Getting useful results for society does not have to mean producing commercially usable findings. It could mean serving the public or voluntary sectors as well. But academics cannot expect the public purse to fund hobby research that neither offers much contribution to the fundamental building blocks of their discipline (basic science) nor offers useful results to broader society. There is an important issue for academics to get to trips with: simply working hard is not enough; their work has to be useful as well.

Generally the funding that is open to non EU nationals is fudning offered by the universities themselves rather than research councils. If you search carefully you may find some university funded studentships fully open to international students. Often less prestigious universities fund their own since they have not got studentship funding from research councils and these are often open to all international students (look up Salford, Bournemouth and Bolton for instance). Nevertheless you will find more prestigious unis that fund their own studentships. Partly I guess it depends whether universities place an importance on your chosen subject area and so offer a studentship in this area.

You can get guides to hotels where you can take dogs in the UK. Surely there must be some guide to rented accommodation where you can take dogs. There are some nursing homes for instance that allow pets. Have you done a thorough google search, talked to people who run rental organisations?

There's a good book called 'How to Write a Thesis' which guides the PhD student in developing their PhD writing whatever stage they are at (e.g. first, second or third year...). It has a lot of exercises in it to stimulate writing. It's well worth reading. Of course one of the key pieces of advice in the book is to start writing as early as possible, though it gives a variety of suggestions which are not all about doing 'proper' writing for the final thesis straight away, but nevertheless will help to build the writing skills necessary to produce that thesis.

IF you have have more than two pages of stuff to present then take more than two pages (this is quite likely if you have any length of work history and publications). Temporary work agencies might want 2 page cv's but academic cv's are not judged on length (either being short or long) but quality. They want to see all relevant information (including any memberships of professional bodies, publications etc).

Yeah I'd like to volunteer at a dog's home. Apparently you can walk dogs for Guide dogs for the Blind as well - the puppies who are in training to become fully fledged guide dogs.

You found any good dog vountary work Olivia?

An interesting piece in the New York Times:
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/

What do people think?

Spiegboy, How many hours per day do you need to spend in order to ensure you are devoting your heart and soul to your PhD?
I love your advice Spiegboy, it's so generic.

My answer Badhaircut is not to answer questions if you don't like them, instead of criticising people's English skills where English is not their first language. Universities will be able to quite adequately assess their English skills before admission using IELTS and other tools.

No Badhaircut our postgraduate system is very difficult to navigate particularly for foreign students. Alternatively it is pretty obvious that there are not many academic jobs for the number of people doing PhDs. There is a strong common theme running through these two issues: do your background research before you starting a PhD.

Please give me sponsorship to build a city kennel, to look after dogs who are cold this Christmas. All donations will be used responsibly.

I find it rather hypocritical that the same people who say they have no idea what the point of their PhD is (e.g. they can't find an academic job with it etc; have no imagination about how the PhD might be used in industry/voluntary/private sectors) find it so easy to criticise those who are trying to navigate the opaque postgraduate funding system. Those people who complain about these prospective postgraduates clearly didn't do adequate research of their own, since they were not aware of the fierce competition to get an academic job even with a PhD.

And on that note I'll leave you to moan amongst yourselves. I can't be bothered to engage with people who always want to see the negative side of things. That is not looking down on anyone. Just my choice in life.

But first you'll have to prove that you can actually get this academic job which you tell us you have the perfect qualifications for. But I imagine when you got to interviews you arrogantly put far too little emphasis on teaching skills, you are unwilling to engage with the enterprise agenda and your lack (I think you've said this) of publications counts against you because you think the Rae is rubbish and haven't produced enough to be taken seriously.

I am quite happy to take advice from anyone, however, if is productive and useful, though I think you've only told us ever what isn't possible with a PhD rather than what is possible.

In addition Matt I would never think you were capable of following any of the productive paths I set out but you did ask how those more proactive folks might be able to take the opportunities a PhD presents them with. I can just imagine you in 20 years a bitter old academic who hates the progressive direction that academia has taken, hates university management and all they want to do is retire (moaning about whatever system replaces the Rae bla bla bla). There's many of your type.