Cont'd

I feel especially sad because the whole time I was writing up I kept convincing myself to keep going because "It would be worth it at the end". My supervisor told me about the fellowships and lecturer jobs I would be eligible for and I believed him.

But then he was deep sixed a few months ago in a departmental takeover (which I realise is par for the course), and his replacement has done a fantatistic job discrediting him (and thus consigning my reference to Hades). At the time I reasoned I would sit my viva, do my corrections and I would be okay. How stupid was I?

Nobody does (or should do!) a PhD for the money. Nobody works in academia for the money and certainly not for the job security. I'm not saying it's right (I'd not turn down the offer of a payrise or a longer contract) but that's (currently) how it is. Things are getting better, after all, a 12K tax free bursary can be lived on reasonably easily (just a shame that post-doc/lecturer salaries did not increase too!). What we can do as current PhD students/Post-docs etc is make sure that prospective PhD students venture into a PhD with their eyes wide open i.e. they know what is expected of them and know that 3 (plus) years down the line there is no guarantee of a job and that if they want to stay in academia, they'll not be getting rich anytime soon!

Badhaircut, you've got a "fresh" PhD, right? Stop wasting your time here on this student's forum and find a job.

add: with your 'qualifications', it will be VERY easy to find a Lectuer/Senior Lecturer job for 30-40k in one of the "new" (and not very research strong) universities.

Wow. I'm due to start my phd in a few months time and all this talk is making me think about my own future even more.

I don't think that your story is representative. You chose a subject you loved, the chances of it having a job for you at the end were never going to be high. Perhaps your PhD just isn't employable, sorry to say it. Others are I feel so I'm not too worried about my future at the moment. I get pait almost 14k for what is essentially an apprenticeship and no tax etc.. I don't know any other apprentices who get more than £4 an hour. I think I'm doing ok. Also, I knew exactly the score when I signed up for this. Sorry you feel a bit dejected; get a basic job to cover your rent and keep looking.

Badhaircut, I don't really agree with your comments about stipends, as I see the whole PhD process as the chance to get a very good qualification and training while being paid enough to live on for a few years. However, I agree with sentiments about work afterwards. This country is sadly lagging behind in knowledge-based areas, and the reason why is poor salaries, poor prospects, poor job security, and the knowledge that you get more for doing menial jobs requiring no qulifications at all.

Best things to do if you want a good career - get a PhD and then move abroad. Sadly, this drains this country even further, but it's my intention to do this eventually.

wel, my PhD stipend is only 10 000 and was only 9000 for last two years:) And I am fdoing PhD in the second most expensice city in the UK after London:) But what makes me think whether doing PhD is worth are jobb ads like this ' Overseas student administrator, salary 28000-34000, recquirements: first degree, some work experience' compared to this ' Lecturer in.....' , salary 24000-32000; recquirements- PhD, publications, research grants, teaching experience etc, etc'. And knowing that for that Lecturer' s place in my field will be extremely taff competition...I wonder, why I am doing this...

imagine that six years ago ohd grants were around 600-700 per month
so 12000 is much mire better than it was before

Throughout this whole thread, my intention was to point out that most of us roll over and accept SO MUCH without questioning it, while we are studying for our PhD. If I had heard a similar comment a few months ago, I would have replied in the same way as many of you had (being ungrateful, being paid to study, its an apprenticeship, buck up etc).

I would have probably felt threatened, and I would have had a vested interest in believing the academic line, and rhetoric about it being passionate about my subject and it being necessary to suffer. Its only after I finished I questioned it.

Cont'd

I guess I am writing from two positions

1) That it is possible to say all the right things, hang in there and see your thesis to the bitter end, and do the million and one "extras" requested of you and still end up worse off than when I first graduated.

2) The stipends we get, while being better than nothing granted, are still ridiculously underappreciative of the work we do (either for our supervisors, or for our universities) considering the responsibilities and demands placed on us. While I accept we do this out of "choice" you have to concede its often a forced "choice". And often not informed choice. Sometimes I feel I gave my participants for my project much more information on the ethics form about their role in the study, than my supervisor gave me.

Think of it this way:
Someone is paying you to give you the training and the degree.

It's your choice to do a PhD, whether you like it or not.

There's no free lunch in this world.......

i am with you, badhaircut, to an extent. i suppose if you think about it as being paid for doing something you like doing and that will give you good qualifications for the future, the stipend amounts sound good enough. but on the other hand if you look at what PhD students do and what it is worth or should be worth, it seems strange that graduates who do something similar or less hard in industry should earn so much more.

coming from the germanophone area i think it has a lot to do with general attitudes towards PhD students. in the german system PhD students are viewed as researchers, extremely valuable for any university, as perhaps 50% of the research that gets done actually gets done by PhD students. they are viewed as people applying their knowledge and training and are accordingly paid for it. in contrast, over here, PhD students are viewed as students. as people who are learning, worse even, who are being taught. of course this is true too, but it leads to the effect that the things we do are not seen as valuable work but rather as something we do exclusively for ourselves and thus nobody thanks us/pays us decent wages but rather we are expected to pay for the priviledge to be allowed to work and our work is devalued as being "merely" practice (of course it IS practice, but it is ALSO real research with substantive results).

ok sorry, this turned into kind of a rant. on the other hand i must say i'm currently unfunded and would be sooo happy to secure a normal PhD stipend. and to be fair, although i would prefer the money coming in being called "wage" as it is a reward for my work, instead of "stipend", the wages german PhD students earn are generally significantly lower than British PhD stipends. so i'd be happy to take a stipend if it means more money than a wage