Hello,

I have recently started a PhD and so far, I must say I am not really enjoying it.

To make matters worse I am having some problems with my funding.

When I applied for this PhD the 'job description' said I would be have a stipend of £16,500 per year with £1K increments per year. Having heard nothing to the contrary, I went ahead and signed a lease to live in a nice shared house, which I would be able to afford with this stipend. I also should say I left my well paid job, thinking this would be a good career move.

After a month at my PhD I was paid £1,100, not the £1,400 I had been expecting. I spoke to my supervisor, who informed me that I was being paid the standard £13,500 and the extra money was from my european sponsers and should arrive 'soon'. It turns out this money is in Euros and is €3000 (which, with the exchange rate, will mean that my stipend will be about £500 less than stated in the job description, annoying but not the end of the world). However I have still not had the money and have been given no idea when it should arrive. This means I am quite short on money at the moment.

My supervisor has also informed me that they made a 'mistake' when writing my job description, and I will not be getting the £1k increments per year.

So in total I will be getting around £8K less over the course of my PhD than was stated on the job description.

I feel very let down that no one bothered to tell me this before I started (there were 7 months in between me accepting the PhD and starting). This meant I budgeted for a higher stipend than I am recieving and will struggle a little financially.

I don't want to seem greedy/ungrateful as I know that many people get less money than I do and I am very lucky to have a funded PhD. I just feel that I have been misled and should get the money which I was told. As I said I've given up a well paid job to do this and moved house, so I was already going to be financially worse off, but now it is even worse.

This situation has really not helped me settle in and I am rather unsure as to whether I want to stay or not.

I would be really grateful if anyone has any advice for me. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Does anyone know if they are legally allowed to do this?

Thank you in advance

You have to remember that it isn't a salary as such, so I don't think there is any legal issues (I could be wrong). What I would say, is that your stipend is more than many other PhD students - my hubs was on 12k per year, with about £50 increase each year.

I would make friends with the finance department, as they'll be the ones, not your supervisor, who will be responsible for getting the euro people to pay up. If you want to get this money before xmas, I'd go ASAP and bug them every day until you have the money.

Most people take on teaching to supplement their income, and undergraduate marking as just come in in a big wave of horrendous essays - I'm sure there will be some to pick up so you can get some extra pay in the meantime.

It took 6 months (yes half a year!) for my University to sort out the correct pay for me (I'm technically staff and get a wage and tax etc). In the mean time I was on a variety of contracts that were for either one or two months, completely screwing up my tax (I was on the wrong tax band too) and everything. So eventually they sorted it out. Six months later and I'm due an increment increase in wage (I had to force them to write into my contract that I got this in October as they didn't have me registered till the six month mark and so I would only have got it six months late). It didn't turn up in my pay cheque and so I am having to chase them AGAIN. Happily in my case my wife is employed too and I still got money each month so I was able to get by. It was still exceptionally annoying and I thought at the time "If this was a private company like the ones I used to work for, there is no way this would be happening like this for so long!".

In short, I am not at all surprised that you are having problems because university HR seems to me to be completely useless. Coupled with this are academics who seem to have no idea about the realities facing employees and students and who are overworked so they get things wrong then don't have time to correct them.

You almost certainly will get the money your supervisor has said you will recently, but it will be late, maybe VERY late. Keep hassling the right people (find out who in the HR department is in charge of it).

As for the £1000 every year increase - where was this written down and have you signed a contract yet? If it was explicitly stated in writing and you haven't signed anything yet, don't sign anything yet and get some advice from someone who knows about employment law. I suspect you've got no chance of getting it, but I'm not a solicitor so don't take my word for it.

Note: All my opinion, I'll be happily corrected if any of it is wrong!

I'm now in year two and in both years the 'additional' bit of my scholarship (which technically comes from the other collaborating organisation not the research council) has had to be chased up. Irritating but I've just put it down to 'one of those things'. The other 3 quarterly payments of the year have gone through OK.
As for the lack of annual increase - I don't know if this is a new-ish thing for the research councils, but we're all subject to it and I was a bit disappointed when I realised that my pennies for this year and next are the same as last, when costs of living and everything else are increasing. The way I see it is that at least we have a secure, if relatively skint, position for the next 3 years, which is something in these uncertain times.