The ‘Upgrading Scholarships’ funding programme aims to offer PhD and MD/PhD students at the BNITM an incentive to apply for scholarships for their doctoral theses themselves. However, external scholarships generally offer lower remuneration and do not cover social security contributions, including health and unemployment insurance, making them less attractive than the institute's doctoral salaries, which are based on public sector pay scales. For the institute, however, they are advantageous because they relieve the burden on the in-house budget. For this reason, the Friends' Association supplements the remuneration from externally acquired scholarships to the level of civil service salaries, including social security contributions.

The following guidelines apply:

• The annual programme budget is limited to 25,200 Euro.
• The total amount of monthly payments (scholarship plus supplement) should not exceed 2,300 Euro.
• The maximum amount of support is 350 Euro per month. Therefore, only six scholarship holders can receive the maximum support at any one time.
• If necessary, additional scholarship holders can be supported with reduced payments in order to fully utilise the annual budget. Applications will be processed in the order in which they are received (first come, first served).
• To simplify administration, individual adjustments to monthly payments will be rounded down to 10 Euro amounts, taking into account budgetary constraints.

The regulations will apply from 1 April 2021.

There is no legal entitlement to a supplement to the scholarship.