That really does change matters. I think your boss has put your colleague/ supervisor in an extremely awkward position that's really unfair to both of you. I think you should definitely go for a different university if you can afford it financially and time-wise. I'm guessing from your situation (unless you're in law or education) that you're at a teaching focussed institution, so in career terms, it might be better for you anyway to get a PhD from a research-focused university.

Will your scholarship cover the fees charged by British universities? If so, you need to look for one that is open to the idea of distance-learning for PhDs and doesn't require you to spend at least a year at the university taking research training courses. This might knock out the top-ranked universities as many are stricter on these type of issues. You really need to ask this institute in Madrid what previous students have done, as what you want to do is a bit unusual, so precedents might be helpful. Is the scholarship part of a wider collaborative project with a few institutions involved by any chance? If so, one of the partner institutions might be willing to take you on.

My suspicion is that what you describe is predominantly a problem in science where there a loads of authors on papers, everyone ublishes loads of papers, and the question of who's contributed what in the lab can be a bit blurred at the best of times, allowing anyone who is unscrupulous to take full advantage. It's much harder in other subjects where single authored work is the norm and where if you suddenly started publishing on something there'd been no signs of you working on, then alarm bells would ring.
If you or others have evidence of actual plagiarism, i.e. theft of work published elsewhere, why don't you complain to the journal that's published the work? Science journals do investigate and retract articles if there's proof.

Hi Caroline,

Best thing to do is to ask your department's ERasmus coordinator or international office for help. They can tell you which of their agreements are also for PhD students - some are just for BA/MA students. You then need to apply for one of the places and hope your coordinator picks you - it can be good therefore to pick somewhere less popular. Obviously though you've got to apply somewhere where you could do something helpful in a semester or 2 for your PhD project! The grants are very small though.

Erasmus Mundus is a bit different I think, in that it seems to be grants for masters courses that are split between several countries and they can be outside of Europe.

Really don't think of this in terms of letting people down. If you do decide to quit, then you've tried something and it's not really for you - there's no shame in that. I'd suggest two things: find out exactly what would be needed to finish up with the Masters and make an appointment with the university counselling service to get someone neutral to talk this through with.
I think your parents are wrong to assume it will only take two years. If you are struggling, it may well take a lot longer than that and if you don't really enjoy it, then it's going to be a miserable time, so seriously thinking through whether this is or isn't a good thing for you is the right thing to do. I'm guessing from your post that a research career isn't top of your list now for future employment, so maybe also talking to someone in the careers service about what careers might excite you would help too. If you could get a clear idea of where you'd like to be in a few years time, then you could also figure out whether a PhD is actually likely to help.

Can you use your second supervisor's question as a spur to get your first supervisor and yourself to agree a schedule? He might be embarrassed to have to own up to his colleague that he's not reading your stuff and you've then got a legitimate reason for pushing him a bit more openly to get comments back to you. I'm like you and tbh I need deadlines as otherwise I can procrastinate forever. I think I'd definitely own up to supervisor 1 how you're feeling and just ask him to help you get back on course by drawing up a plan.

Thanks all for the support! I was rather taken aback by the response. I don't know really why I'm bothering but heh:

OP - assuming from the additional info you gave, you are trying to get a +3 award then I would suggest the following course of action:

Get some feedback from someone (probably the person in charge of PhD students in your department), who was on the committee that decided the quota and open places and who is NOT your proposed supervisor, on why you were unsuccessful. You need to know if the problem was you, your project (from what you say about it, it might be that they think it's too close to the supervisors' work and not original), or that your proposed supervisors are viewed poorly as a supervisory team for some reason. You need top ranking in all three areas so you need to know what the weakness is and whether the problem is fixable. You also need a clear answer to whether it is worth you trying again next year at all. Being offered a place in itself is nice, but doesn't mean that the dept. necessarily considers you a serious option for funding.

If you are told yes, you've got a good shot if you sort out a b and c, then the more sensible option is to either defer completely or start part-time as moussec suggests.

If they aren't encouraging then you need to revisit how much you want to do a PhD and why. Think seriously about who else could supervise it elsewhere if it's the project that drives you. If you intend to concentrate on the work of those two people, then possibly you might gain from having someone supervise it with a less personal stake in the outcome.

I really wouldn't take out a big bank loan (assuming anyway in the current climate, you can find any bank that will fund a year of a PhD on the gamble of subsequently getting funding) unless you / partner / parents have independent wealth such that it does not represent a personal risk.

Y - This depends a bit on you. Have you already got the research MA or would the first year be doing that? I'm not sure anyway you'll be able to get a bank loan for a PhD but you would probably get a career development loan for a research training MA and at least then you'd have a recognised qualification at the end of a year if a second funding bid was unsuccessful. I would definitely defer rather than starting a PhD proper though as I think you'd be disqualifying yourself from funding if you did start as there aren't any +2 awards.
ESRC funding is very hard to get though and I don't see it getting easier next year. Also what subject and how flexible are you regarding where you do the PhD? If it's something like Politics which is hideously over-subscribed then you really need to apply nationally wherever has a decent number of quota awards to have much of a chance (and in reality have both a 1st and / or a distinction at MA) - keeping with one university is very risky. If it's a less over-subscribed subject then it might be less so. Finally, it depends what you want to do with the PhD. Personally, I would not self-fund a social sciences PhD with the hope of an academic job in the future having seen what happened to a couple of my cohort who did. Why? The reality is a) very few jobs and thanks to the RAE funding settlement the future isn't looking bright and b) getting those jobs often requires hanging around for a year or two on poorly paid part-time teaching or research assistant jobs and being very flexible about location - if you have bank loans due for repayment then the financial realities are such that you have to get a proper job fast.

