Your first problem with be that most universities will have minimum periods of candidacy so you are unlikely to be able to enrol somewhere for a year to complete for example. More seriously though if your research involves human subjects as I imagine it might well do, then not having ethical approval for your specific project will make it very hard to get a supervisor to take it on part way through. Finally, as an employee you probably do not own the intellectual copyright to the research data you are currently using, so it may not be possible for you to use it in a thesis unless your current employer agrees. The simplest way would be to see if you ca enrol as a staff candidate where you are working - the fees are often low in that case - and use your PI as a supervisor.

Ants I think you are reading things into this that are unnecessary. Your university has procedures, and your examiners and supervisors have to follow them. Why because if they don't, they are open to being sued by disgruntled PhD students, who don't like the outcome of their viva. It's not because they are sitting there thinking how best to ruin your birthday or Christmas, it's because they are being professional and following the rules. It is unlikely that you will fail after minor corrections, but it sounds like you are demanding cast-iron guarantees that they cannot give (if you refuse to do the corrections for example - and yes I do know someone who did just that as he was convinced of his own intellectual superiority over the examiners - you have to fail). Your supervisor also can't guarantee you will pass (not one of the examiners) and sounds to be offering as much as can be offered within the rules.
Many universities have moved away from giving lists of corrections at vivas, because they were often unclear and couldn't reflect the actual viva. It's in fact seen as bad practice to do that. Where I work the examiners have a certain period of time to complete both a report for the student and a stack of other paperwork, then the dean has to agree the corrections are reasonable and clear. If the dean queries something, the list has to be reagreed with both examiners. This is all in the student's best interest but it only takes an admin error, or someone to be ill, submerged as is usual at this time of year in undergraduate marking or to experience a family crisis, for delays to stack up. Check your uni regulations and see if you are given a deadline for receiving the report, but then chase the postgraduate / faculty office responsible for the process not the examiners.

£3.50 per essay and a bit less for exams where I work.

Do you want to get a PhD any more? If not, it might be right to quit but if it's still something that motivates you, I would give it more time. Like you say, doing the courses will help you meet people. Also is there an Erasmus society? Even if they're younger, it can be immensely helpful to share the stranger aspects of your new country with other foreigners. Estonian language classes (yes I know it's an impossible language) might also help you meet people in a similar position.
I just wanted to add that you're also living in a new country and in about the time period when the honeymoon period when everything is new and exciting is over, and all you can see is the difficulties in living in a different country and the things you don't like. Google culture shock - you might find yourself recognising a few of your feelings in the description. From experience, it does get better but you've got to make a conscious effort to keep busy to get through the tough time. Think about how you can do the things you like to do there, plan weekend sightseeing trips etc - anything that gets you out of the house and distracts you will help a bit.

If you are contractually obliged to be on campus three days a week, are you prepared to lose your stipend for breach of contract? I certainly wouldn't do this without written permission. I imagine your supervisor will be concerned as they will think it is a lack of committment to finishing on time (especially if you are research council funded).
You'd be more likely to get teaching hours at one of the post-1992s which will have fewer PhD students needing teaching hours. Unless you have an unusual and in demand specialism, the others probably would give preference to their own students as known quantities who they have some obligation to train. TA hours won't be advertised - the only way in would be to write a speculative letter to the HoD more than a semester in advance. Be prepared for the request for a letter of support & recommendation from your supervisor. You also aren't guaranteed user-friendly timetabling so it can be very time-consuming.

Eimeo, there really is a massive problem of over-supply of PhDs in the arts for the academic jobs available (this is true to an even greater extent in the sciences & social sciences but the training is at least more easily transferable in some cases). It's probably not anything you have done wrong that's stopping you. It's structural. I do blame your university for not having made this clear and helped you develop a plan B in case (as is likely) academia doesn't work out - I really can't understand why the AHRC isn't pushing this more onto their funded departments. There have been quite a lot of redundancies in the UK, and then people in lectureships at universities with known financial problems are also looking to move to less-threatened departments, couple this with the well-known last year of REF transfer activity, and currently the market is next to impossible for new PhDs. I think once the REF cycle closes, things might be a little less frenetic in terms of publication expectations but even then government policy means that it's very risky for universities to hire into permanent posts as they can no longer guarantee undergrad recruitment. THat basically means greater reliance on buying in hourly paid teaching - and as we know there are plenty of under / unemployed PhDs only too willing to do it, as it keeps them in the game. For your own sanity, I'd give yourself a set amount of time to break away, develop plan B and if it doesn't happen implement it.

Human - was your PhD funded by the university or a research council? If so, I doubt you actually own the intellectual property. Check your university website for the rules on PhDs and IP but frequently the university owns the intellectual property of research carried out there. If you are in science I think this is even more likely to be the case.

I would agree. It sounds like they're making sure your interests are protected.

I think you need to figure out how they've got hold of it. Is it posted anywhere online legitimately? If so, you could contact the webmaster for that site and point out that someone is plagiarising their content. They might be willing to go into battle on your behalf on copyright grounds. If not, who had access to it who might have done this? Did you share it with friends / colleagues for feedback?

I published mine as articles. It was the easiest way to get publications out quickly and I needed to add to my cv to get a job (like yours mine would have needed a lot of revision to be viable as a book). However, it depends very much what sort of institution you are teaching in - I have a very conservative HoD who clearly doesn't rate me because I don't have a book. So it can come back to hurt you in terms of promotion. How safe is your job and how much do you need to be seen to take his advice?

What is not clear from your posts is whether you have actually been through the appeals and complaint process of your institution yet. If not, I would do so systematically. Your student union will have people able to advise. You wouldn't need a lawyer to do this. What you would need to do though, is to try to separate out your upset feelings from factual failings / errors that you can prove. It is the latter that will count and should form the basis of your appeal against failing. If you have completed the complaint / appeal process, then you can take your case to the office of the independent adjudicator for higher education. I mention this because these are ways that might get you some satisfaction and will not cost you money.

Like the others I also suspect going to the media might be counter-productive. You would need to be very careful that what you said was not libel as then the university or your supervisor could sue you. That's what mackem beefy was meaning.

Do you mean the proposal for applying to do a PhD or the formal proposal you have to submit to the university for things like ethical approval after you've started? I think my initial one was 3 pages (that was then the ESRC maximum) and the formal approval was on a form so it had quite tight space constraints for each section.

Emaa is there a public library nearer? I did manage to get chunks of a chapter written in the reference section of a tiny library - for some reason I found a change of scene really helped. Another thing I did when I got really blocked was to move up a trip to an archive that I was going to have to visit at some point. I found that I could work there as I knew that I wouldn't forgive myself for wasting money if I didn't. And when I got back home after a week's absence, I finished the chapter I'd been stuck on for weeks in days.

======= Date Modified 18 Nov 2012 20:07:57 =======
Hi,

I think it's understandable to be cautious, although unless the student is very thick she should realise that she can't turn in a dissertation similar to yours because your joint supervisor will promptly recognise plagiarism. What I think you could possibly do is either offer to meet the student if feasible or send some suggestions for where she can find data. That way you look helpful but don't send your research. I'm assuming that your Masters dissertation isn't held in the university library by the way - if that's the case, I'd just send it as a read-only pdf as she can access it anyway. You could of course try to encourage said student down an alternative route by sending some really useful sources for a neighbouring topic and say she's right that there's not much data and in retrospect, you wished you'd looked at b instead of a.