I talked a lot about the higher education in United States and China in the blog posts. In this blog, I would like to share my research experience in a research-orientated institute in Austria to see how the higher education in Europe goes.
I spent over nine weeks as a full-time research assistant in the Energy Institute in Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. This is a purely research institute and no classes are provided. Although there are some current Ph.D. students doing research in this institute but they have to take courses from other departments. In this institute, there are three different groups, all doing research works related to the energy, including the economic, law and engineering.
The working time is quite flexible as you can schedule your working time as long as you can satisfy the 40-hours per week. Therefore, many researchers will choose to work more than eight hours from Monday to Thursday and leave the office in the noon on Friday. Also, it is more exciting that you are allowed to work from home as long as there is no need to meet personally. Usually, I work from 7:30 to 17:30 including the lunching time and napping time in the afternoon while many colleagues will leave early to pick up their children from school. Each group has a small number of members and we have to communicate very often to make sure everyone is on the right track.
As for the leisure time, there are lots of places to go in Austria, such as Salzburg, Vienna and Graz. All these cities have a long history and lots of places of interests. However, there is one thing bothering me that markets and shops are not open during weekends, especially in Sunday. Therefore, there is no place for you to shop during Sunday. I realize this is a Catholic tradition that people will go to the church or rest at home. As heavily influenced by Catholic, Austria still preserve many religious national holidays, which inspired me a lot.
The funding system in this institute is also different. Most of research are funded by the government and European Union. Therefore, there are lots of collaborations and communications among different countries. The project I worked on is a collaborated projected by universities in Austria, Sweden and other European countries. There are some permanent positions as the tenure tracks in United States but there are more flexible positions since many master graduate will take it as a break to gain some research experience before they go to the Ph.D. program.
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