Is your review with people other than your supervisors? It might be the ideal point to raise concerns about the parameters of your project and get a perspective from other academics. Do you get the chance to submit a confidential progress report for example that you could say that you're a bit worried? But I think you might be panicking too much and that's possibly why your supervisors aren't too concerned. I think it's pretty normal for the first year to be as much about adjusting to being a research student and figuring out what does and doesn't work.
When you say you feel like you're moaning to your supervisors, rather than just giving them a list of problems, are you also suggesting changes, new approaches to resolve matters? If you weren't, maybe you could prepare a document that said what you think the best way forward is, for discussion with your supervisors? If you did that after your progress review, you could phrase it as, 'the progress review and the comments I got really made me think again about the project. This is my effort at responding to them - what do you think supervisors?'. I can't see how anyone could see that as being anything other than constructive.

I suspect it's the downside of doing a PhD at a teaching not research intensive university. MMU didn't enter your department in the RAE by the looks of things, so I guess research resources are not going to be prioritised, and that does mean things like limited access hours, because it's expensive to provide the relevant security / health and safety cover needed. They'll choose things to help undergrads over research students because that's their priority. Somewhere like Manchester Uni on the other hand that really pushes research, and expects their lecturing staff to be in the lab at all hours and their research students with them, would probably make the opposite decision. I suppose the question your position raises, is whether teaching intensive universities should offer PhDs in areas like science where resources are so crucial.

Several thoughts spring to mind. First - it is pretty normal for the first year not to really produce anything usable. Even if you think it has, a year down the line you tend to look at what you wrote and cringe. That at least is what I and most of my friends found. So the pile of work you have, is not that unusual.

Second - you're not sure if you really want to continue. There's a book by Philips and Pugh called something like 'how to get a Phd' and there's a chapter in it that looks at how people get and don't get PhDs. You've probably already read it but it might be worth rereading as there were a few case studies about people in the business studies field, who found that they could achieve what they wanted better outside the framework of a PhD than within it. It might be worth thinking dispassionately about what you want out of this and whether the PhD is the best way to get there. If you really are not enjoying it and it is making you so depressed, is it worth it? Unfortunately, being an academic means basically spending most of your life being told your best isn't good enough (rejections from journal submissions and grant proposals, teaching evaluations, people tearing your conference papers to shreds and ever-rising demands from university managers) - I think unless you really enjoy what you're doing, the constant barrage of criticism is not worth it.

Third - however I phrase this, it's probably going to irritate you but here goes. How much of this do you think is down to you having a painful adjustment from being a successful professional (presumably if you were senior then that means you were used to having pretty favourable appraisals) to being a student again? I think it's hard enough going as I did from always being one of the best BA/MA students, to being told my work wasn't good enough and needed complete redrafting at PhD level. It takes a while to get used to the level they expect. But I think it would be much harder in your situation - particularly if your PhD is related to your old job, when it would be hard to have work on something you think you're expert on being criticised. A friend had a similar nightmare 1st year and he said it was only when he realised that they were critiquing his written work and his understandings of key literature, not his professional competence in his former job, that he was able to take it less personally. His ended up a great thesis and he now is friends with the supervisor he hated, and says the criticism actually had to be done otherwise he wouldn't have passed.

The project summary should basically be like an abstract of your proposal but framed in language that would be understandable to a non-expert. Focus on the overall goals and timeline of the project. It really needs to be very clear, so get someone critical to read it.

Last year references were not included in the 2 page limit but this is something I'd double check with your supervisor, if reliable on such matters, or your dept. postgrad administrator if not... Last year they only clarified this and a few other things very late in the day, so it's worth keeping an eye on the website in case they post a FAQs document. Have you got the guidelines for completion?
http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Images/Studentship%20proposal%20guidance%20notes%202009%20(4)_tcm6-25861.pdf

OK- in that field a 2:2 is a bit more problematic than it seems to be in the sciences. The less picky universities probably won't mind. Quite a few good universities though will let you enrol initially for a postgrad diploma with the idea that you can then continue onto the MA dissertation (the only difference) if you do well enough on the taught section. This could be an option and worth trying to ask about with course leaders. It would though probably only work if you were willing to stay at the same institution. OK Oxbridge and LSE probably wouldn't but I think it'd be worth asking elsewhere.

BUT I think you need to be very careful if you don't know exactly what you want to do because, I THINK and hope someone else can confirm or deny this, that the new ELQ rules that come in next academic year mean that you can only pay the subsidised home (rather than more expensive ELQ or in some places international fees) for one degree at the same level. THis is definitely true now for people wanting to do two BA degrees and I suspect a PGDip at the Open University and any subsequent stand-alone MA you wanted to do might fall into the same trap. So it might be worth hanging on until you're very sure what you want to do and then asking whether they'd let you initially register for a PGDip if they say a 2:2 isn't acceptable for the MA.

Your nationality (and that of your husband) is irrelevant - it is all about your length of residence in the UK. You have to have been living in the UK or EU for three years before the start of the course to be able to pay home fees. Universities are strict about this and I imagine the other student you mention had spent 3 years here before starting the course.

I would imagine your supervisor is concerned that you were discourteous to the people who were still to present / were presenting when you left - especially if it was a smallscale invitation only event where your absence would have been obvious (and thus embarassing for your supervisor). As someone who has never been able to learn by listening, I also find conferences hard and get very little out of them, but if you do go then I think you have to think about displaying a professional persona and be polite to the presenters even if you're not getting much out of it. It would be better to leave before the chat/ networking muttering about a dental appointment or similar than to leave during the presentations if you feel really stuck.