How much do PHD students get payed?

paky

I spoke to a guy the other day who said he was researching a Law PHD. He said the college funds him for doing it. I never asked him how much. Do they get payed much? Thanks

username123

Some PhDs are funded, some arent.

Those that are, the funding is tiny (and getting smaller each year with the recession). A friend recently applied for a funded one and the funding was 16k a year.

If you are doing a PhD there are usually opportunities to do some part time lecturing, supervising etc to earn a few extra quid.

Depending on your age and circumstance 16k could be enough to get you through a year, but if you have any financial responsibilities, children, a mortgage, rent, car loan etc... it wouldnt go very far and you would need a secondary source of income.

Lord TSC

Afer getting through uni with a 3 grand grant, the idea of having 16,000E a year is shocking <_<

That said, does that go towards paying for fees or are your fees a seperate issue?

Up-n-atom!

My friend is doing one on 16k or thereabouts. She doesn't have kids etc but is paying rent and is just about scraping through. She definitely wouldn't have the time to get a part-time job to suppliment her income, she has her hands full doing extra research at the weekend, but she is doing some lecturing as part of the PhD. Another friend was paying for her own doctorate - can't remember the exact amount, but it wasn't as much as I'd expected.

DeepSleeper

As far as I know, fees are usually deducted from the 16k.

Do keep in mind that most PhD researchers are on a lot less than that and also that it varies greatly across the disciplines. It is common for people in the Humanities to do a PhD without funding - they might apply to lots of potential sources of funding but these are very difficult to get, so they end up with a part-time job, some tutoring, some undergrad exam supervision etc etc.

In the Sciences it is much more common for PhDs to come with funding - basically most Humanities researchers think "I'd like to do a PhD on XYZ - I wonder who would fund me?" and then starts applying to various funding bodies directly, whereas the Science researcher often thinks "I'd like to do a PhD on something" and then looks/asks around to find a lecturer who already has external funding for a large programme of research and who needs a student to do a funded PhD on ABC - in other words, the lecturer picks the ABC, not the student...

paky

thanks for all the replies. 16 k sounds quite good considering i lived off 3 grand for the year! :eek:
i think i could live quite comfortably on that

evolving_doors

Sounds like PhD is the new masters these days,

paky

Armelodie wrote: »

Sounds like PhD is the new masters these days,

seems to be the only worthwhile thing doing. no point seeing a degree going to waste since there aint no jobs

DeepSleeper

Maybe.... but the problem is that people's expectations tend to rise in proportion to the years they spend in university and a PhD should not be seen as a reliable route into lecturing (or into anything else for that matter...). Plenty of people with PhDs on the dole or emigrating at the moment....

If you're going to do a PhD, make sure it is a very, very good one which makes a significant contribution to your chosen field (lets face it, there are plenty of so-so ones out there...). Also, do as much as you can while doing the PhD - tutorials, small-group teaching, lecturing, conference papers, seminar presentations, posters at conferences, publishing papers etc etc -they are all vital add-ons to the basic PhD thesis.

TheBunk1

I'm doing a PhD in the sciences and get around 15-16k per year which is average. Fees of around 5-6k are paid for me on top of that. It's an SFI grant. But pay varies depending on discipline as mentioned above. Believe me, if you're thinkin of doing this for the "money" because 16k seems great compared to a college grant you're makin a mistake. You can survive better than undergrad but it's still so easy to spend and you get paid monthly so it can be difficult to budget.

Main consideration is to make sure you are really interested in your subject because it's 3-4 years of hard graft which would be a disaster if you've no interest.

Good luck what ever ya decide.