Is anyone else fed up with people that just simply say 'I am a graduate in ... and am looking for a PhD, if anyone has one please email me on...' I find this really stupid that people think that supervisors will come looking for them and just offer them a place. These people are totally clueless about how to go about getting a project. Is there no way that the findaphd team can filter these messages out of the forum, they are annoying.

bloody hell stu, you really do have an axe to grind about this. I totally sympathise with you but I think you need to make a nice cuppa, maybe have a hob nob or two and relax before you give yourself a gastric ulcer

Anon is right, it is annoying (as a female, I find the ones which start 'Sir' especially irritating!) but not worth the gastric ulcer! One also lives in hope that having found the forum, the message posters will also find the 'PhDs Explained' and 'Funding' links and perhaps be able to put the information to good use.

One can hope in vain!

We must bear with this, how ever much we scream and shout every few days someone will post a similar query.

I think Stu is right though! This forum must be an awful dissapointment to some, since I imagine they never get any interviews. Nothing better than emailing potential supervisors yourself and getting invited to have a look around a department..

Unfortunately such questions are inevitable. We could make the forum more difficult to find, ensuring that visitors go to the search page first, then to PhDs explained etc, before being allowed on the forum. However, we don't think hiding the forum is a good solution. What we do do is move such posts into the 'General' section of FindAPhD or delete the ones that have absolutely no chance of an answer.

Within the next couple of months this forum will be expanding and will have a more explicit 'Removed Threads' section which will be the dumping ground for many of the posts you describe. It will give reasons why a thread has been removed - thus allowing the person who wrote it the chance to re-phrase their message.

haha, half the people on these threads sound like they need lobotomies rather than PhDs! I particularly enjoy seeing the posts which demand/expect funding based on the fact they live in India and use capital letters a lot.

During my Msc, I had to work with some of these students from [COUNTRY NAME REMOVED BY MODERATOR]. What I notice was that they didn't read a lot. They expected that other persons should read and them tell them what to do. I found this ridiculus and irritating. Not only that they didn't even know the difference between a title page and an acknowledgement. They were spitful as well. I was very disappointed and miserable during my course. I expected to gain so much from a UK Uni only to be held back by people who's ambition was to work in McDonalds and Burger King.

As an overseas student I spent over 15,000p for my education, which came from my parents. My question is..why do some UK uni take students that cannot pull their weigh? and why are some courses just full of these people. Some of them are reprobates...they use to fart, don't say sorry but that it was a gift from God.

Most of them are usually sick when it was time to have group meetings. They would call up to say that they have TEMPERATURE. It was amazing to me that5/6 members would I have the same sickness at the same time. I came to the conclusion that these people had a gene for fever that was continually expressed but repressed in the rest of us. Not only that they were disrespectful and always harassing other students. By january most of the good students dropped the course because of these people.

Zoe - We are not here to answer for universities who accept below par candidates. However, the nationality of these students is not relevant to your question.

Although it was probably not your intention to imply that all students from a single country do not treat their education seriously this is the view that your comments portray. Your question about some UK universities allowing underqualified students to take inappropriate courses is valid - it is not valid to assert that all such students come from the same country.

hardline zoe! Its sad that for a number of factors, lots of bright graduates go into jobs, whilst the rest stay in academia! Cutting the number of pointless, unemployable degree courses at former polys might help...

How about a new category "PhD wanted in..."? A bit of simple programming and all "I am looking for a PhD in ..." messages could be punted there automatically?!

John, you are right. If some former Polytech, which claim to be University stop, offering courses that they can't teach might help

As has been pointed out most of these students do not come from the UK. They come from a different culture and some are struggeling with the English language. For us it is obvious that their requests will be ignored because we know how our society "works". In their home country they could maybe expect (?)a helpful reply to a general "find me a PhD" plea.