Choosing between a PhD in the UK and Hungary

Also noone looks down on self-funded PhDs, or would even know you were self-funded unless you told them. The reason why doing a self-funded PhD is a bad idea isnt because people will judge you - its because dropping the best part of £50k on a degree which typically doesnt increase your potential salary relative to an undergrad/masters is insane unless you were wealthy.

Outside of the top UK universities, a lecturer in computer science gets about £40k/year if they are lucky, which is about £28k after tax. If you borrowed the money for the PhD then you would end up with about £30-40k debt at around 10% interest, which is absolutely crippling on that low a salary and would essentially destroy your life.

Its going to be very difficult to get a UK academic job with a PhD from Anglia Ruskin, which is not even close to being a top tier university. Since you are self-funded, you have a big advantage over most students when it comes to PhD admissions - did you try applying to all the major UK universities first?

Thanks for replying. I have choose Anglia Ruskin for many reasons. The two major reasons, however, are: it has the perfect supervisor for me, with nearly the exact same research interest; second, their tuition fees are low comparing to others and they are giving 1000£ international scholarship. I simply can't afford top 10% British universities.

Actually it will affect my salary since I had my Masters degree in a modest university in my home country, Algeria. I believe it is not very appreciated by most of the international universities or enterprises. I had the opportunity to study in France (in french) where the education is free. But I wanted to peruse in an English speaking university to vary my language skills. I have the advantage of free education until my Masters degree, therefore, doing a self-funded PhD should be considered reasonable for me. All my concerns are about my employablity prospects. is Anglia Ruskin really bad ?!

Also noone looks down on self-funded PhDs, or would even know you were self-funded unless you told them. The reason why doing a self-funded PhD is a bad idea isnt because people will judge you - its because dropping the best part of £50k on a degree which typically doesnt increase your potential salary relative to an undergrad/masters is insane unless you were wealthy.

Really bad is perhaps a bit harsh, but it's not good. To the extent that it really probably won't do anything for your employability.

Really! they are saying in their website and in the league tables that 9 of 10 students find a job within 6 months after graduation, I believe PhD ought to be one of these 9. I thought it will affect my employability dramatically since my Masters was in a very modest university in Algeria (not really recognized at the international level). At least this one may lead me to a decent job. I would happy earning 24k£ per year!

If you're doing a PhD to increase your employability (outside of academia) then, as tomfailinghelp implied, you're doing a PhD for the wrong reason...

I think I disagree...At least, from what I've been told, the reason why a self-funded PhD is not ideal is not just because of the amount of money a person has to spend to pay for a PhD (though that's also a good reason to try and avoid self-funding). It's because academia is so competitive that not being able to secure funding for a PhD may be seen in a negative light when applying for post-docs. A big part of being successful in academia is showing that you're able to attract funding, and for most people, getting a funded PhD is the first sign to future employers that they are able to do so. So not having a funded PhD is a bit of a set-back from the start, if you see what I mean.
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Getting accepted onto a funded PhD program does not constitute 'attracting funding' in any sense that people care about. Conditional on having the same publications, references, and instution quality on your CV, its unlikely that many people would care whether your PhD was funded. Additionally, they wouldnt even know - this isnt something which its typical to mention on your CV anyway.

The exception might be if your PhD was funded from a prestigious source (eg you won some national scholarship, or a named departmental scholarship), or if it was funded by an industry partner which you had managed to secure yourself. But even in these cases the impact on your CV would be so marginal its not worth stressing about.

I am getting confused, I thought doing a PhD in a technical subject will specialize me more. Thus , it may increases the employability because eventually I will be probably one of the few people able to do that specific job. What I meant though, is working in Academia at the international level. I would not mind teaching at some African university or Eastern Europe. Something I would never be able to do with even a French or Algerian PhD. (due to the language and other reasons)

Getting accepted onto a funded PhD program does not constitute 'attracting funding' in any sense that people care about. You havent attracted funding, you have just been accepted onto a PhD.

Conditional on having the same publications, references, and instution quality on your CV, its unlikely that many people would care whether your PhD was funded. Additionally, they wouldnt even know - this isnt something which its typical to mention on your CV anyway. The exception might be if your PhD was funded from a prestigious source (eg you won some national scholarship, or a named departmental/university scholarship), or if it was funded by an industry partner which you had managed to secure yourself. But even in these cases the impact on your CV would be so marginal its not worth stressing about.

A PhD will open up academic jobs, although from you what you say, the places you would like to work at arent likely to be hugely prestigious so you might want to check that a good UK Masters degree wouldnt be enough to teach there anyway before you commit 3-4 years to a PhD. If your main constaint is money then you should probably have a serious inquiry into whether an Anglia Ruskin PhD would look better than (eg) an Imperial College/Cambridge/etc MSc/MRes, assuming you are able to get in. Getting a good academic job in the UK without a PhD would be very difficult, but other countries use different systems.

Whether the PhD opens up non-academic jobs depends on the field. A computer science PhD will do this, in a sense whcih (eg) a History PhD wouldnt. But institutional prestige does matter quite a bit for indusry, which is what tomfailinghelp was getting at. However things might be different in developing countries where any UK/US PhD may be seen as good regardless of whether its from a top Western university - I dont know enough to say.

Really! they are saying in their website and in the league tables that 9 of 10 students find a job within 6 months after graduation, I believe PhD ought to be one of these 9. I thought it will affect my employability dramatically since my Masters was in a very modest university in Algeria (not really recognized at the international level). At least this one may lead me to a decent job. I would happy earning 24k£ per year!

I am getting confused, I thought doing a PhD in a technical subject will specialize me more. Thus , it may increases the employability because eventually I will be probably one of the few people able to do that specific job. What I meant though, is working in Academia at the international level. I would not mind teaching at some African university or Eastern Europe. Something I would never be able to do with even a French or Algerian PhD. (due to the language and other reasons)

However, again, I don't know if this is specific to my area (because funding is relatively scarce, but not so scarce as to be negligible) but as a general rule of thumb, I think that getting funding will always be a good thing.