Hello everyone, I have stumbled into this forum and really thought it wouldbe interesting to know about your experiences. I did obtain my PhD a few years ago from a major Uk uni. In my experience, there was a clear pressure from my supervisor and other people in the dept. to extend the length of my self funded phd from 3 to 4 years. That is what i was told at least, since i don't know what would have happened if i hadn't fought back, handing in without the supervisor approval, and pulling it off in 4 years including the obvious minor emendments bit. Probably i would still be there, forever re-phrasing my entire theses in a more academic style....I am not going to bore you with more accurate details, but it was pretty blatant to me that what was initially presented as a 3 years course was effectively expected to last (and to be payed for) 4 to 5 years. In my department theres something like 50 research students, you are talking hundreds of thousands of pounds every year excluding the gov funding, it's a humanistic subject, so thats definitely no crumbs for them.
Question to all of you: could you really rule out that many of your bad experiences with supervisors arent actually rooted in economical targets to be met by lecturers within the departments? This wouldnt exclude the lecturers who push students to hand in early in order to keep the uni ratings high, i think the economical optimum is reached by different depts/disciplines in different ways. Needless to say, my research was badly hurt by the whole situation, i wrote a work that wasnt anything near the level i could have written, still nobody really cared. They needed me to be enrolled a certain amount of years. Any thoughts anyone?

Well, of course departments and unis are under a lot of pressure to deliver revenue by whatever means and it stand to reason that those lecturers/potential supervisors who are ruthless will exploit potential and current PhD studnts in order to meet their targets. My first sup, I am almost certain, fits into this category: no real background in my topic, very keen and promising me the earth until I actually signed on the dotted line and delivered my fee payment, after which point becoming distant and beyond unhelpful.

My uni has quite a good system for fee payments in some respects: it costs the same to complete a PhD as a full or part-time student, the payments are just made over a shorter or longer priod. I do not understand why, in your situation, you didn't go part-time for all or part of your PhD process, thus keeping the fee situation on an even keel.

'Well, of course departments and unis are under a lot of pressure to deliver revenue by whatever means and it stand to reason that those lecturers/potential supervisors who are ruthless will exploit potential and current PhD studnts in order to meet their targets.'

Well guys, is this such an obvious thought??! I mean, it looks to me as a very serious conflict of interests, where the party that takes the money can decide to take much more without giving any substantial reason for this! I wouldnt dismiss it that lightly, even because once entered the academia you will have to deal with it again, if only as a witness or co-supervisor.

To answer the query about my experience, I payed a few hundred pounds for an extension, then handed in anyway, got it back for the minor amendments that dont require any further payment, then handed in the final version which went through, by that time the exact 4 years had passed. I am pretty sure they took the money from gov funding though, since it was a few years ago and the funding was still per enrolled student. Anyway, my problem wasnt the money they wanted from me, it was the waste of time and energy that this situation created, and the consequent disruption to my work.

In more general terms though, the problem is not about the fees , the problem is about the general practice of unis with regard to research students. Once you are in and have invested money and time, you are effectively at the mercy of your supervisor. In my uni the supervisor chooses all the examiners of your course! So, no way out there.

I think one of the problems with phds is that there are many agendas superimposing on the research work of the student. They can be academic agendas (sups pressurising you to use methodologies/resources that are relevant to their own work), very personal (control freaks, overpowering, bullying, this happens all the time in any working environment). But they can also be economical agendas. In many cases all these issues come to life together.

I think there is a problem of transparency that unis should address, the completion of a phd is too much connected to the funding system of the institution. Plus, would be handy to have very clear statistics. We finally had a completion survey made public last year or so (but why did it take so long?), however it doesnt tell me much that  at some unis 90 % of full time phds are completed in 7 years, i want to know how many are completed in the advertised 3, and then 4, 5 and 6. And I would like to know how much money the uni takes from the tax payers, and what are the precise criteria for awarding those money. Maybe it would be also interesting to know if there has been some change in the rate of completion for phds when the law changed 2 or 3 years ago: I believe it went from awarding funding on the basis of the no of enrolled students to considering the no of completed phds instead. Wonder why anyone felt the need to change that law?

I have seen some posts from academic on here, maybe they want to help us to understand?

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[quote]Quote From Dr_Strangelove:

'Well, of course departments and unis are under a lot of pressure to deliver revenue by whatever means and it stand to reason that those lecturers/potential supervisors who are ruthless will exploit potential and current PhD studnts in order to meet their targets.'

Well guys, is this such an obvious thought??! I mean, it looks to me as a very serious conflict of interests, where the party that takes the money can decide to take much more without giving any substantial reason for this! I wouldnt dismiss it that lightly, even because once entered the academia you will have to deal with it again, if only as a witness or co-supervisor.

I don't entirely understand your respone: I was agreeing with you, not dismissing your words, and , yes, from where I am sitting, with my experience of several competitive career areas, including academia, it is a very obvious thought: there are always ruthless people in any given area and they will exploit who ever they can however they can, especially when their careers depend on it. And yes, of course, I agree with your opinion on the other kinds of exploitation experienced by PhD students, not least because I have experienced all of them first hand and because they have been discussed by others, at length, on this forum many times. The issue of regulating the PhD process in order to make it less exploitative has been a popular one too - we have never, ever ruled out the idea that these experiences are rooted in economic concerns. We support eachother here, and try to get through this often exploitative ad demoralising process; unfortuately, we are not in a position to change the system. If you have any ideas which will help us do that, then please offer them up.

Also mods: THERE REALLY IS A DEMAND FOR A POSTDOC FORUM, Strangelove, and I suspect others, want to discuss topics with postdocs and established academics, not necessarily with PhD students.

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I think this could be a really interesting discussion, but it's not really a question about funding and timetabling as your title suggests, and it would help if you credited PhD students with a bit more awareness of their situation re the realities of economics to academic life, we are not that dim. Plus, I think the post would be better responded to if you had a definite point that you want to discuss which is indicated, clearly, in the heading and in the text of your original post. It seems to me that you want have a discussion about the intricacies of the impact of departmental economics on the PhD process in various disciplines, and, I am hoping, something of a discussion about how to make the process more 'transparent'; although that has been hoped for often on this forum - isn't it a pretty well discussed issue generally, I've seen articles on this in the press - I'm not sure PhD students have enough knowledge of the other side of academia to conduct a thorough discussion - we could offer you suggestions of what we'd like though, but you'd need to make it clear that is what you want.