Hi,

I am going to meet a potential supervisor this Friday about potentially studying for a PhD in Forensic Entomology. It will be co-supervised by someone from the department of Archaeology and will be a non experimental PhD and more literature review based.

The fees page states that the fees is £1903 per year for part-time PhD. My questions are:

(1) Are there any other additional costs? I dont mean living expenses, books etc. I mean any other "admin" costs that the uni will throw at you that has not been advertised on the web page.

(2) If I start this year, will the fee be £1903 for the length of my PhD? I dont plan to take a break. 5-6 years.
Should I expect to pay different amounts every year?

(3) Is there funding available for part-time students?

I'm not at Reading, but I don't think you'll come up against any hidden admin costs. If you start this year, fees should remain at the rate you started paying them throughout your course. That's the situation with undergrad courses. As for funding, I'm not an expert, but I would imagine that it is very difficult to acquire funding for the arts and humanities, particularly following recent cuts. You could look at the AHRC and see what that says, if you haven't already.

I am a part-timer at a different uni and the fees per year is all that I had to pay, no hidden costs. However, my fees increase yearly due to ? inflation or any other excuse they can find. If the fees page state 2011/12 or something similar then expect them to go up each year.

Most PG fees go up each year in my experience. There may also be a submission fee (not usually very much). You will probably need to go to conferences which willvary depending on the location - I went to two conferences last year (funded by my employer university) - one worked out at about £1600 as it was in SE Asia, the other was in London so was about £500 with accomodation, conference fee, transport. At least you don't have oversas fieldwork!

Good point about fees going up with inflation, but I meant that if you start the PhD in 2011 then when the fees potentially double or triple in 2012 onwards, that should not apply to existing students. I could be wrong, but that's the case with the undergrads.

I was really dim when I first read this I thought it was a PhD in Reading (ie research into what / how /why people read) and I didn't understand what the question had to do with that. Dim or what?