As it is well known, the situation of doctoral students is becoming increasingly precarious as housing prices and living costs are on the rise in Barcelona as well as in large cities. On March 1, 2019, the Royal Decree 103/2019 was passed, establishing the new Statute of Predoctoral Research Personnel in Training (known as EPIPF in Spanish). The new statute indicates the unification of predoctoral research in four years for all contracts under this purpose, as well as the improvement of working conditions for our collective. Some Catalan universities such as UAB have already implemented those changes for their predoctoral researchers.

After more than six months since the new Royal Decree was passed, we are urged to fight for our rights. In this sense, we ask UOC to implement the new EPIPF in its entirety as a policy of the University so that it generates an impact on the quality of our research, on productivity as well as social impact. Likewise, the implementation of the fourth year will directly affect the satisfaction of doctoral students, improving their working conditions, the recruitment of talents and promoting the feeling of belonging to the UOC community.