Fixed-term employment contract financing?

To answer honestly and simply: Because of the principle with the donkey and the carrot on a stick.

PS: The keyword for Wikipedia and further research is Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz.

Hello, I thank you for the many answers. I have clarified the matter with our financial broker. Since we have very good equity through our apartment and can sell half of the land later, we will only finance the land for now.. of course if everything goes well. Until my husband gets a permanent contract, we have to wait with the new construction. There is a small old house on the land which was actually supposed to be demolished but is still habitable because the owner himself still lives in it ... we will rent out the house until my husband gets a permanent contract.

And how do you finance the land?

It is certainly worth considering, but I don’t fully understand it either.

If the fixed-term contract is a problem, which is understandable, I don’t quite understand what the purchase of the property is supposed to solve. If the situation with the fixed-term contract remains and the reason for this is not planning the project as a whole, I would only invest once the employment situation is clarified.

If nothing changes, you will always be stuck with a plot of land that may never be developed.

The financing will not be a favorable one, moreover there will be a senior creditor, so you are tied to this bank when it comes to financing the construction project.

Perhaps you want to secure the property, ok, but in that case it is advisable to finance it with a variable interest rate.

Hello, Thank you all for the many answers. I have clarified the matter with our financial broker. Since we have very good equity through our apartment and can later sell half of the land, we will initially finance only the land.. of course if everything goes well. Until my husband gets a permanent contract, we have to wait with the new construction. There is a small old house on the land which should actually be demolished but is still habitable because the owner himself still lives there ... we will rent out the house until my husband gets a permanent contract.

Hello What did the bank say about the new construction? Are there problems, limits, etc.? If the bank finances only the land, you need a subordinate creditor for the new construction. That will become unnecessarily expensive

Third-party funding has NOTHING to do with this. Otherwise, regular companies could also save on permanent positions by using some project durations.

There are special regulations in the Higher Education Act for universities that limit the maximum employment duration. It is politically desired and intended (yes, also by the universities) to employ staff for a maximum of 5 years, with various exceptions such as parental leave, for example. Universities are training institutions and are supposed to train doctoral candidates for the private sector. Then with a doctoral degree. Otherwise, permanent employees would block a scientific position for 40 years. That would be a death blow to science.

By the way, large institutes can also employ scientific staff permanently at will. This works quite simply through bilateral industry projects and the free funds generated from them. The institutes all have affiliated GmbHs. Of course, they still only grant permanent contracts as an exception. The people who get such contracts do not stay long. Professor Günther Schuh with flying taxis was recently on the news again. The good man has a huge network of companies alongside his chair and his Fraunhofer department.

That is not entirely correct:

1. The maximum duration is set at 6 years, or more precisely, it is 6 years for the doctoral degree/advanced qualification and then another 6 years, so a total of 12 years. In the case of a habilitation, I believe there is another 3 years, but I am not sure about that.

2. Saying permanent positions are a death blow to science is, to put it mildly, absolute nonsense! With the current approach, it repeatedly happens that people who want to work scientifically and very well end up going into industry. Sure, this may bring in new forces, but for some projects, this is rather a problem due to the necessary familiarization time.

3. Yes, there are enough institutes where the head has GmbHs on the side (see Prof. Schuh), but that cannot be the solution in the end. If you see that there is a manifold higher demand for positions, then there must also be options to employ people permanently. Fundamentally, this is even possible with third-party funding, but this has the consequence that the earnings of that person must be secured by a corresponding capital investment until potential retirement, which almost never works.

The Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (Scientific Fixed-Term Employment Act) is by no means only positive, and arguing that otherwise others would be denied a doctoral position is also questionable. There are enough institutions that use doctoral candidates as cheap labor; the doctoral candidate then works full-time for their time and in the end finishes their dissertation while on unemployment benefits. Unfortunately, this is common practice in some areas!