Full time or part time phd

[CaulkheadUpNorth]

So I've got two options, but have no idea if one might be better than the other!

1. Work 9am-3pm tuesday -Friday and 9pm- 3am Thursday and Friday night. Leaving me more financially secure but only three afternoons/evenings and two full days to study

Or

1. Work the hours above for a year, save like crazy and begin phd full time a year later

Or

1. Work 9am-3pm four days per week, leaving rest of time for phd but being significantly less well off.

The other issue is that the funding on the day time job runs out July 2015 so I would need a new plan for then!!

(As I wrote the post I thought of the third option, hence title saying two but listing three)

Do you have children? Childcare duties make a huge difference to how you can spend your 'free' time.

I've supervised dozens of PhDs and generally the part-timers struggle to complete because it is hard to squeeze study into normal life and stay motivated for 5-7 years.

But do remember you can switch between part and full time study (though not repeatedly). So you could think about working and studying part time for a year, saving as much as possible, before reassessing things.

In my experience of social science Phds, P/T is harder. Not only is the length of time to stay focused a struggle, but they also often lack sufficient time for reading and thinking.

Is your PhD linked to your work? If it is then this can help a bit, especially if work is used as a research site for collecting data or you work at a university so can get to library/seminars etc without any problems.

Also what are you doing a PhD for?

If you want to try for academic jobs, you will struggle if doing your PhD P/T as this does leave space for all the other things necessary for your CV (eg conferences, networking, teaching etc).

None of the P/T PhD students I have supervised have become academics. Many of them didn't want to anyway, but this is worth bearing in mind.

I did a phd working part time. I would go for full time if possible for all the reasons stated by other posters. Also be sure that the phd will count for something when you finish and that all the effort will be worthwhile.