Dear All,

There has been some confusion about Academy funded graduate school positions for 2013. Here a reiteration of basic facts:

1) Former academy-funded graduate schools have *no* funds for 2013. That means zero, nought. Therefore graduate schools will pay no graduate school positions in 2013. That means zero percentage, zero cents. If you think that you have such a GS positions, that may be worth nothing (but please read further).

2) University of Oulu should fund these graduate school vacancies in 2013, and it will do so with certain conditions (please read further). If UO funds the GS position, it will fund it for 100%. No money is coming from any other university nor from a former GS. However, if UO will not fund the positions, this means that no money is coming from an other place. If you are covered and get funded, you probably know that already. If you do not know, you should try to find out.

3) In general, UO accepts GS positions when you had employment contract for the GS in 2012, and that contract continues till 2013. In that case you should be covered for the whole period of the original employment contract. However, if your employment contract was due to start in 2013 or ends in 2012, you are probably not covered, and will get no money. There may be errors in the data base so that you should check the coverage of your contract if you do not know that yet.

4) Several Graduate Schools have appointed new positions for 2013 this autumn. In general, these appointments are void because Graduate Schools have no money to pay the salary, and UO does not recognize these appointments.

5) There are many cases where people are in danger of dropping out from GS funding although they assumed they have a position for 2013. Faculty of Science has opened applications for PhD grants for 2013 (see http://www.oulu.fi/lutk/apurahat). These grants are mainly directed to those people who have a _bona fide_ GS position for 2013, but have no university funding. You should absolutely apply these grants if you are dropping out from the university funding. This is also the only way we can learn in the Faculty how widespread and grave this problem is. The deadline of applications is November 23, 2012. Please apply immediately. Please note that this grant will cover all 100% of the position: no percentage is coming from any other source. Moreover, this will be a grant instead of salary.

Best wishes,

Jari Oksanen Research Dean, Faculty of Natural Sciences