Dear all,

In addition to external funding such as AHRC, most universities have their own fund of X million pounds per year for PhD sponsorship. It is a mystery to me how my uni allocates this money. I can't find anything published concerning the criteria on which applications are judged or previous awards made. It would be nice to know for example that last year my uni awarded x studentships in Maths, y in Chemistry, z in French etc. It could be for example that a particular uni favours / prioritises subjects a, b and c so that an application in subject d, no matter how good, is doomed.

Is it reasonable of me to expect a uni to have some basic transparency on this?

My uni has annual competitions for each school - but its worth knowing the politics behind it. I know for example that this year, there was no chance it was going to go to a psych proposal, just becuase of the people that are in the psych department and the number of PhDs there are already.

Ok but does your uni publish in advance that for example there are three studentships ringfenced for modern languages and six for computer sciences or does it wait until seeing the applications and then decide for example 9 for modern languages and 0 for computer sciences?


thanx

======= Date Modified 23 Oct 2009 18:50:01 =======
As far as I'm aware, they are assigned to departments, and then they are awarded on the merit of the student's application. I've very rarely seen internal funding offered generally i.e. applicants from all subjects can compete. Some disciplines (or sub-disciplines) don't fit neatly into the scope of any of the research council's funding areas, so they often get more internal funding opportunities. Also some departments simply don't attract enough PhDers (probably modern languages is a good example), so they may get more money to attract good candidates. I'm sure there is lots of other criteria/politics behind who gets what and why though.

But, yes, you are being reasonable to expect some figures on where it goes. I'm not sure how you'd go about obtaining such information without annoying someone, but you could submit a Freedom of Information Act request to least find out which departments get what (although you might not necessarily find the reasons behind the allocation).

Just to add, it would be interesting to know if the research councils are transparent about who gets what.

This type of thing can be quite complex because the money will probably not come from public funds. The money will often be derived from a mixture of private donations, bequeathments, endowments and other historical gifts and investments. Benefactors often also place stipulations on how the funds are to be used.