Hi,

I'm due to start a PhD in September, that I'm self funding. I was just wondering what people thought about working alongside full time study. Most advice I can find assumes that full time students are funded. I have a part time job which is 18.75 hours per week, would I be able to do a PhD full time alongside this? I feel I could comfortably dedicate 30 hours per week on my PhD in addition to these working hours.

Any thoughts?!

Thanks!!

Jem

Hi Jem,
My first thought would be do you have any other committments, children etc? My opinion is that if you were free to concentrate solely on your PhD and your p/t job, then it should definitely be do-able, with planning! If however you have children etc then I think you may be pushing it!

I don't think there's a 'right' answer as regards the hours. It varies from PhD to PhD but in my first year I could easily have worked a job full-time but there's absolutely no pace to my PhD (very unusual) and I've tried to kick start it with little success. My supervisors need to attend to things before I can go further and let's just say they're very relaxed in their approoach, unfortunately for me!

Thanks! That's very helpful - I have no committments - no children, not even a pet! And my supervisor is very supportive as he studied and worked. :-)

Hey there! I would say it definitely depends on what subject you are studying, and whether you are expected to be doing lab work or need to be out testing all day every day etc. Personally, there is no way I could fit 18 hours of work in per week around my PhD, even half that would be pushing it! But if the hours for your PhD and/or your job are flexible and you can adjust these to fit around other commitments then you might be just fine- I know people who work far fewer hours than me and who have done their PhDs alongside various other part-time jobs and have managed just fine! KB

There's been a few posts about the no. of hours needed to do a PhD lately, so you might want to check other threads too. 18.75 hours a week is doable, although the 30 hours a week will take up just about all of your free time. Even though you don't have dependents, there's always other commitments - housework, exercise, and a bit of a social life etc. But I worked 20 hours a week and studied for about 30 hours, and it was fine. Hard work, but definitely achievable.

I'm doing a PhD in Psychology, and it's a qualitative analysis of archival data, so I don't need to be recruiting participants or doing lab work. So hopefully 18.75 hours work is okay :)

Haha you lucky thing, I wish my data was ready and waiting for me lol! You should be fine with 18.5 hours of work on top of that- your analysis can be done whenever works best for you and you won't be pinned down to testing all day every day. Go for it! KB

I'm in my fourth and final year of a PhD. I have had no funding during that time and have consequently had to work to pay bills, etc. This has been quite tough. I work about 25 hours a week, however have sometimes done more, ie. 50!
Luckily my PhD is in the Humanities so I am not required to put long hours in a lab or similar facility. Nonetheless, I often feel that should I be unsuccessful in my doctorate, my university's unwillingness to financially assist me should be held responsible! Ha!

Good luck.

Tommy.