Funding finished what are your options?

Metalpanic

Hi All,

I have one month of funding left in my PhD and am many months away from completing. I am sure there have been lots of postgrads. that have been in the same situation and was just wondering what they did to get by?

boarddotie

This happened to me alright, ran out in October and only just finsihed now.

Luckily I managed to get a P/T research assistant job for a few months (70 hours spread out kind of thing) and that tied me over. So you could look into that within your Dept or others. Brainless work though which might take away from your own research but it is good for the CV.

I also had put a few schillings away for this rainy day. Too late for that though perhaps in your case. In my write up few months I literally was living on about €60 a week. Not because I had no money but because I was doing NOTHING expect sleep, eat and write. So I had nothing to spend money on :cool: sad but true!

Took out a loan...DID NOT want to be worried about finances during the last few, most important, months. More important things to worry about.

And finally...I dont know exactly if its possible in every case/many cases but if you can prove you are willing and able to take a part time job (i.e. doing your Postgrad on a parttime basis) you can get job seekers allowance/benefit (not sure of the difference). I have applied for that and even though I am finished now and actively job seeking as far as I know you can get it without being actually finished the PhD.

Hope that helps

Metalpanic

Thanks boarddotie,

I was teaching part-time but with the summer fast approaching that will dry up soon enough. Actually this week! Great!

I know I'll be able to get by on very little once I get to the writing up stage but it could be months before I even get to that...... That might also stop me getting job seekers as I won't technically be available for work immediately.

Casey_81

I was in a similar situation to the OP from Jan 2009, I did all kinds of jobs around the college, from correcting exams to lab demonstrations to grinds to lecturing.

Although my CV definitely looks better, I seriously wouldn't recommend it as it is really difficult to context switch from teaching java for example to applying statistics to results and I feel that it delayed me in finishing up. I am now in the final final stages of my thesis - will be submitting in June.

If you think that you have more than about 6 months left to do then, see if you can get an exemption from fees (kind of a year out), work away on your thesis as normal - you should be able to get the dole. Then you can re-register after your year out and submit.

brianthebard

boarddotie wrote: »

And finally...I dont know exactly if its possible in every case/many cases but if you can prove you are willing and able to take a part time job (i.e. doing your Postgrad on a parttime basis) you can get job seekers allowance/benefit (not sure of the difference). I have applied for that and even though I am finished now and actively job seeking as far as I know you can get it without being actually finished the PhD.

I doubt this is possible, you need to be able to prove you have finished your course. If it were possible any phd student without funding could switch to a part time postgrad and claim the dole with no intention of getting a job.

tommiejoie

I know of people who have yet to finish up who are claiming the dole. Once you are in the writing up stage you are technically available for work, many people seek and even start full time work before completing their thesis.

OP, you need to speak to your department/group head/administrator. They have probably dealt with this type of situation before and I'd be surprised if they didn't find a way to help.