I am an international student in the UK and am about to complete my MEng in EE. I am very keen on taking a doctorate course but I also want to work in the industry. The EngD course seems like the perfect match for me in this sense.
Everywhere I look, I find people saying that a doctorate is never worth it if you're paying for it. I am not eligible for EPSRC funding so I will be funding myself. My question here is that is it worth it considering how much money I will be paying?

Being an international student you might not have heard about the recent advances for women in engineering and other science careers. To comply with new equality regulations, lots of universities now have grants for women. Some are for general topics e.g. http://www.imd.org/programs/mba/fees/Funding-for-Women.cfm and others are specific to subjects like engineering e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25300669

My advice is to find a course you like and then find out what is on offer for women at that university. If you have any problems, contact the Equalities Officer there. It is very soon going to be more or less mandatory for universities to provide special access for women to careers in science subjects, so don’t take no for an answer.

Hope this helps :)


PS someone PMd me asking about funding for universities that don't give special access for women for science education and career development. The position is that the NIHR (to be followed by the other major funders) will soon only be funding institutions that comply with gender equality standards (an Athena SWAN silver award): "The NIHR has stated that for future competitions to designate and fund NIHR Biomedical Research Units, Biomedical Research Centres, and Patient Safety Translational Research Centres, it does not expect to short-list any NHS/University partnership where the academic partner (often the Medical School/Faculty of Medicine) has not achieved at least the Silver Award of the Athena SWAN Charter for Women in Science" http://www.ris.port.ac.uk/athenaswan/nihr-statement-on-funding-links-to-athena-swan-silver-status/