Funding for PhD

have u looked at how the marks are given out? or is this just heresay...

So it doesn't seem like you're all funded!!! Unless I'm confused by this post. If this is not the case then I guess he should stay in the UK. However he clearly said he's not likely to get any funding for his first year.

"In 2003, the median number of years between enrollment in graduate school and completion of the doctoral degree (elapsed time to degree, or ETD) in all fields in the US was 7.5 years."

source: http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles.php?issue=8&article=phds



Can't find a UK median easily to hand, but http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/HEFCE/2005/05_02/ suggests that 57% complete within 5 years, but defines complete in an odd way (around a year after submission, which makes little sense*), so it's probably somewhere around the 4 years mark. 3 years is very much a target rather than an actual time


* possibly because the universities are in no great hurry to report back to HESA as they don't usually have much to do with PhDs, so 'closing their HESA file' takes place long afterwards.

The same occurs in the US, in fact, funding is less stable, I know of people who had had to change project or drop out altogether from their studies in the states due to lack of funding - that does not occur with funding in the UK.

It is up to the individual if they wish to pursue a PhD course without funding (and the person you have quoted is the exception, not the norm), however, that vast majority of people doing PhDs full-time are funded by someone other than themselves or their family or a bank loan. All the PhD students in my department are funded either through the research councils, the university or private companies - you cannot do a PhD in the department unless you have a source of funding (i.e. you can't pay your own way).

Of course I can't say that everyone in the UK gets funding for a PhD just as you can't say that is true in the US. However I was merely rebutting the suggest that a PhD in the UK meant racking up a large amount of debt when for most people it does not.

I actually seriously looked into doing a PhD in the states and found that it would be wasting my time as the first few years would have been spent in gradschool doing stuff I had already done.

Thanks for the clarification.

Actually all of the PhD programs I've looked at in the US will skip you ahead at least 1 year if you have an MSc already.

I also have strong feelings about excellent teaching. I learned a lot when I was at Oxford but honestly the teaching was much below what I was used to at Stanford. Their skill lay in setting out great reading lists. The lecturers were extremely boring, made the subjects seem boring as well. Perhaps if the Phd program in the UK were longer and focused more on teaching, there were would be better quality.

The same occurs in the US, in fact, funding is less stable, I know of people who had had to change project or drop out altogether from their studies in the states due to lack of funding - that does not occur with funding in the UK.

Actually all of the PhD programs I've looked at in the US will skip you ahead at least 1 year if you have an MSc already.

This isn't necessarily the case, or at least it must depend upon the discipline and institution in question. I'm in a social sciences PhD in the US. My offer of funding from the university came with my offer of admission. It's a multi-year funding package, guaranteed for at least 5 years provided I remain in "good academic standing", a rather vague phrase which essentially means that I have to behave myself and maintain a B+ average in any classes I take during the initial two years. After five years, I believe I will receive funding, though on a year-to-year basis subject to periodical review (I take it that's an incentive to finish). Some people I know in my program are on year-to-year funding from the start with no guarantees that it'll be renewed. They'll get loans and so on. But, as far as I'm aware, that isn't really the norm in the States, and I think it relates to the relatively poor financial endowment of the particular institution I attend (as compared with, Harvard say, which has tons more money than we do).

The only problem I have now is in paying for it all. I'm unlikely to get AHRC funding for my first year with a 2:1, but apparently I have a decent chance of getting it after my first year. I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows how true this is, what it would be likely to depend on, and how generous the AHRC are likely to be -- how often do they tend to award maintenance grants in addition to fees etc.

In the UK most funding is through the research councils so the relative financial health of your institution has no bearing on your funding.

To me it is simple, by the time I had finished a PhD in the states I will have gained at least 2 years of postdoctoral experience here in the UK and would be in a much better position to seek academic appointments both here and abroad.

Well that's sort of the point isn't it. A US PhD can go straight into a position as a tenure-track assistant professor upon graduation. Whereas I've heard US academics say that they would not consider hiring a freshly minted UK PhD who doesn't have post-doc experience,* and I have a feeling, from speaking with friends back in the UK, that getting a job as a junior lecturer in Britain is much the same these days- i.e. post-docs are required. So ultimately we all end up in roughly the same position as regards time.

* Usual caveats apply about this being the case in my field etc.

i dont know what the comparison is for a uk prof though - that's top of our tree (or it used to be...) and i dont see a similar title in the usa.

Someone told me that 'Professor' is used in Yankland as a title for most academics, compared to UK where it's tied to a Chair. This true?

Yes, this is largely true. In the US, the hierarchy of positions goes something like this: adjunct assistant professor (works on short contracts) ---> assistant professor ---> associate professor ---> full professor. Undergraduates tend to refer to their teachers here as "Professor X", whatever position they occupy in that schema.

In the UK, it's usually something like: junior lecturer ---> senior lecturer ---> reader ----> professor.

It seems I owe something of an apology to ChemistBoy. I've been chatting with someone today at university and he assures me that in the US, it is indeed quite common for natural scientists to have to complete a post-doc before even getting on the lowest rung of the job market, and this despite the lengthy time to completion for a PhD here. Having said that, post-docs are not normally required for the social sciences and humanities, where it is common for those who get jobs to take them up directly following the doctorate.