Hey guys just getting some opinions and funding advice. I'm a child of an English family living in Ireland. I currently have Irish citizenship. I was offered two positions at English universities only to have the offer retracted two days later. In both cases they were unaware the BBSRC only funds students who have been in the UK for three years prior to the offer. They do fund the fees portion of the PhD but not the stipend.

To be honest I find this a little odd that plenty of British students come to Ireland, Germany and France to do a PhD and get the full funding and the same standard isn't applied in the UK. What are people's opinions off this?

One of my lecturers here is a researcher in Imperial College London and left because of the restrictions on hiring PhDs.

A lot of people do seem to be commenting on this recently. Don't suppose you have a UK address you can 'borrow' for applications?

I wish. I know it will hurt the science but I really think the same standard should be applied across the EU. A lot of the supervisors I've been in contact with have no clue about the restrictions

It is really a pity. Really frustrating if you see PhD ads that match your interests and your skills almost 100% and you realize later that you can't apply as a european citizen, even though the position is advertised as open for EU citizens. The only way to get these project is finding an additional external funding source that provides your salary for the project before applying to the position.....which is rather unlikely.

I suspect that the criteria are a result of the funding source, which is often industry or industry related. They probably want to restrict this funding to UK citizens or people, who are more likely to stay after their PhD and work in the UK. Just my speculation....

I also thought about applying anyway and see if there is anoher way to receive additional funding, but I guess that a professor who has the choice won't walk that extra mile and will just choose someone who receives the full award.....

Hi folks

That's an interesting suggestion re. the search feature - I'll pass it on.

There is currently an option to filter searches by EU (non-UK) citizenship (you can select this using the 'funding' options). That should remove any projects that don't offer any funding at all to non-UK nationals.

However, the amount of funding available may still differ between individual projects. This is partly because a large number of PhDs in the UK are supported through the UK Research Councils.

The funding they allocate is public money, derived from UK taxpayer revenue, etc. EU regulations require that all citizens have equal access to public funding for degree programmes, but that doesn't extend to the maintenance grant (which doesn't pay fees for the degree).

This general policy only applies to Research Council funding; individual universities are free to provide fees and maintenance awards to students of any nationality, at their discretion. Some may also choose to supplement Research Council awards for EU students.

I appreciate that this can be frustrating for EU students and that it's crucial to be aware of funding criteria when applying for a project. I'd suggest confirming funding details early in the process.

Most of the projects on FindAPhD.com will have information on funding in their project descriptions, but you can always use the email enquiry feature to query or double-check this.

It's also possible to combine funding from a range of other sources. Our sister-site, www.postgraduatefunding.com lists a large number of awards available to 'top-up' PhD funding.

As I say, I'll pass on the feedback re. search filtering.

Thanks

Mark

I don't see why the people supplying the funding shouldn't apply whichever criteria they want! Seeing this as racism is adding a level of hysteria which probably isn't justified.

Yes, funding restrictions seem quite unfair, and can be extremely frustrating when you've found exactly the right project, and even a willing supervisor.
But hey, its even worse when you are non-EU!

I don't think it's racism but it's certainly unfair and damaging to science. Also the fact that you can't effectively search for PhDs that offer full funding to EU citizens non resident in the UK makes it very difficult indeed.

It's certainly not fair because at this moment the UK is having its cake and eating it. Students from UK can obtain full scholarships in most other EU countries but the same doesn't apply in reverse. The people supplying the funding can apply criteria but I don't think they should claim to "support" EU students at the same time. Some of the advertisements are very misleading and it's being used as a loophole by the UK to not do it's fair share. I wouldn't mind this but the fact is UK students are availing of PhDs with full funding in my home country of Germany.