Why doesn’t the Government cap Masters degree fees?

[Theworried2]

Surely it would make sense for the Government to cap Masters degrees fees to ensure costs aren’t prohibitive for home students. DS is starting his undergraduate degree in economics this year and if he were to pursue a masters at say LSE for example, the cost would be north of 30 grand!
Those in STEM often get the chance to do an integrated masters where the cost is the same as an undergrad fee.
Surely this disparity should be fixed?

@Needmoresleep We get a lot of North American Masters and PhD students in my Dept - even the international fees are cheaper than those in NA. Plus, yes, you can submit a PhD here in 3 years whereas it can take 6+ years in the US - mostly because they have those years of taught classes first and usually have a teaching assistant post running alongside their research. But if you are good enough to get one of those places in a north american university they are fully funded and you get a lot of teaching experience.

As a result, PhD places are much more limited in the US than here because we do not have to provide a teaching post to go with it - it is primarily research plus some limited UG/MSc demonstrating in practicals - we have about 100 PhD students in my Department!

A lot of PhD projects are student-defined some are supervisor defined and advertised. It can depend how the UKRI doctoral training programme was set up. Most of these are consortia across a group of universities. But yes the best thing is to find a supervisor you want to work with and discuss options.

@titchy In my time, we had the Career Development loan, i think that was earmarked for Masters degrees. Has it been abolished?

They were just bank loans weren't they? Not Gov funded or anything?

I suspect each subject and University is slightly different.

DS was offered PhD funding at the LSE along with guaranteed teaching, which unlike in the US would have been paid in addition. (The LSE is always on the hunt for Masters and PhD students who can hack the maths/stats and are willing to work as teaching assistants on their very large UG economics course, though in practice the Masters course was so intense that it would have been an unwelcome distraction) Once we factored in the tax free element and the guaranteed teaching DS would have been on quite a significant salary, though, after advice, opted to go to the US.

There was also plentiful paid Research Assistant work, which DS did from the end of his second UG year. Tutoring to London's private sixth formers will also pay. From the experience of friends, Imperial's Physics PhDs were doing well. DS, had he been more entrepreneurial, could also have picked up work tutoring affluent first and second year students who needed to pass their compulsory maths courses.

He was lucky that his subject was in high demand. Other LSE Masters programmes are a lot cheaper but the scope for additional paid work will be much more limited.

100 PhDs sounds like a lot. DS was one of an intake of 30 on a six year programme, though a number have already been poached by banks etc. He got away with Research Assistant rather than Teaching Assistant work in his early years, though got some additional paid work covering for a friend in the (well regarded) Business School teaching some MBA students. None were natural econometricians, and he hated being the youngest in the room, but their catering was great. (Not surprising given they are paying about $250k for the two year programme. DS and his friends seem to live off MBA leftovers.) DS rejected the idea of tutoring members of the football team, which was additional money and which I thought would be interesting. College athletes, even though recruited for their sports skills, need to maintain a certain GPA to be eligible for the team so the University is very keen for them to pass Econ101.

When he applied he did not know how competitive funded PhD places were. It is only after seeing some of his friends struggle to find places that he realises he was very lucky indeed. It is almost certainly different in other subjects, but it seems rare for the LSE to recruit staff who do not have overseas, usually US, experience.

Yes, DD2's STEM Masters was a full 12 months, and potential PhD supervisors have mostly been interested in her thesis over and above everything else.

The other advantage of a separate MSc is that it gives the student the chance to 'upgrade'. Obviously this isn't necessary if you're already at Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial etc, but DD2 went to a mid-rank non-RG university for her undergrad. She did well enough to get a place on a highly prestigious Masters course at a world-renowned (for her field) school.

Excellent point, @thing47 . Students with a Masters stronger than their UG degree, particularly those with a strong thesis, are also better placed to apply for a PhD.

@Mytholmroyd I am mot sure it is a great thing that we take so many PhD students. In my STEM subject the Home students who finish will land on their feet in well paying jobs. But the many with aspirations to careers in academia, think tanks, etc will have almost all let those dreams go.

A big reason for this is that ‘yes, you can submit here in 3 years’. No, you really can’t. We jig the enrolments of funded students to keep them within guidelines but it really takes 3.5 or 4 years. And for the best jobs they are competing against international students who are on longer timescales. These other students therefore have more impressive CVs.

