Financing and Insurances
Financing your doctorate
Find out about the most common funding models for a doctorate; find out more about the external funding opportunities offered by the Begabtenförderungswerke; get to know the external offers for printing and travel costs, or click through the overview of databases and search engines to find the right funding for you.
Detailed information on the various funding options during your doctorate is available on the Graduate Academy website.
Health, accident and liability insurance
Depending on how you finance yourself during your doctorate, there are different insurance consequences. For example, scholarship holders are subject to compulsory insurance under German social security regulations because they are not considered employees. This means that they generally have to insure themselves.
Everyone who has statutory health insurance in an EU Member State, an EEA State (with the addition of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) or Switzerland is entitled to a European Health Insurance Card. This serves as proof of entitlement to necessary medical care during a temporary stay in EU and EEA countries as well as in Switzerland, i.e. in a country other than the country of residence.
Scholarship holders can apply for membership in the statutory health insurance. The health insurance providers (Krankenkassen) will then check on a case by case basis whether conditions for membership are met. The following options and conditions are available:
- Student health insurance
- Voluntary membership in the statutory health insurance
- Mandatory membership in the statutory health insurance
- Family insurance within the statutory health insurance system
Additional information is available from the statutory health insurance providers (Krankenkassen).
If scholarship holders cannot become members of statutory health insurance providers, they will have to insure themselves privately. Private health insurance companies have many different tariffs on offer and can provide detailed individual information on the topic.
- Enrolled doctoral candidates and doctoral candidates employed by an institution are generally covered by full statutory accident insurance. Covered events under statutory accident insurance include work-related accidents, commuting accidents (including business trips), and occupational diseases (basis: insurance coverage pursuant to Section 2(1)(1), (2), and (8c) of Book VII of the Social Code (SGB)).
- Scholarship recipients are not covered by statutory accident insurance, as they are not employees.
- For doctoral candidates who are not enrolled at the university, insurance coverage is limited to that provided under the bylaws of the Saxony Accident Insurance Fund (UKS) in accordance with Section VII, §36, No. 1. Insurance coverage applies solely to the premises of the institution; that is, in the event of an accident involving a scholarship recipient while traveling to or from the institution—including during “business trips” - accident insurance coverage is excluded under the UKS bylaws.
- For doctoral candidates who have the status of members of staff, the University will cover damage to others or their property during working hours, provided gross negligence cannot be proved.
- For doctoral candidates who are not employees of TU Dresden, TU Dresden does not provide any employer’s liability insurance, not even if TU Dresden itself is the scholarship provider. Therefore, it is recommended that scholarship holders take out personal private third-party liability insurance. With regard to the specific insurance coverage, it is important to ensure that the risk of damage to TU Dresden's property is explicitly covered.