Some people do the masters part and then years later do the PhD (with ESRC funding) in a different discipline and on a different topic so there is no official need to have any link significant links between the two.

It is advantageous to have parts of your masters dissertation that can be expanded in your PhD thesis. But I have also heard people say that the main focus in the first year should be competing the masters part and it can be a big mistake to worry to much about the PhD and instead just concentrate on getting the masters completed with a good grade, then turning your full attention to the PhD.

The only tax which students are exempt from is council tax, plus studentships and scholarships don't attract income tax or NI. Students do pay income tax and NI on all other earnings exactly the same as everyone else.

If someone earns over the tax free allowance of around £6,400 (approx £125 a week) they will start to pay tax and NI. Being a student (or not) is irrelevant.

The only reason most students don't pay tax is becasue very few earn over £6400 a year! If you have earned less than this someone has made a mistake and you should claim it back, if you have earned over this amount you are probably paying the correct amount of tax.

It would look good on applications but the independent research would have to be peer-reviewed to really be accepted as a high-quality research. Perhaps it would be best to tailor the research to a particular journal or conference and see if it is accepted and then take things from there?

The article might have been written to come across as lighthearted/funny/satire etc but the content is still offensive. As a vice-chancellor he is always representing the university when he writes in a personal opinion capacity like this and he has to be very careful about offending people.

Using academic freedom to defend what he has said is pretty desperate - we are not discussing some research he has carried out that has unpopular findings, it is his personal opinion he is putting forward.

Surely female students, studying at Buckingham (paying £8000 or more in fees per year) have the right to feel offended if the person highest up in the institution says about them: "Enjoy her! She's a perk"?

If someone high up in a university makes offensive, nasty comments in a freely available newspaper they need to take the resulting criticism!

Benm, look at it logically:

How could the UK government possibly afford to subsidise the education of students coming to study in the UK from every single country in the world? They can't, so they don't.

There are some schemes to fund international students like international overseas research scholarships (funded by the UK government/British taxpayer), but the fact remains that if international students want to study in the UK they usually have to pay the going rate.

Because the fees UK students pay are subsidised by the govenment. The UK govermnet can afford to subsidise fees for UK students but couldn't afford to subsidise the fees of people coming to study in the UK from other countries. I believe in some cases the fees of EU students are also subsidised and it is only non-EU students that pay the full cost of their fees.

Higher education in Britain gains a large amount of its funding from the taxpayer, so students coming over from families who have paid nothing into the UK/UK higher education in tax won't be entitled to a subsidised education - they will therefore have to pay the full cost of their education. Might not sound fair but thats just the way it is.

There are overseas scholarships for foreign students studying in the UK, but like almost all other sources of postgraduate funding they are extremely competitive.

You could look into doing a Postgraduate Certificate or Diploma, as these should be easier to get onto with a third class undergraduate degree. If you do well in the Cert/Diploma some universities allow you to stay on and upgrade it to a full Masters degree.

Another option would be to do the PG cert/diploma through the open university, then go on to apply for the masters degree at the university you want. You would stand more of a chance with a 3rd plus a PG cert/diploma than just a 3rd class degree on its own.

Hmmm 7th at the latest? I guess they must have forgotten about me! I'll send off an email tomorrow but I'm guessing that if I'd been successful they would have informed me straight away. Always next year I guess!

Anyone still waiting for ESRC news? I am and its driving me mad!

phdnewbie,

Last year the universty I applied to for ESRC open competition found out on July 28th and informed me straight away via email. Assuming things happen at the same time this year I'm thinking its going to be at least a week or so yet until people are going to start finding out if they have been successful or not.

I was talking a lecturer at the university of leicester a few years ago who was supervising a social science Phd on the sport of Ultimate Frisbee and how it is growing in popularity across the UK. Not exactly weird but I bet there isn't too many people who have done PhDs on that topic.

Also, I'm just about to listen to the Thinking Allowed podcast (from BBC radio 4) and they are discussing the research into the 'ping pong' clubs in Thailand on that, and i'm very interested to hear how this has been studied as a topic of social research.

Depends what field you are looking to do a PhD in.

