Do PhD music students get paid?

They are on occasion but there's very little funding for music PhDs and it's quite cut-throat to get that funding. Plus the funding will only cover the first three years, meaning most people have an unfunded fourth year that they have to somehow stump up the money for

What’s the difference between funding and tuition fees? Uni applications are making me think ahead of things I want to research haha

So if you're a "funded" student doing a music PhD, that usually means your tuition fees are paid for, either by a research council body, or by your uni. Usually with funding (although not necessarily, if your tuition fees are paid by the uni), being a funded student means you get a stipend (for rent, living costs, research costs, and travel) of about £16K a year to live on if you're at a London uni, or about £13K if you're outside of London.

Eesh, how did you cope with funding/ tuition fees?

I'm self-funded as I could not secure funding, due to my relatively-weak profile

What’s it like being self funded? I’ve seen a few figures of the fees, and it looks seriously expensive in contrast to other degree levels 😶

I mean, in my case the Bank of Mum and Dad are paying the tuition fees. I live with them and they don't charge me rent or anything, so I am in a pretty decent position self-fund, though money is very tight for all of us, and I feel bad that my parents are paying...

The tuition fees aren't that bad actually, especially if you do it part-time. For the first 6 years of the course, I paid about £2K per year tuition fees (or just over that). For full-time, it's double that, so £4K per year. In the write-up years (the aforementioned fourth year that no one gets paid for), the fee is £440 full-time, or that cost split over two years part-time.

That's at a uni - music college postgrads are much more expensive (at least for Masters, not sure about PhD level)

That’s so nice-can you do PhD/ remotely? The closest uni that offers a music degree is about an hour and a half away from home, and I don’t even know if they offer a PhD in music...

That’s so nice-can you do PhD/ remotely? The closest uni that offers a music degree is about an hour and a half away from home, and I don’t even know if they offer a PhD in music...

Basically what PhoenixFortune's said above! Generally speaking, unless it's an explicitly distanced-learning PhD, then the expectation is that you would go to campus regularly to meet with supervisors, use the libraries, etc.

Something to stress is that while you may think you wanna do a PhD now, things can change so easily! It's a big decision to make, not least because there are so few jobs and it overqualifies you for any non-academia-related job So try not to stress about it too much at this stage

That’s so true, but I want to have some sense as to what a PhD is whilst going through uni and thinking of what I want to do next, you know? I’m just an odd planner and dreamer basically 😂

In short, a PhD is where you focus solely on one research project (either proposed by yourself or your supervisor) for 3+ years, whilst also presenting your research at conferences, writing articles about it for publication etc. It's a very intense and challenging qualification to do - that's the reason it's the highest academic qualification you can get!