Financing and Insurances
Funding during your PhD phase
Different funding options exist for financing your PhD:
- as an employee at the university
- as an employee at a non-university research organization
- being enrolled in a structured PhD program (scholarship/employment)
- grants and scholarships
- a doctoral post within a company
- take on part-time/full-time work (self-financing)
Details about the different funding options for doctorate students can be found here.
In addition to ensuring a financial subsistence, there are certain additional subsidies, such as travel awards for conferences or grants for research stays abroad as well as grants for the completion and wrap-up phase of the doctoral phase. You will find an overview about funding opportunities offered by TU Dresden here.
For questions regarding the funding of your Ph.D (GA funding programs, TUD and State funding programs, external funding opportunities), please arrange an individual appointment at the Graduate Academy.
Health, Accident and Third-Party Liability Insurances
Depending on how you finance yourself during your doctorate, there will be a variety of legal consequences in terms of insurance. For example, scholarship holders are not subject to compulsory insurance in accordance with the provisions of the German social security system, as they are not classified as employees. As a rule, this means they have to take care of their insurance 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.
In principle, matriculated doctoral candidates and those with an employment contract have full statutory accident insurance. Events covered by statutory accident insurance are work and commuting accidents (including official travel) as well as occupational illnesses (basis: insurance cover in accordance with Article 2, Para.1, No.1, No. 2 and No. 8 c of the Social Security Statute Book (SGB) VII).
By contrast, scholarship holders are not insured in the statutory accident insurance, as they are not employees. Unregistered doctoral candidates only enjoy insurance cover according to the statutes of the accident insurance of Saxony (Unfallkasse Sachsen, UKS), pursuant to Section VII, Article 36, No.1. Insurance cover extends solely to the work premises, i.e. – by virtue of the statutes of the UKS – there is no accident insurance cover in the event of an accident of a scholarship holder on the way to or from the institution or within the scope of “official travel”.
For doctoral candidates who have the status of members of staff, the University will cover damage caused to others or to the property of others during working hours, as long as 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 provision of insurance cover, it is important to ensure that the risk of damage to property belonging to TU Dresden is explicitly covered by the insurance.