In the social sciences, arts and humanities most funded PhD studentships are advertised in Jan - March with deadlines in April/May and successful applicants starting in September/October. All research council ESRC/AHRC applications have passed for this year but there still might be a few studentships funded by universities, but not many at this time of year.

In the sciences I think it is a bit more likely to find studentships advertised throughout the year.

It is fine to cite supervisors work. Supervisors are bound to be recognised names in the research areas their PhD students are working in, meaning that during the course of writing a PhD thesis students will almost always cite the work of their supervisor at some point.

He is definatley trying to help you, and if his book is good it is logical, maybe even essential, to cite it. As long as you avoid the extremes (i.e. don't rip his work to bits, or be way over the top with praise) it will be absolutely fine and normal to cite your supervisors book!

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Eueu,

To me, your post just comes across as bizarre. Sorry but it does.

You are not seeing your youth “flee in front of your eyes” you are using your youth to get a PhD – something which will set you up for a fulfilling and productive career. So many people you age work in factories, shops or are unemployed. How do you think they feel about their youth passing them by? You are in a very privileged situation. You should appreciate that, not worry about not having made a 'famous discovery' aged 23 when practically no one else has either.

“It saddens me that PhD students do not get enough media attention on their projects”

Sorry but no one owes you attention. Got to work at producing work that is brilliant enough to achieve attention like, as BHC says, Ben Goldacre, Petra Boynton, Alain De Botton, Tim Harford or Tanya Byron, plus David Starkey etc have done this. Most PhD students don’t get media attention because they are STUDENTS. They may go on to produce brilliant attention-gaining work later in their career but just now they are too busy learning the skills they need to achieve later success. The media attention will have to wait for later. (Probably the same reason why there is little attention for trainee architects, artists, journalists, lawyers, politicians, and actors but quite a lot of attention for people at the top of these careers). The act of being a PhD student is not in itself enough to gain media attention.

I’m pretty sure that each discipline has its Associations and groups who celebrate the young people achieving things in their discipline, and as far as media attention goes you will have to be happy with that. Do you really thing mainstream media are going to deveote time to PhD students projects? Most peoples (non acadmic) mates aren’t that bothered about their work – why would the general public be? You seem to conflate successful academic careers and being a film star/celebrity which, in this post at least, which comes across as odd.

You say you cannot believe the negative attention this post is receiving in a Postgraduate forum which is meant for support. But support does not mean mindlessly accepting what people post. People responding were never going to blindly agree with you. Your claim of more media attention needing to be focused on PhD projects is a little strange and was always going to be contested and criticised on this forum.

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I know this isn’t going to be popular but here goes…

Academic careers are NOT poorly paid! This is a myth which has been bandied around so much that everyone seems to believe it without ever questioning it or researching it for themselves.

From the Times Higher Education March 2009:

“Figures collected by the HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency) show that UK academics on average earned a healthy £43,486 a year in 2007-08. [Recent wage rises] put academics ahead of some of their professional counterparts …Professors on average took home more than lawyers and solicitors, and lecturers more than quantity surveyors or secondary school teachers. Researchers took home an average of £31,915, up from £30,161 in 2006-07.

Moreover, academics also see the additional benefit of around 35 days’ annual leave and a final salary pension scheme.”

To put academic pay into perspective the average wage in the UK is around £23,000 a year. Working for the minimum wage would get you around £11,750 a year.

The belief that academics are “poorly paid” I find borderline offensive. People doing hard physical jobs with unsociable shift patterns for the minimum wage are poorly paid. Academics aren’t. Also, the belief that people on this thread think they could make more as a bus driver (average salary £18,500) shows how widespread the myth of academic poor pay is. Even police officers (on an average salary £34,000) earns less than the average academic salary of £43,486.

It is an absolute myth that people in other sectors make loads of money while poor academics have to make do on poverty salaries. Look at the facts – it is simply not true!

Obviously there are many jobs which pay more than academia, and many people who have left academia and made much more money elsewhere, I am not denying this at all. All I am pointing out (and I am trying to put a different point across in this debate, not start an argument/attack on anyone) is that academia is a field of work which is rewarding and fulfilling, work in a nice, comfortable environment and get a salary that is above the national average. Doesn’t sound too bad to me.