Course places

Scrappychimow

Why do some courses have a small number of places,like 10 ?

Marvinthefish

Money.

I guess each school or department tries to secure as much funding as possible from the Government each year and then divides that pot of money up to see how many students they can cater for in however many courses they provide.

El Siglo

Money and the lack of postgrad students. I know in Geology there wont be any PhD students starting this year, when you don't get that intake of students you lose demonstration staff for labs and tutorials etc... then you can't run certain modules and then the stuff you can cater for is limited, so you drop the number of undergrad students that can take the course.

Scrappychimow

So its difficult to obtain a Phd in the geological sciences area? Is this due to the way things are with the economy ,do you think more Phds will be available in a few years in this area?

El Siglo

Scrappychimow wrote: »

So its difficult to obtain a Phd in the geological sciences area?

No, it's as hard as any other discipline. Generally a PhD application goes one of two ways. Either you go up to a lecturer in JS or SS and say you'd be interested in doing a PhD, ye work out a project and see what happens (i.e. application for funding). The other way is the formal application, a project is advertised (usually with funding), you apply, maybe an interview is involved and you get in, but this way is competitive. Either way requires funding, and that leads me onto your second point.

Is this due to the way things are with the economy ,do you think more Phds will be available in a few years in this area?

Yes, but there's a whole host of other problems. Funding is a major problem alright and in order to pay for your; equipment, conferences, analyses, training, living expenses etc... you need funding. This funding is declining at the moment. However a big problem is that certain departments have a certain focus on research, and if this isn't in line with the powers that be then you don't get funding.
I wouldn't worry about it just yet, there's always PhD opportunities going, the best place to check is earthworks.com for earth sciences ones. However, concentrate on the undergrad first, a good start to getting into any PhD is getting a high 2.1 or 1st.

Scrappychimow

Cool, thanks for your advice