Hi. Let me clarify my positions. I am sorry if I put out jumbled positions.
First, my key message is about tenacity and not losing hope about any possible funding.
My second message was in agreement with Hobnon's comment about it being hard, and that there is truth in what the naysayers say about the privatisation of higher education, the reduction in government funding and so on.
Within this second point I wanted to share that for me the journey has been very hard. For these reasons: that I am switching disciplines and so need to prove my worth. That it is often assumed that English of non-native speakers is often not good enough. That the nomenclature of higher education in management in India is often a post-graduate diploma. But what I pursued was a two year residential programme from one of the world's pioneering institutes of development management in India. And yet other places that I applied to, in NZ for example, told me that I should do two more master's before I can be considered for their doctoral prorgamme. Similarly, in India a first class in the range of 60-70% is very good. But I was often told that my academic performance was poor, it turns out getting a hundred in a master's dissertation in UK is achievable but in India no one in 35 years of my institute's history has as much as gotten an overall A, leave alone a A+ or a 100%.
Not about the UK, where my experience with the academics was very good, they were supportive, hugely patient, and enormously indulgent as I went about organising all the paper work to prove the above; but in a number of places I was ticked off. I was told that my education is not good enough, that they mostly accepted people from Oxbridge as if those are the only places where intellectual potential resides. Similarly, that a UK master's is better than an Indian master's, like in NZ. In Australia, they told me that funding is only for applicants from elite institutions (as if all academia in the third world is useless). So, funding I was told at many places was not available to untamed, natives such as myself.
What is this, if not continuities of colonialism where applicants from the third world remain subjected in so many ways? Where it is believed that Oxbridge is the way, the only way, to go? Where funding (like in Australia) is only available to those from the elite or elitist institutions?
As for hope: the message is still the same. Like my guide-to-be supported my application and pushed my case and guided me through the maze, it is about keeping the hope that there are certain academics who believe in you, who understand what you are saying and are interested in providing an opportunity to wanna-be academics.
Does that help explain what I wanted to say?