Hmm, my first thoughts are that I'd never have taken on a PhD project without funding in place to begin with. You need £50,000 plus bare minimum including fees and in London, you may as well add on another £3,000 minimum a year living expenses. Parents even thinking of funding that I honestly believe is unreasonable. But I take your point that your brother had been given money, so your parents thought it was unfair if his sister didn't benefit also. Also, I was Science and Engineering where funding for various projects seems easier to come by.

Whilst normally I would say this is an issue between your brother and your parents, they do have a right to know. On face value, he's apparently p*ssed their money up the proverbial wall (though I have a further thought - see later). To follow up on your above post, wait to see what your mother says in a few days and if he hasn't told her, I'm afraid I'd spill the beans. However, Christmas is coming and the last thing you want in a family row over this period.

I'd wait until New Year, then step back to allow him and your parents to sort out the mess

One thought niggling me though is given the difficulties many encounter during PhD (workload, etc.) is there may be depression or health issues he's not being open about. He may have suspended for such reasons, but chosen to remain private about them. I've seen someone fade out of a PhD in the way you describe, in that they attended less and less, downgraded to MPhil then finally left altogether. Your brother may have tried harder than you think trying to stick it out, his sixth year full time suggesting this. The fact your brother past year four without the PhD being terminated suggests he's had previous suspensions.

That said, I hope he doesn't use health issues, etc. as an excuse when questions are finally asked of him.

Ian

The PhD is not worth your health. The further you push into the PhD, the more stressful it will become and the greater effect it will have on your health.

You need to apply for a suspension immediately and tell your supervisors. As TreeofLife says, they can't kick you out because of illness.

Check your University guidelines or other terms and conditions as to the withdrawal of sponsorship. Even if the sponsorship can be pulled, I would still put your health first. You can always apply for other PhDs.

Ian

As regards structure, it's what you make it under the guidance of your supervisors. Yes, structure will be a little vague at times as we are talking academia, but the PhD will in the end be what you make of it.

I think almost every PhD student feels the sense of a lack of direction at times or the goal posts being changed because a supervisor (or sponsor) has a bright idea (though generally he was a good supervisor). What I recommend is something similar to my approach. I knew what kind of basic data my supervisors were after, so I designed my own experimental programme to obtain that data. The structure proved quite successful and I was able later to concentrate further test runs on 'boundary conditions' between different data sets.

When my primary supervisor came in with the inevitable bright idea, I was able to roughly accommodate that into the structure and this gave me extra quality data I included in my thesis. One or two of his less feasible ideas I managed to leave out on the basis I was aiming to submit the thesis by a given date, though his reasoning for trying some of these extra experiments was based on an excellent understand of his subject area.

Ian

Solo,

I got asked the questions you have by a number of interested people one I finished. My experiences resulted in this blog. Take a read (first link) as it tries to answer the most frequent questions I was asked.

If you want a smile, you might want to click on the link for the "PhD Game" (second link). :-)

Ian

PenPen,

I checked my former Uni. regulations and there is no mention of this upgrade from MPhil to PhD at final viva, either as they stood then or as they are now. So it must only happen in very rare, exceptional circumstances as with the teaching company candidate I mentioned.

You're probably right to think about working for a few years before coming back and attempting PhD again. I needed a break after Masters and didn't return for another 5 years. You could look for work in the real world in an area relevant to what you might want to do.

But as said above use MPhil as a stepping stone, learning from your mistakes if / when you finally do PhD.

Ian

Just my penny's worth here. At my old Uni., if you produced a very high quality MPhil dissertation that showed sufficient originality and contribution to the studied field then you could be upgraded to PhD at final viva.

I heard of one person on a teaching company scheme who got his PhD via this route.

Ian