Been offered a post doctorate position in Germany but now pay has changed

Question

I was wondering if anyone could help me with my current predicament. I have been offered a postdoc position in Germany at TV-L 13.

I completed my PhD in Australia last year but have not done a master’s (in my country a special year is added after a bachelor’s). After receiving my offer, I’ve been told by HR that, because I don’t have a master’s, I will have to start at TV-L 12. They want me to start at E TV 12 and then once my paperwork gets approved, try and move to the higher TV-L 13 scale but that seems precarious. I’ve sent my degrees to the German Central Office for Foreign Education (“Zentralstelle für ausländisches Bildungswesen”, ZAB) but when I’ve checked the Anabin database it doesn’t seem to recognise my BA (Hons) as similar to a master’s.

Is this standard? Would that mean I would be stuck at this pay for two years? How are the levels (Stufen) negotiated?

The position is for three years. Any general advice would be great as I’m not used to the German pay system and am about to move countries.

Answer 1

This is a rather common error made by bureaucrats who have no idea of foreign academic careers. If your academic progress is beyond a master’s equivalent (and your job requires it), you get a TV-L 13 payment. A PhD certainly fulfils this, and thus only this degree is relevant. (Mind that for your level (Stufe), other things may be relevant too.) Australian doctorates are amongst those which should be recognised most easily: There is a specific agreement on this and Australian doctorates are amongst the few that automatically allow you to call yourself “Dr.” in Germany (pertinent law for NRW, the largest German state).

Details depend on who communicated this to you, but most often this is solved by reminding the HR department that you have a PhD and this is TV-L 13 position. In the worst case, you have to activate the professor who hired you to tell the bureaucrats to do their job properly. Remember that your professor usually is on your side in this matter: They do not benefit from you getting paid less (they can’t use that money elsewhere), they have no close ties with administration, and they are not very keen on losing you over this.

Mind that the difference between TV-L 12 and TV-L 13 is only about 5 % at the same level (Stufe), and if you have a higher level on TV-L 12, you may even get more (see this table of the salaries). The best way to proceed really depends on the details: What previous experience counts at which group and which level? And would clarifying all of this delay everything make you lose one month of salary? For example, if they count more than ten years of experience since your bachelor’s for TV-L 12, you end up at 5582 €, whereas entry-level TV-L 13 is only 4074 €.

How are the Stufes negotiated?

This is a bit more tricky as it depends on the details of your work experience and how it is counted. The crucial thing here is work experience in positions that have similar requirements (master’s equivalent) and duties (probably mostly research) as the new position. Here, any research position after your PhD almost certainly counts; everything else is more complicated.

Answer 2

You have a PhD. That's obviously "more" than a Masters and should count. The problem here (as Wrzlprmft also points out) is a cultural issue. The German administrators are familiar with the German system where one does a Bachelors, then a Masters, and then a PhD. So everyone with a PhD also has a (separate) Masters certificate. They're also sticklers for paperwork, so if the paperwork says a Masters is needed, you need the certificate that you've completed a Masters.

The complication arises as you've done your PhD at an institution which doesn't bother with the intermediate Masters designation(*), and goes directly from Bachelors to PhD. The bureaucrats are confused because the regulations say you need a Masters certificate, and they can't find anything in what you submitted that looks like a Masters certificate.

You're unlikely to convince them that they regulations can be ignored in this case, but what you likely can convince them of is that your PhD certificate also counts as a Masters certificate.

Because in reality, your PhD likely is the equivalent of both the Masters and the PhD. In the German system, a Masters is an ~2 year degree where the student takes a combination of classes and research, and writes and defends a thesis at the end. Then the PhD is a ~3-4 year degree where they just do research and write and defend a thesis at the end. (All this is roughly speaking -- different institutions and individuals have variations.)

I'm guessing(*) your PhD program was a ~5-6 year degree, with a combination of classes and research in the first ~2 years, and then research in the last ~3-4 years, followed by writing and defending a thesis at the end. There was likely also an event (possibly colloquially known as "prelims" or "quals") at about the 2 year mark where you had to write up a document and then defend it. -- Or in other words, it was a single program which combines the features of both the German Masters and the German PhD programs. Additionally (though institutionally dependent), it's also likely that - had you decided that the PhD program wasn't your cup of tea - at about the 2 year mark you would have been able to write up a thesis, defend it, and then leave the program with an official Masters degree (which is further recognition that the first two years of your program is a Masters equivalent).

So what's likely helpful is to convince the bureaucrats that your Australian PhD certificate counts as both a PhD and a Masters. I'm not sure what documentation you'd need to do this, but that's the angle I'd recommend to take when asking about it: "I'm terribly sorry about the confusing and backward way Australia runs its graduate education program. It says PhD, but it's really equivalent to a combined Masters/PhD program. What documentation do we need to prove that?" -- It may seem like a minor phrasing change, but going from "I don't need a Masters, I have a PhD!" to "My PhD certificate should also meet the requirements for a foreign Masters equivalent." is an important one for regulation-following sticklers. The first one asks them to bend the rules and special case you, but the second accepts the regulations and tries to satisfy them.

(*) I'm assuming. I'm not overly familiar with the academic system in Australia, and am basing it on the system in the United States.

Answer 3

I was exactly in a similar situation a year ago, but I manged to pull it to tvl-13. I convinced them that my msc-phd is combined together,like the US system. Negotiate strong don't fall on that trap.