People know how to read a CV and do make some adjustment for the shorter British doctoral term, but nothing speaks as loudly as accomplishments. Almost everyone I know wishes we could lengthen (funded) doctoral training.

Back when Y13 was arguably equivalent to Y1 at American university, only 10% of British students attended university and only a few of those went in to the PhD, our doctoral timescale may have made sense. Those days are gone.

Why pretend the British have magic potions that can accomplish in three years what takes the rest of the world five or six? And in the STEM disciplines broadly speaking those initial years of taught modules in North America are generally an advantage, giving you a better foundation.

I do agree that the absence of teaching duties can shorten the timeframe somewhat. Taking only the very best students does so even more! Very large doctoral programmes are always subject to slippage in my experience.

@poetryandwine I didn't say it was a great or better thing or that we have a magic potion but I know three people who submitted in 3 years (one of them in two but it was a while ago!) and went on to successful academic careers. It's perfectly possible to do it in 3 years but it can depend on the discipline/topic - if you have to complete a couple of field seasons it isn't possible. But a PhD in the UK is training in research not teaching - it is not pretending to be anything other than that. Some UKRI ones now also have an optional 6 month work placement outside academia which is excellent and the funding which is currently 3.5 years can be extended to 4.

And people do a PhD for all sorts of reasons - I did mine solely for my own sense of achievement - I never intended to work in academia it just sort of happened.

We have a lot of people in my discipline who do it because they love the subject and many are mature students - as I was - who have had previous successful careers as doctors, dentists, accountants, surveyors, teachers etc. Why would I turn them down as students? They often don't want to teach just to immerse themselves in a research project they love! And many make an important contribution to knowledge in the process.

I took out professional studies loans to pay for my law courses post grad.

Took years to pay it off but managed.

@Mytholmroyd of course taking students who have various reasons for pursuing the PhD is a fine thing. I never suggested otherwise, only that those who have the aspirations and perhaps the ability to compete at the highest levels don’t have the time to compile the CVs of their international peers. In my discipline students don’t do field study but it is vanishingly rare to get any results before Y3 or Y4, because there is so much background to acquire. Then you don’t usually have any journal acceptances going on the job market in Y4.

The top few doctoral students in each specialism will always be fine, but the remainder of the top quartile or so, who used to be able to aspire to futures in academia, national labs, etc, have mostly lost chances for this dream. They do a couple of temporary jobs if they are lucky and then transition. To the extent that they’ve loved their experiences and wouldn’t change them, this isn’t all bad. However meanwhile we (Russell Group STEM, at least) hire the best internationally for the academic posts these young people may have been able to compete for with more comprehensive training.

PS In the US typically the teaching is about 20% of time, about 30 weeks/yr. It does not impact research time all that much.

Well have to disagree with you about not getting publications until after the PhD - most of my Masters students do publishable masters dissertations and I actively encourage them to publish PhD research as they go and give them other chances to gain authorship on my own projects if they want to be job ready at the end if the PhD. Even one of my taught MSc modules is a team project that produces novel publishable data each year so some come out of their masters with two publications if they get a move on!

Most start getting results early in year 2. Obviously we are in different disciplines but I have had PhD students get lectureships and post docs straight out of PhD and examined three PhDs where the student already had a lectureship job to go to so I don't recognise the landscape you describe.

@Mytholmroyd perhaps we are just doing different things. Nothing wrong with thst. In some STEM disciplines MCSc theses ate not expected to produce original research.

Things can be objectively different in different disciplines and for students who have different goals. Where is the disagreement in that? Of course British students are getting a few postdocs but the pipeline is narrow. I just spent a while looking at CVs in DH’s discipline which I have shared before - maths - and could not find a single instance of a Russell Group academic under a minimum age of 50 who had gone straight to a lectureship. Many had two post docs and of course many are international.

I got 20% off as an alumni :)

Dafukkkkk?

(Highly intellectual intro there)

Mine cost 5k. It was full MSc. Yes it was 20% cheaper as I was alumni but why are they costing others so much?

@bottleofbeer because it is a seller’s market

True enough, Poetry.

Mine has,, so far been useless. They still take a wedge back out of every pay packet!

Very different how the funding works.