Hi folks,

You're *probably* aware of the UK's new PhD loans - £25k per student, no additional public funding, etc. We're carrying out a little research into the new funding over at FindAPhD and would appreciate it if any prospective students here had time to complete a quick survey. It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes and there's a chance to win a £50 Amazon voucher as a thank you.

I'll be speaking about the results at a policy forum later this year (with several fairly important student finance people in attendance) so this is a chance for your views to be heard (in a manner of speaking).

Cheers!

Mark

FindAPhD

Actually, I hadn't heard of these. Is there a good website to find out more?

Of course -


;)

Oops, I am not sure if I was supposed to start this. I'm a few questions in and it is asking questions like "where do you plan to do your PhD". So presumeably it isn't for existing PhDs/PhD students. I've just noticed in your original post that it says for "prospective" students. Sorry!

Not to worry - we are mainly interested in what prospective student think, yep. I'd still be happy to hear other people's thoughts here on the forum though. It's all useful.

Thanks! So is the 25k for the duration of the whole PhD? It doesn't seem that it would be a enough to cover fees and living costs?

Apologies - missed your reply here. Yep, that's the limit. As with the Masters loans, the intention is for the money to make a 'contribution' to a student's costs. Remains to be seen how useful that ends up being. . .

Already on a PhD so can't take survey. My two cents - not much help. £25k might seem like a big wedge but over 3-4 years it's a drop in the ocean. I think my studentship, bells and whistles included, is worth something near £70k and once you factor in 4 years of living costs, tuition and all the rest of it, that's spread pretty thinly. I expect to be working part-time during my writing up year even with saving part of my stipend each quarter.

If you take out a £25k PhD loan you're going to need to find at least another £30 - 40k from somewhere. Might be handy if you're self/family funded as it relieves some of the immediate outlay but otherwise I don't see the point in it. Anecdotally, I've seen people discussing the loan elsewhere who seem to think it's going to cover most of their costs - clearly not doing the maths. If the loan ends up encouraging more people to take on a self-funded PhD than would otherwise do it, fair enough, but I wonder if it might encourage some to take on a bigger financial burden than they can realistically handle.

If you are prepared to stay away from city centres and London, don't have a car, have no dependents or debtand are prepared to flat share, it is absolutely possible to live very comfortably on less than £10k per year.

£25k would give you about 60% of that so you'd need a part time job as well.
Honestly, if you can't get full funding for your PhD you really need to take a step back and listen to the message the system is telling you. I would personally never take out a loan or self fund.

Yes, I think this is the main point.

I think it is better than nothing (that 25k is available now). I know people who are part funded - and working their socks off to pay the other part. So this would help them nicely. Other than that, yes, it isn't enough!

Why?

Some people aren't getting funding because they aren't striking lucky. I say this as a person who did get funding. Not getting funding may be sending no message other than: there isn't enough to go around - you were unlucky.

It's sending a strong message that your research is not valued enough by our society to bother funding.
It's not a great place to start a PhD from.

LOL. If you say so.