Science PHD programmes US, low percentage of homegrown students, does this apply to the UK too or is our education system doing better at science?

[beingageekisagoodthing]

I caught this on shorts and my takeaway is not that it is about a secret weapon as per the heading, but about the lamentable state of education there. Does this apply to the UK too? I am asking as DC keen on a career in something science related and I don't know much about that world (I am an arts grad) but also because the situation sounds pretty dire generally.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VNXwRZebJx0

When I was doing my PhD and subsequent postdoc, I knew 14 PhD candidates in my department. Of those, 11 were born in the UK. Of the 3 who weren't born in the UK, 1 remained here after graduation and I lost contact with the other 2.

For science based PhDs in UK universities, the funding system favours UK students (at least it did when I went through it). It was common for no course fees and a tax free bursary to cover living expenses from the BBSRC for example. The international students had astronomical fees to pay. One poor student used to fall asleep at the bench because he had to work nights to earn enough to get by.

I did my PhD in the US in a scientific field and there was only one student in my entire programme (it takes 6-8 years so there was maybe 50 of us in total) who wasn’t US born.

I think the thing with any postgraduate course though and this applies to the UK as well, is that you have to be able to afford to do it, in addition to being an attractive candidate. Where we get non-UK students in the UK is where they can self-fund. Funding is very limited. If someone comes from a rich family who can pay all their expenses and the cost of the programme, that can open some doors that might be closed to a student who requires funding.

Generally though, when selecting PhD students, English language proficiency is really key. You are working on someone else’s research for them. If you are hard to work with because your English isn’t great or you can’t present well or would struggle to take on teaching and supervising roles, you would be less likely to get a place than a student with equivalent research skills but fluent English.

So to answer your question, probably depends a lot on the programme. But in my department, we have huge numbers of MSc students from overseas (because they are big money makers), but not many at PhD level. You often get a PhD spot through connections to the team, so someone who is familiar with the research, maybe had an internship or research assistant job previously, not someone who just dropped in from far away. That doesn’t mean a non-UK student couldn’t get accepted on our PhD programmes, but they would probably have been in the UK awhile, did an MSc, very familiar with the project. Because of visa requirements, that is probably hard to do.

i supervise PhD students in the UK. Applications are around 70% overseas to 30% uk but it is v hard for the overseas students to get funding so completed PhDs are more like 70% uk and 30% overseas.

we are always trying to recruit more UK students but PhD funding is not generous and they can often get better job offers in other sectors. But if a smart UK student wants to do a PhD, there are places available and it is a good opportunity

Thanks for your posts, really interesting.

Unless I am misunderstanding it, what @HollyBookBlue is saying about funding being potentially generous for UK students slightly differs from what @mindutopia and @parietal say. Though I assume the point parietal makes is that whatever funding you get, a paid position is going to pay more, and as mindutopia says being able to afford it personally makes it easier.

Mindutopia, it looks as though your experience differs from how Michio Kaku describes it as he implies that most science phds are heavily populated by foreign students, is that because things have steadily changed in recent years, I wonder? Thanks for all the useful info about being easy to work with etc.

How is the UK doing for science/tech, in schools, universities, post grad, careers, at the moment? Compared to mainland Europe, the US, rest of the world in your opinion? (Sorry, a very wide question I know!)

I will try to explain the funding more.

the university has a pot of money for UK PhD students (lets say 200 studentships to go around all topics) and another pot for overseas PhD students (lets say 40 studentships). any student who gets the money gets the same amount to live on etc.

differences between UK and overseas students arise for several reasons
First, there might be 400 UK applicants for the 200 UK studentships but 2000 applicants for the overseas studentships. So it is more competitive for overseas students.
Second, the UK applicants often have many other options, so they might have an offer of both a studentship with £20K per year or an industry job at £30K per year. And then many sensible applicants go for industry.
whereas for the overseas students, there may be fewer options or good jobs in their home country so getting a 20K studentship in the UK is a really good option.
Third, there are big differences between topics - more UK students doing PhDs in medieval history and more overseas in engineering.

In terms of comparing the UK to other countries in science / tech etc, I think we are doing OK. The academic career structure is better than many parts of Europe (students from Italy / Spain / Germany come to the UK for better careers) and UK scientists publish more high-profile papers than you'd expect for a country of this size etc.

at the moment, no one can match China for investment in science & engineering (not the USA, not anywhere). but the UK is not too bad.

That is really helpful, thank you so much.

Caveating this with my experience is from 20 years ago, in a biochem lab. Funding is not generous at all. But it does exist in science and seemed to not exist in other subjects (1 friend had to self fund archeology PhD, another had to self fund psychology PhD)

In my department, the PhD students were funded by charities or research councils such as the BBSRC. My funding paid my course fees and provided me £12k a year to live on. I could certainly have earned more working in Tesco! The PI (the professor or reader in charge of the lab) would write a reasarch proposal to be awarded funding for each PhD student, or would apply for grants which included funding for x number of PhD students over x number of years.
However international students were not funded by these organisations and had to find full course fees and living expenses from somewhere.

I think the UK punches above its weight in terms of quality of research.

A thing I did notice, judging on the drive/work ethic of international postdocs I met, in comparison to UK or European born, I think the work/life balance is better in UK/Europe university labs than the US, China or Japan.

Not great as there is systemic failure at every level. Plenty of research over the last couple of decades points to investing more in STEM. But this has never been done by successive governments. Most graduate students at top universities are foreign students. I’m doing a masters at Oxford and out of 8 only one is from the UK. Other countries have a rigorous and better school/college system than the UK, hence these students can easily out perform UK students when there is competition involved to get into graduate studies. My local university is opening a medical school and has stated that it will only take foreign students for the first few years. I don’t even know how this has been allowed or for what reason.

