hi i have a question that might sound silly, but i'm french and not very sure of how it works in England! i'm about to start a phd and was wondering if it had to be done during 3 or more consecutive years???
like, can you start for a year, then decide to put it on hold for a year and go back to doing it afterwards? would you have to pay for the fees anyway?

i'm about to start my phd in Newcastle, but i was also thinking of doing a postgrad degree in france next year, my supervisor said i could live in france while doing my phd here in theory, but i'm not sure i can commit to both degrees at the same time. so i was thinking maybe i could start my phd this year, then put it on hold the time to complete my French degree next year?

thanks a lot for your answers

======= Date Modified 22 Nov 2008 18:03:46 =======
In theory, yes you can do it, but normally you require a good reason for doing so (e.g. long-term illness, pregnancy, family problems etc.). I doubt many institutions would look favourably upon someone taking a year off to do another degree elsewhere.

EDIT: If you do interrupt you don't pay fees, but you will also no longer receive any funding and your university membership may also be put on hold.

A good friend of mine attended Newcastle University and they were very strict with respect to students wanting time off or resitting exams etc.

I really think you should do one first, then the other - first complete the PhD then do the other postgrad course afterwards, or vice versa. A PhD is a LOT of work, more than you realise at the beginning, so you really need to be very committed to it.

It's a big deal to take a large chunk time off during a PhD, at my uni it has to be approved by two different committees at various levels, so it's not just something you can do because you feel like it. You can't argue with illness, births and deaths which are acceptable reasons for time out as MissSpacey said, but popping off to do another degree somewhere else seems a bit odd, without knowing any details. Have you mentioned your idea to your prospective supervisor? I would think he/she would like to know you were totally committed to your studies when you start, it's only fair. Alternatively, if this other postgrad course is really important to you now, perhaps you could defer starting your PhD for a year as you have a place, get the other course out of the way then start your PhD with no prospective interruptions. You should really decide what's most important now, in case you need to sort anything out, then stick to that decision. Good luck!

I'd have thought this might be a bit subject dependent. E.g. I can see this being much more problematic with a lab-based PhD than say a philosophy one. You can always suspend studies yes but the question would be how damaging it would be to the progress of the PhD and how much extra time it would then take.

hmm that's pretty complicated! well i'm doing a media studies/gender studies phd so I wouldn'have to be in a lab or anything, according to my supervisor it wouldn't actuallt matters if I didn't live in the same country while doing it... so at first I was thinking I could do both, start my phd, doing the other degree next year and then concentrate on my phd again, but i probably won't have as much time to concentrate on the phd for a year, and since it's pretty expensive I thought the best solution was to just "pause" it... i guess i'll have to ckeck with newcaslte university how things could work out!

I probably should have asked earlier, but I was curious about why you'd want to do both courses at the same time? Will the other postgrad course fill an intellectual gap or take you in a different direction to your PhD? Or if you do your PhD, will your interest in doing the other course disappear?

I was wondering, because I thought in the past, much earlier in my PhD, that maybe I should do a fashion history postgrad course at some point as I knew nothing about it, which left a big gap in my knowledge for my PhD work. I ended up having to do a lot more reading, but I don't feel any urge to do a course like that now, as my PhD includes enough of that subject to get by with my undergrad teaching and to finish my research. I will still do a postgrad certificate in teaching after I complete my PhD though, as it's a different set of skills and a different qualification.

I don't know whether it's relevant to your case, but some PhD students at my uni have done short courses and training, though mostly technical (video editing) because it was necessary for their PhD research, so it was organised and paid for by the uni. Depends what you want to do, I guess, and on the uni.

hello,
well the other course is completely different actually... i wanna do a phd since im interested in the subject, but then, im not really sure i wanna be a lecturer all my life which seems to be the main objective with a phd (about that, what is a postgrad degree in teaching? i thought the phd was enough to teach in England?). im really interested in doing it and writing about my topic, but the other course would allow me to do more jobs in the future and id like to keep my options open. i dont know if thats possible but well...

another idea: do you think that would be achievable if i was doing my phd part time?

======= Date Modified 24 Nov 2008 21:32:12 =======
I guess it all depends on various things really... how interested are you in doing the PhD and the other course - is one more interesting to you than the other? Would it make any difference in the long run if you postponed one of them, completing the other first? How will both these courses be funded, and will you have financial considerations to take into account? Also, how good do you think you are at juggling different and sometimes conflicting responsibilities?

I can only answer whether it's possible to do other things from my own experience. I'm doing my PhD part time while also working part time. It's a lot of extra work and frequently quite stressful dividing my time between these things, even though they're related. Quite often after a heavy term's teaching I realise I've done absolutely no work on my PhD for months, and it takes quite a while to mentally pick it up again and remember where I was with it, even though it was only 3 months earlier. The positive thing about it is that I don't think it's as isolating as being a full time PhD student and I am working, which is obviously useful financially in the present dodgy economic climate. I really like teaching and doing research, so I do want to stay in academia afterwards as I like my subject more now than when I started.

I was thinking of doing a postgrad certificate in teaching after my PhD because from 2010 there will be a requirement for all teachers in Higher Education to have or be working towards a teaching qualification. It's not necessary now, as you pointed out, but I think I should be able to get my fees paid by my uni if I'm lucky, plus get more teaching work, so I might as well do it now while the money's there. It'll just be an extra thing that should be useful when I'm applying for jobs in the future and shouldn't take up much time. I half thought of doing the teaching certificate a few years ago when my uni seemed to be extremely keen to fund people to do it, but in the end I just didn't have the time or mental energy to do it on top of everything else.

If that other course you want to do is a vocational one that will give you more job choices in the future, maybe you could leave it until after your PhD, if you can do it later on, and pursue whatever you find most interesting right now. Some things you can do any time, because there isn't an age or a time limit on them. If you do several things at once, it seems fairly likely it will dilute the amount of energy and commitment you can give to them, with a possible impact on the quality of the work you produce, although it ultimately depends on you. You've already got a place for your PhD, so maybe start that and see how it goes. You'll be making a more informed assessment of your situation by then, but it all seems a bit abstract right now, from what you've said. I think there are usually options to transfer to part time status from originally starting as a full time student on PhDs, but you could check with your uni. Also, lecturing isn't the only option after doing a PhD, other ideas are likely to pop up along the way. Best of luck with it!