AIBU to think you can't expect friends and acquaintances to fund your postgraduate dreams?

[FickleByNurture]

A friend of mine in his late 20s has just asked me to donate to his GoFundMe. He wants to do a PhD but says he can't afford it. He's looking for ~£20k in donations.

He says that he's been accepted for a PhD, which IME you will be if you offer to self fund and all that is standing in his way is his supposed poverty.

My problem with it is that it's not in a subject that will benefit society by its study, like medicine, science or engineering. It's a humanities subject. It's not at a prestigious university either, in case that is stopping him from getting a concurrent job. His family isn't really loaded but they aren't on the breadline - all the kids went to private school, live in an affluent part of the country etc. I'm not even sure it'll get him a better chance at employment to be honest. I'm struggling to see why he thinks that his friends, acquaintances and friends of friends (he's nagging us all to "share" the campaign) should fund him to potter about in higher education for a few years. AIBU?

Very cheeky to ask friends and acquaintances.

If he wants to self fund, he can take out an educational loan (as is typical to do an MBA for example)

Nobody will know, or care, whether the work cited is self-funded. They'll only care if it's good.

Surely the answer is to work all the hours he can for a year or more, save, and then do the PhD

You'd think so, yes - but that would involve actually taking responsibility for the whole thing, rather than just holding a hand out for someone else's hard earned money

FFS, go educate yourself about what the Humanities is about. I'm a historian, do lots of work with prison reform groups and human rights organisations that is bloody well relevant to the present day.

I disagree with a PP that the supervisor is more important than the institution if they want to go into academia. Prestige counts for a lot on the academic job market.

Anyway, are you being pressured to contribute? I think it's cheeky to go around 'begging', but I suppose it shows a bit of creative thinking.

Don't give him money. Your money,your call.

BUT - to assume that (1) humanities subjects like philosophy literature history don't benefit society is absolute bullshit. And (2) to say that a simple self funding ability guarantees acceptance into something like a PhD is preposterous.

I've just rejected two potential phd students today who had fully finances for tuition and subsistence, because they were simply not phd material.

I've also just had one student terminated after 18 months of breathtakingly shoddy work and lies.

I've also had the pleasure of supervising a brilliant, amazing, sponsored student from a country where being seen talking to a person of the opposite sex alone in the same space could get you lashed.

And, shock horror, I am not in the STEM subjects, what an utter drain on society me, my colleagues and students are, and what self indulgently lavish extended adolescences we must had led.

The GoFundMe website in itself doesn't sound too bad, but nagging at people to share the page, or donate to him isn't on. Even if it was a PHD I approved of, I'd find that sort of nagging to donate highly annoying. So YANBU.

Well, excuse the typos. Clearly this non sciencey PhD prof can't even spell :D

Focus - if someone is proposing researching a less tangible topic and begging mates to fund them I would be prepared to listen to even a wild hypothesis on why they think it would be worth doing and judge accordingly.

If someone said they were researching the effects of X on dementia suffers I would not need to ask further as the potential benefit is clear.

I know a few people who have done enormously useful work during their phd but who, if unable to get funding for it, have come up with a solution a little more elegant than begging.

My friend has said he wants to research X during Y period and can't afford to unless we give him money. Surely there's a difference.

I am still laughing at go fund off. Did everyone else miss that?

Things like this always make me think of my mil, which sponsors £1 for a marathon and stuff. That'll take a while...

Who, not which

I would be amazed to hear that the important humanities work or history being cited was self funded.

RunnerHasBeen - I don't want to give too many details as it would be identifying but all the PhDs I spoke about in vague terms are indeed self-funded. And at a top university.

Who exactly is he expecting you to 'share' his funding campaign with? He can share it himself with people that he knows, but he'd have to be pretty far removed from reality to think that people who know his friends but don't know him would be likely to give him money.

Gold star

Sponsor him £1 then he will have to stop asking.

shadowfire a PhD you approve of? Either you're a genius who is intimately acquainted with research across the whole of the Humanities, or you're both arrogant and ignorant in equal measure.

He's a cheeky fuck and if I were his dw I'd be mortified!

Yeah that's ridiculous and I have a humanities PhDs (not self funded I hasten to add). He should just get a part time job in london and write it up as a book in the bl.

I have no issue with this being a humanities PhD that he wants to pursue but I have a huge issue with asking friends and potentially distant family to fund one's career/education goals! Quite bizarre!

YABU for thinking that studying history doesn't benefit society.
Like others have said, you don't have to give him anything if you don't want to.

I'm thinking pure Benthamite, not Gradgrind.

which will make no sense if you know nothing about the useless humanities

I think maybe if you want the crowdfunding model to work for research funding, it has to be the topic rather than the student that sells it. Ie. Put some money into this because it is really cool and has to be researched, not, please help me make my dream come true !
When I have contributed to crowdfunding it's either been because it's an individual in desperate straits (eg someone needing urgent medical treatment with no insurance) or because it's a project whose outcome seems to me to be worthwhile. If he's just presenting it as being about his own needs then that is very entitled and annoying when many other people would love to do further study and can't afford it.

YABU, you don't have to donate.
I'm thinking of doing this for some of dd's school fees, some people will want to donate others won't.

I'm a bit about the whole thing.

Yes, he's being cheeky, but you're not forced to fund him. If he starts pressurising people, then he can be told to Foxtrot Oscar.

I still think he's significantly less cheeky than rich celeb types who use Gofundme or similar to beg for cash for their next self indulgent "project".

Does he have a lot of friends?

Can't he work his way through university like most people do?

I'm thinking of doing this for some of dd's school fees

See, now that, I am a bit at!

Not sure why, maybe because free state education is a universal right, but funded PhD study is hard to come by.

Or maybe I'm just an inconsistent hypocrite.