Thank you. Sounds bl**dy terrible!

And looking at your post compared to the others on the thread, things have got worse in recent years for UK students.

PS - out of the 8, where do the others (non UK) come from?

My university was well regarded in relation to engineering, science, medicine a few decades ago - has there been a declne there too or have the good universities retained their standards do you think?

I’m in the arts and humanities as opposed to STEM, but the funding is pretty similar. There are various schemes funded by the specific research councils, under the umbrella of UKRI (UK Research and Impact council). These studentships are limited to UK students generally. Overseas students are funded through a variety of schemes - Commonwealth Scholarships, for example, or by individual research projects, funded by the EU, via Horizon Europe/ERC, for example (not an exhaustive list). Some universities also set aside funding - at my place, we have a Global studentship scheme for applicants from African countries and the Indian sub-continent. Richer universities will have more, as will research-led places.

Other countries will fund their best and brightest to study overseas, and we’re lucky that the UK is very much seen as an important place to study.

i am constantly hugely impressed by the sacrifice, dedication, and hard work of my international PhD students. I know what family resource, as well as government support, goes into their study with us. It’s why I think the current attitudes of government and a minority of UK citizens are deeply wrong and misguided in the “clampdown” on foreign students. They are a net gain to the UK, and contribute knowledge and labour. Their studies here are a significant contribution to UK soft power globally.

They value something that the UK ethos at the moment does not: high quality curiosity driven research - “blue skies” thinking. It seems to me that’s why China sends so many students abroad - they want to learn how we do this sort of research.

The UK has an extraordinary opportunity to attract some of America’s best science researchers, labs, and teams, who are having funding withdrawn under the current US regime. But the attitude here is that universities are a drain, a cost, and “cost too much” so we’re going to lose an amazing opportunity. US science researchers looking to relocate are apparently going to Germany.

UK science research punches way above its weight, in terms of funding, endowment and numbers. We are second to the US but, I fear, not for very much longer. Sadly.

They were from all over the world - Singapore, Taiwan, Spain, Germany. I think universities are using the international students to retain their standards and fund themselves. I believe it’s something like £70k for home students to study medicine at Imperial but almost £200k for international students. It’s not that the situation is hopeless for home students but it’s more than just work hard and get good grades and opportunities are there. For your DC keep exposing them to what they are interested in academically.

Thanks - it is engineering, though they aren't certain which sort. Do you know which of the UK universities are best for that?! (Thought I'd pick your brains while you are here!)

We are not in the UK at the moment and I am trying to decide whether or not to go back. In my day I would have said UK hands down for the sort of thing DC wants to do, but today I am not sure. However, the education where we are (mainland western Europe) is rumoured to be significantly declining too, according to some internal reports.

@ParmaVioletTea Did you watch the video I linked? Do you agree with what Michio Kaku said about the US education system? Do you think that the same thing is happening in the UK?

This isn't about clamping down on foreign students. Not at all.

The UK has an extraordinary opportunity to attract some of America’s best science researchers, labs, and teams, who are having funding withdrawn under the current US regime. I don't think the US are clamping down on the high level science programmes being talked about by Michio Kaku, are they? Or are they?

The overseas students I have known have either been self funding (bank of very generous mum and dad) or on bursaries from their home countries, none have had funding from the U.K. university

The big universities Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, UCL all offered rigorous programs. But the type of engineering matters. If you take automobile engineering, the UK industry is much smaller than it was decades ago and faces uncertainty and competition from the far east, Germany and US. It’s useful to be aware of the changing landscape of the engineering industry and what could be on offer when your child graduates.

Thank you, that is great, very useful.

I think their interest is in the direction of civil/structural or planes - still early days though - used to be chemical but a changing world there.
Thanks again for your advice!

Perfectly normal for new med courses to be open only to overseas students - Gov caps the number of home students, and no uni will be able to attempt to bid for home students without any data to support the bid.

While overseas Masters students outnumber home at many unis, as parietal says it’s not indicative of an issue with home students getting RC funding.

Not indicative of a problem with funding, as you say, more a shortage of high calibre home-grown students because of problems in education system, i.e. as per comments by Kaku?

It is not a problem with the education system itself - the UK can provide a great education in science and engineering for those who want to learn and engage with it. But young people have many options for jobs that don’t involve a low paid PhD and so they can take other options.

it is not clear to me why you are trying to blame “the education system” for all sorts of things and in particular for the career progression of your child. The uk has plenty of excellent academic research and engineering but a student has to want to do it and go find it.

I don’t think any funded PhD is going to be short of suitably qualified home applicants so not sure why you’d draw the conclusion that UK schools/UG/Masters level education is poor

This is what Kaku said in the "short" which I linked - if you watch it on youtube you will see what I mean. Do you agree with him, and do you think that UK education is going the same way? Was my question in my opening post.

I get the feeling that you and other posters haven't read the opening post nor watched the short I linked, which was the point of the thread. There is no "blame", I was asking if posters agreed with what Michio Kaku said about education levels and if posters thought that the same thing applied to the UK.

DC hasn't even done GCSEs yet. But wants to do something science related and I was interested to hear what other people in the area thought of what Kaku said and whether the same thing applied in the UK (or might apply to the UK in future).

Not interested in random YouTube clips sorry. If you want a discussion, or to learn more about UK doctoral funding, post your points here. Otherwise maybe use YouTube itself to comment if that’s all you’re interested in.