After the Focus Group for PhD and Postdocs: researchers prefer welfare and smoother bureaucracy over trips and pizza nights

Today there was a focus group on the campus life of the scholars, in particular PhD and Post doc ones. The meeting was held by Zofnat Institute, an institute for research and consulting organizations. Two researchers came to the university to meet us and ask our opinion about the Student Life Team, made up by madrichim belonging to TAU international office.

The intention of the meeting was to inquiry the social/amusement/leisure experience of the International students and scholars, but soon the meeting turned into a vibrant discussion about the various bureaucratic and institutional issues, perceived by all of the participants (and the shocked researchers) as an effort "to survive" the student life.

Most of the participants were PhD students, with a minority of Post doc, always too little to be represented (Alas!). The general sentiment was of frustration and disappointment on a hand, but passion and interest on the other! People are in general in love with their studies and research, and many of them received a lot of help from colleagues and PIs, contrary to the feeling of passivity they perceived from the TAU international team. 

Again, and not surprisingly, we discussed about issues such as:

• Visa procedure.
• Expensive prices (from the apartments to the Ulpan) compared to the scholarship amount.
• Difficulties in relocation and approaching Tel Aviv housing market.
• Missing information about how to interact with the Social life team and details about the rights and the possibilities of the Internationals. Many people got to know about these facilities pretty late (someone discovered their existence today!!!)
• Little motivation to trust and participate in the activities of the Student life, while the focal point was on the scholarships, the tremendous bureaucracy and the difficulties with the Hebrew documents and state requests.
• It was proposed to give possibilities to single students or scholar to participate in some welfare in TAU while being paid a sum for their services, which could be networking or welcoming the new students, make an introductory tour etc...
• Frustration for the overwhelming struggle to collect information and get the things done.
• Disappointment for not having enough options for choosing the courses during the semesters (Master and PhDs are supposed to collect at least 8 credit points during their studies).
• Incompatibility between the scheduling of the activities from the student life team and the one of the working scholars, who work long hours that overlap with many activities.
• Lacking of common (physical) spaces to gather and feeling of exclusion from the Israeli community, which is followed by the Student Union.
• Lacking of social gatherings within (some of) the faculties, where networking opportunities would be an advantage.
• TAU documents (from emails to the website facilities, including the mandatory safety courses) are often in Hebrew and in some case they were not available in English. There is still a language gap that needs to be overcome.

In the end, after 2 and more hours of meeting (way much longer than expected!), we concluded our list of issues and we are all hopeful that this report that the two researchers have will help all of us to obtain a better service and assistance from the University bodies.

The researchers told us that the report won't be shared with us as the "client" is the university. Unless TAU decides to disclose it, we won't know what's specifically written and whether things will change.

We also are aware of the fact that many of the needs brought up by the focus group participants are the same that we already presented during the meetings of the International Research Senate Committee.

Our hope is that the upper TAU bodies will reflect about the outcome of this report, which adds up to our repetitive requests over the years and the later campaign we are carry on to support the Post docs to obtain more rights and benefits.

As representative of the TAU International PhDs and Post Docs, we invite you to reach us out to discuss and share with us your point of view.