Hi,

I've just recently finished an open university degree in Natural sciences, specialising in chemistry and biology and I'm look at doing my masters next, as I don't feel confident in jumping straight into a PhD. I'd really like to do my PhD distance when I get to it, is this possible? Or if not what part time bioscience PhD's are available and what sort of hours are 'part time.'

I just seem to get lost in endless mouse clicking when I try to google information.

Thanks :)

Natasha

I think it depends what sub discipline of biology/chem you will be doing. How would you do lab work if you were long distance? Part time hours would be expected to be around 20 hours per week. Most PhDs that are advertised can be done part time rather than full time, but bear in mind you will probably be at a disadvantage when applying as supervisors would prefer full time students.

If it's not too personal a question: why do you want to do a PhD by distance learning?

While distance learning is not uncommon at Bachelors or Masters level, it is much less common for PhDs. Where it does occur, some disciplines lend themselves far more than others. Bioscience generally does not. The only scenario I can think of where a distance learning approach may be preferable for a bioscience topic would be where one lived in area X which is the unique habitat of species Y which one wanted to study, but there are few/no universities locally, so a PhD would have to be accredited by a remote institution. Even then there would need to be at least a few meetings over the course of the study. Another option where it would be possible, though not necessarily preferable would be some kind of bioinformatics project analysing data generated by others. Obviously distance learning wouldn't work at all if the PhD require access to lab facilities - funding shortages being what they are, one would be unlikely to be allowed to pop into one's local university to use their lab without being a registered student.

Some further things to bear in mind:
- you have experience of distance learning, but this might not extrapolate to PhD level. There will be no classmates, no-one on the same journey. All PhDs are lonely to a degree, even if carried out face to face.
- if you go down the part time route for a lab project, make sure the experimental work lends itself to it. Some experiments can easily be put down and picked up, others require regular/daily attention. Do not get involved in cell culture! :)
- universities in the UK are increasingly hung up on students finishing 'on time' and have regulations on the maximum time allowed for completion, even for part timers. It's not very common to have part time bioscience students but I imagine 2 days a week would be the absolute minimum time permitted.

I've just completed a laboratory-based biomedical PhD after obtaining a similar Open University BSc to you (actually a BSc Life Sciences, but it contained a mixture of biology and chemistry modules). I would reiterate what others have already said, it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to find a distance learning PhD in the biosciences, as most projects involve a substantial amount of laboratory work. Part-time PhDs are certainly possible, but would be dependent on the nature of the research, and funding might be a problem. I did a Masters first (an MRes to get the necessary laboratory experience), and then got a fully-funded PhD (in spite of being in my late fifties!). I think a similar strategy might be your best bet.