specific qualification but allow teaching, like profesor asociado or professor ayudante. Based on this teaching experience, universities will
create civil service positions for them when they finish their Ph.D.s.
Those universities continue to create positions for them as they gain the necessary credentials and accreditations for higher jobs. But universities have been reluctant to create positions for RyC
researchers, who mainly have a research role and not a teaching role like the home-grown candidates, argues Fernandez-Soto. This is because local-government funding for Spanish universities depends on the number of students the institution has, so they "only create positions based on 'student pressure,' never on research success. We are in clear disadvantage because we cannot even compete--there are no positions created
, period."
Compounding the problem is enduring "cronyism" in Spanish universities, says Fernandez-Soto. As outsiders, RyC fellows have a harder time fitting within the Spanish academic system, unless their university decides to make a welcoming gesture. A recent study from the CSIC supports this assertion, estimating that between 1997 and 2001 more than 96% of the newly appointed professors were already working in their host institution when they were hired. In 70% of the cases, there were no other applicants for the job.
RyC researchers who went to work in public research centres like the CSIC have been luckier in securing a position; the majority of the 2001 cohort taken on by the CSIC has already been integrated. "There are no 'non-permanent' positions, and the level of compet for the permanent ones is just too high, no matter how hard a panel could try to fit a friend," writes Fernandez-Soto. "So usually the entry point for a permanent position now is to have a RyC contract there."
In response to the outrage of the RyC researchers following Quintanilla’s comments, the Ministry of Education and Science has repeated the view that "The Ramón y Cajal programme is a contract for 5 years to enable a postdoctoral scientist with regular performance evaluations to incorporate an R&D centre research organisations> in our country." And even though the Ministry acknowledged the initial aim of the programme--reiterating "its support to the Ramón y Cajal programme … not only as a means for Spanish scientists to come back from abroad, but also to attract good scientists, regardless of their nationality"-- it believes it has done its part. "To create the conditions for these scientists to find a definitive place in our science and technology system the Ministry launched last year the I3 programme." The Ministry leaves it up to the research institutions whether to accept the financial incentive--and integrate their Ramón y Cajal researchers--or not. Although the Ministry insists that the I3 programme provides funds for all the RyC fellows finishing in the next 3 years to be contracted, "the Government can not oblige universities and public research organisations to contract anyone."
How successful the integration of the RyC researchers will be remains to be seen. But there is more at stake than the future of a few hundred young researchers. The Spanish university system needs to prove that it can shake off insularism and be an attractive place for young, mobile researchers. Some Ramón y Cajal researchers remain hopeful that things will work out. "In the end the majority will get a job," says ANIRC vice-president Mark van Raaij. "But it will be organised in the Spanish way, at the last minute."
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