Is there no money?

Moved to Postgraduate Applications forum.

As other posters have said, funding for any Arts/Humanities courses is so limited for students from any background, I've also experienced A&H funding being cut and diverted towards more social science-focused projects. As you are an international student on top of that, I really don't recommend self-funding, due to the astronomical costs associated with it.

Totally appreciate why you'd rather do a PhD in the UK than in the States. That said, if you don't plan on going into academia afterwards, is it really worth the time and effort (since you're not fussed about the money)? I'm not sure how things are in the States but in my case, a PhD in music overqualifies me for a lot of jobs and is rather useless in that respect.

Quite a number of PhD supervisors do seem to be quite 'hands-off', from what I've heard. Personally, I've got an amazing PhD supervisor who is attentive without micro-managing or dictating. But I appreciate I'm very lucky like that and perhaps in the minority... Perhaps you could ask to be put in touch with current students in the Depts. you applied to, to find out more about how your prospective supervisors are viewed by others in their Dept. and whether they are known to be good supervisors or not?

As for whether you're a cash cow or not for the universities, that would be hard to say and even harder to prove. It's true that some unis may take in slightly "inferior" students, I guess. But if you're already published, I'd assume you're reasonable intelligent, articulate, and that you write well...

Hi,
So far I've been accepted into four PhD programs at different universities. Two of them were in the Russel group so I was pretty stoked.
One of them I turned down simply because there were zero funding opportunities.
My program is in the Arts and Humanities.
So far I have been turned down for internal funding 4 times for one of them (I deferred entry to re apply), once for another, and I'm waiting to hear about funding from the last one.
My work has been published in international music journals so I thought I would be a strong candidate for funding.
I've looked extensively and there's no funding opportunities for me aside from what the University has for PhD scholarships for international students. I'm American and it seems like the only other option is to take on an astronomical amount of debt and I've become too resentful of my funding application experience to do this.
Is this typical?
It seems weird.
Thanks

If you aren'y bothered by the debt, I'd say the opposite to basically everyone in this thread: take the plunge and do it. Easy for me to say because I did get an Arts Council scholarship (which are like rocking horse shite, by the way—it is very hard to get funded here for home students, too!).

I was like you, I did my PhD because I wanted to do it for me, not because I wanted x or y outcome (though I do now teach, precariously, at a couple of institutions). If the debt is a dealbreaker, then obviously you are in a shite position. If it's not, have at it.

PhD supervision isn't necessarily awful, by the way. the people I know that have had great supervision far outweighs those that have had poor supervision.

That's a shame. Is there a way they could fund even like a module or is there a part time option that wouldn't affect the workplace as much?

Are the arts underfunded compared to social sciences, in your experience?

I'm not sure I'm in much a position to evaluate, to be honest. Anecdotally, the guys that I know/knew were when they were after funding found themselves in a remarkably similar position to me, with similarly few scholarships to go around.

That's what I thought. All but STEM had a pretty rough ride.

I can't do part time because I'm international. I've considered leveraging my offers against one another because sometimes departments or even professors have grant money they can use to fund their PhD students, but it could backfire if not executed properly or they might simply not have any room in their budget.

If you aren'y bothered by the debt, I'd say the opposite to basically everyone in this thread: take the plunge and do it. Easy for me to say because I did get an Arts Council scholarship (which are like rocking horse shite, by the way—it is very hard to get funded here for home students, too!).

I was like you, I did my PhD because I wanted to do it for me, not because I wanted x or y outcome (though I do now teach, precariously, at a couple of institutions). If the debt is a dealbreaker, then obviously you are in a shite position. If it's not, have at it.

PhD supervision isn't necessarily awful, by the way. the people I know that have had great supervision far outweighs those that have had poor supervision.

The debt only scares me when I see how it scares other people, but then I have to remind myself I don't actually care.
There's an old quote on wall street that I feel is appropriate to the situation with student loan debt "If you owe the bank $1000 the bank owns you, if you owe the bank $1,000,000 then you own the bank".

Which is a contentious view to have for some people, I'm certain, but you only yolo once.

The difficult thing with gauging the quality of supervision is that I don't really have a good idea of what to expect.
I had one supervisor who would reply to my emails within a day, and actually spent time getting to know me during our regular meetings. I had another supervisor who couldn't remember what my project was and had to be reminded regularly, but he also seemed to have some level of investment in me as far as time. He got me acquainted with the facilities and so on.

I have three potential supervisors but don't really know how to gauge their quality. Maybe I should send them a paper I'm working on and see how they respond with feedback or advice?