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What is Fulbright Austria?

The Fulbright program is the flagship foreign exchange program of the US State Department. Every year, thousands of Americans win competitive Fulbright grants to do research or teach abroad, usually for a semester or two. Similarly, folks from all over the world win Fulbright grants to do the same in America. Exchanges between the United States and Austria are managed by Fulbright Austria, a commission based in Vienna.

Which grants are we talking about?

Every year, around twenty young Americans are awarded competitive grants to travel to Austria for nine months as “Fulbright US Students.” They are usually recent bachelor’s graduates. There are five different types of grants:

• Open Study/Research: For a research project of the grantee's own design, such as “art history research at the Y Institute in Salzburg.” These grants pay 1,150€ per month.
• Fulbright-Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Award For Graduate Studies And PhD Research In Science And Technology: Like Open Study/Research, but especially for STEM research. These grants pay 1,150€ per month.
• Fulbright-IFK Junior Fellowship: Like Open Study/Research, but for research at a specific institution in Vienna called the IFK. This grant pays 1,200€ per month.
• Fulbright Combined Award: Part-time English teaching, part-time university enrollment, part-time small research project of the grantee's own design. This grant is technically 8 months of employment (October - May) with the Austrian Bildungsdirektionen at approximately 1,307€ per month, then one month (June) of Fulbright stipend at 1,050€.
• Fulbright Community-Based Combined Award: Like the Combined Award, but the research project is replaced with a community project. This grant has the same 8-months-employment-then-1-month-stipend structure as the usual Combined Award.

All grants provide additional benefits detailed below. None of these additional benefits provide direct support for daily living expenses, such as rent and food.

What is the problem?

As part of the Europe-wide EU-SILC study, the Austrian government defines an official “at-risk-of-poverty threshold” (Armutsgefährdungsschwelle), and uses it to study social conditions.

This threshold is currently 1,392€ per month, and has recently been rising about 3% per year.

Fulbright US Students on research grants only make 83% of the Austrian at-risk-of-poverty threshold. Fulbright Austria maintains that the stipend “is a supplementary grant” and that “additional funds are required.” However, the grant terms effectively prevent the grantees from supporting themselves otherwise. They cannot take a side job without prior written permission from Fulbright Austria (see sec. 444.1 here), and we are unaware of Fulbright Austria ever granting this permission. If they want to crowdfund, they are forbidden from using their Fulbright affiliation, the Fulbright name, or the Fulbright logo to do so (sec. 444.4). They are required to disclose parallel grants (such as PhD stipends), which can reduce their Fulbright grants (sec. 444.2). To the best of our knowledge, most grantees have no parallel grants.

In order to pay their living costs while abroad, some Fulbright US Students rely on their life savings, gifts from their family, or even personal loans.

Why mutual aid?

We, a group of Fulbright Austria alumni, believe that Fulbright grants should be accessible for everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status. Thus they should cover all, not part, of the costs of modest living. To this end, we believe that the at-risk-of-poverty threshold should be a floor for Fulbright grants.

In spring 2022, we organized a petition to this effect, and collected 38 signatures from present and past grantees. You can read it here, with names redacted for privacy. Signatories included more than 70% of the 2021-2022 Fulbright US Students, more than 50% of the 2021-2022 Fulbright US Scholars (primarily American university professors teaching for one semester at an Austrian university), and program alumni, including alumni from each of the previous five years and from decades ago. The petition was emailed to Fulbright Austria leadership on June 10, 2022, and hand-delivered to Fulbright Austria offices on June 21, 2022. Fulbright Austria responded on July 7, 2022, declining to adjust the stipends. Their response is discussed below.

We have thus started a mutual aid fund, collecting donations to distribute directly to current grantees. Please consider making a donation to our fund here – thank you!

What does Fulbright Austria say about these issues?

Fulbright Austria’s response to the petition can be found here, with names redacted for privacy. In our reading, it makes four main arguments:

• These grants are supposed to support a university education.
• These grants are not intended to cover all living costs.
• These grants are not considered "income" as defined for the at-risk-of-poverty line, and are thus not comparable to the at-risk-of-poverty line.
• These grants provide many additional benefits beyond the monthly stipend.

The benefits mentioned in the fourth point are a one-time 2,000€ travel/relocation grant; coverage of premiums for both Austrian national health insurance (66.79€/month) and a Fulbright-specific limited health plan called ASPE; free tuition at an Austrian public university (726.72€/semester at the University of Vienna, for example); reimbursement of residence permit/visa fees (160€ for a residence permit); and reimbursement of two-thirds of the cost of any German-language courses they choose to take in-country, up to 500€.

Here are our responses, point-by-point:

• These grants are supposed to support a university education: In our experience, the majority of grantees are not enrolled in a *degree-granting* university program anywhere in the world. It is true that grantees are required to enroll at an Austrian university. However, combined grantees are only required to take one course per semester, and research grantees are not required to take any courses at all. (Unlike most American universities, Austrian universities permit students to stay enrolled without taking any courses.) A few grantees are enrolled in American PhD programs and are doing dissertation research in Austria, but most grantees have just finished bachelor's or master's degrees in the United States, come to do research/teach for a year in Austria, then return stateside without finishing any Austrian degree.
• These grants are not intended to cover all living costs: To the best of our knowledge, this petition response, in July 2022, was the first time that Fulbright Austria publicly took this position. The grantees currently in Austria applied in fall 2021 and accepted in spring 2022, so they did not know this when they agreed to come to Austria. Additionally, we are concerned that Fulbright grants only partially cover living costs while putting severe restrictions on the grantee’s ability to support themselves otherwise (see above).
• These grants are not considered "income" as defined for the at-risk-of-poverty line, and are thus not comparable to the at-risk-of-poverty line: We are not claiming that the monthly grants are considered "income." However, they are the funds that grantees use to pay living expenses. The at-risk-of-poverty threshold is a convenient threshold, set by the Austrian government, for the approximate cost of living expenses. It is therefore relevant in answering the question, "Do grantees have enough money to live on?"
• These grants provide many additional benefits beyond the monthly stipend: This is correct, and we are grateful for these benefits. However, none of them directly supports living costs, such as rent and groceries. Furthermore, in comparison with the at-risk-of-poverty threshold, many of these benefits cover things that an Austrian citizen working in Austria would typically not need (like round-trip travel to the United States, visa costs, and German-language lessons). Finally, for comparison, the 1,392€ at-risk-of-poverty threshold is “after subtracting health insurance premiums," in the sense that it is based on post-tax ("netto") incomes. Austrian taxes include health insurance premiums.

Questions/suggestions/complaints?

Please email support@fulbrightaustriamutualaid.com. Thanks for your time.