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?

I worked my way through! I had a weekly 12 hour shift plus a sleep over in a old people's care home.

Also my friend is working their way through too. She does evening work - three times a week.

I'd probably only sponsor him if he was working up to and through his PhD.

If you don't want to sponsor him. Just say 'no thanks, I'm on an economy drive'

I think it's only fair for him to ask once and once only with no pressure!

When DH did his PhD he was working full time as a research assistant with his phd supervisor and also had lecturing, tutoring and exam responsibilities. He got a discount on his fees because of it. It took him five years though and his research was linked to the project he was being paid to research.

I think it's only fair for him to ask once and once only with no pressure!

That's not how you get "crowd" funded.

It's more like running a marketing campaign.

You need more of a pitch than "I'd like to have Dr before my name, give me the cash now."

Asking your old college friends to "donate" to your PhD is like asking your neighbours to give you money so you can get a new kitchen put in.

Ridiculous.

I'm a humanities person who understood the Gradgrind and Benthamite references upthread.

Nevertheless, it's a YANBU from me OP. Nothing worse than a sponger.

Love the perks, Kindle

Regardless of whether the subject studied will be valuable to society, people don't do this because they want to selflessly contribute to the world. They do it because the qualification will enable them to earn more money and because it interests them.

Neither of those reasons will mean jack shit to the OP or the other people being asked to contribute. He is a cheeky fucker and would be given a straight no from me.

I think I'd refuse to donate but might offer him first refusal of any odd jobs I had, like cutting my lawns, for some cash.

Has he even bothered to apply for any grants or scholarships? Or is it easier just to set up an internet page?

Yanbu

It's an absolute cheek. A grown adult begging is what it is. I can't stand freeloaders.

If he's been privately educated, then I suppose that's where he's developed his sense of entitlement.

Why not? There's plenty of research that will never get funded by governments or industries that's still of benefit to people so if he can get people to pay him to do this research, why not? A friend of mine self-funded a sociology PhD that studied the experiences of people in mixed-sexuality relationships (bisexual/straight, bisexual/gay, pan-sexual/whatever, etc etc) and I was very happy to contribute as a subject but now I think about it if he'd been trying to crowdfund it I would have been happy to contribute to that as well.

For me it would have to be A) a ground breaking worthwhile research and B) the student is already earning money while studying and isn't expecting a free ride

Somebody please correct me if it's changed, but it was always expected that Phd research will be original and add significantly to current knowledge ... that's why I asked what this guy's aims were and what he planned to do with it

Since it seems he's not very forthcoming on that - though pretty insistent about folk paying up - it's hard not to wonder if what he really wants is a few more years of bumming around, financed by someone else