Hive Scholar Andrea is a self-funded PhD Student at Sussex University, Brighton, and gives an insight into how she has managed to survive without secured funding.
Photo by Andrea Perez Porres
When I started looking at studying a PhD in the UK, it seemed that the only possible way was to secure funding that could pay for the tuition fees and towards my living costs throughout the whole PhD.
If you are applying for a fully funded position the story changes, but if you are proposing your own research -like I did- it is very competitive, and hard. My research is in Science, Technology and Policy Studies, and the funding cycles and patterns are very subject specific. Long story short, I applied for many scholarships I qualified for, and I did not get any. I was close, but I did not get them. This left me with a few options: should I study part-time or full-time? Should I make use of the doctoral loans? Would I be able to work at the same time? I had so many questions and not many people that could answer them. The only resources I could find about PhD funding were about how to secure funding, not what happens when you don’t manage to secure it.
My choice was a fairly simple one, I decided to study full-time as I already had done my MSc part-time. I qualify as a UK student because I have settlement status, so I was able to get a doctoral loan which helped cover my tuition fees and some of my living expenses. After obtaining the loan, I started applying for small grants from trusts and charities. There are hundreds of them, some of them are very specific but luckily there are some that apply to mostly everyone. I managed to get two grants, and I will be applying to them every year. I really recommend spending some time looking through them -one place to start is The Alternative Guide to Postgraduate Funding.
Photo by Andrea Perez Porres
In addition to these small grants, I have worked multiple part-time jobs outside and inside of the University. I worked as a Spanish tutor a few hours a week for a few months, and I also worked as a temporary Research Assistant in my department for a few months over the second term. I started a new temporary part-time job for the summer as a Research Assistant for another project, which also gave me some skills that are very useful for my doctoral research. RA jobs sometimes are advertised through email chains in University’s departments, so I recommend talking to your supervisors about it if you are interested in working part-time as a Research Assistant.
I have also managed to work now both as an Editorial Assistant for a journal and at the Sussex Research Hive, which will allow me to be financially stable for the rest of the year. Most of these jobs I got through the University of Sussex as there are lots of opportunities to work at Sussex that get sent every week by email! I would also recommend getting to know lecturers and professors in your department because you never know when they need a Research Assistant or a Doctoral Tutor to teach in some of their modules.
In addition to this, I also signed up for multiple research studies available at Sussex and got paid! There are lots of studies available and you can sign up to a mailing list and choose the ones you like or can attend.
Sometimes when you are doing a PhD it is expected that if you have a part-time job, it has to be an academic one. But this is just not true. Some of my friends have had jobs outside of academia while doing their PhD. Working part-time in hospitality while doing a PhD is a reality for a lot of PhD Students in the UK and it is time we break the stigma around it. I worked in hospitality for four years before doing my PhD, two of them were while I was doing my MSc and it is because I was not able to secure a part-time job related to my field, I didn’t even know how RA positions were even advertised! Not everyone is able to secure a part-time job as an RA or a teaching position, and it is completely okay to work any other type of job while you are doing your PhD.
Even though surviving as a self-funfed PhD is hard -getting rejected for funding can make you feel that you are not good enough- I am still very grateful that I decided to go for it! I was still able to finish my first year and passed the Progress Review and I gained lots of valuable skills along the way. Working part-time as a Research Assistant also helped me take my mind off my research when I felt stuck and gave me a new outlook on my own work.
At the end of the day, once you finish your PhD it won’t matter whether it was funded or not, you will still have a PhD!
Sussex Research Hive 