site.btaAcademic Partners Want Assistant Professors' Minimum Monthly Wage Set at BGN 1,880

The minimum wage for an assistant professor, the lowest academic rank in Bulgaria's state-run universities, should be at least BGN 1,880 per month. The Confederation of Independent Tarde Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB), the Podkrepa Confederation of Labour, the Council of Rectors of Higher Education Institutions and the National Assembly of Students' Councils discuss the matter in a letter to Education and Science Minister Galin Tsokov, CITUB's Lilyana Valcheva said on Thursday. The letter comes as a reply to an earlier message from the minister.

The signatories to the letter also urge a rise of university student scholarships. They propose increasing the minimum monthly scholarship from BGN 85 to BGN 120 and the maximum scholarship from BGN 180 to BGN 200.

They say in the letter: "We do not accept the government's discriminatory approach, according to which the pay rise for schoolteachers was in January 2023, for university educators in August, and scholarships for university students were increased as of July 1, which actually means September or October in the case of state-run universities."

The unions, rectors and students further say that they do not accept the decline in public spending on education from 4.5% of GDP to 4.1%, especially considering that the government has defined education as a national priority.