funding for part time phd - discrimination?

[AnnabellaFagina]

Does anymore know if there has been any work done on this. I want to start a phd when my dd starts school, and had hoped to do it part time. However a lot of the studentships(funding) are not applicable for part time phds. Surely this indirect sex discrimination?

It might be, yes, but it depends on the area of work. What topics and funding bodies have you looked at?

I agree, I think it is, and I think it's a huge issue.

Funding is a total bugger, so you definitely have my sympathy.

I think although it ends up discriminating against more women than men, it'd be hard to argue it was deliberate on the part of the funding body (as opposed to the bigger system).

Are you doing it part time to fit in with a job, or to fit in with younger children? I just wonder if it'd be possible at all to do it full time?

There was a poster on here a while ago who was doing a funded full time PhD in the sciences and I believe her grant was something like 17k, so that would be quite respectable? Or even a standard AHRC full time grant is just under 13k, but you do get the money off council tax, and there might be other things?

Sorry, I do realize you may well know all of this and just want to have a justified rant about the system, just, you know, in case you didn't ...

I want to do a social sciences phd and I've been looking at studentships funded by the uniiversity

I could do a full time phd but it would be better as a longer study.

I have two DDs aged 4 and 7, I started my full-time Research Council funded PhD 2 years ago when they were 2 and 5. I get around £17k grant, and do science, like the person mentioned above but I don't think it was me.

I don't think it's discrimination not to fund part-time projects. Funded PhDs, certainly in my field, form part of ongoing research projects, and waiting 8 years to see results instead of 4 is taking the mick a bit. So they tend not to fund over such a long time frame.

Plenty of parents work and study full-time, it's infinitely manageable. Of course it would be nice if we could all work or study part time and still get paid, but sadly that's not always how the world works. It's a bit like having your cake and eating it. You have to either sacrifice family time or you sacrifice the funding.

Yes, not being able to get part-time funding would disproportionally affect women, but that's hardly the fault of the funding body - it's the fault of a society that sees raising children as women's work. There would be no grounds for complaining about discrimination if men took on a greater responsibility for childcare.

X-posts: Anna - if you think the project would work better as a longer study, go to the people in charge and make your case. You don't get what you don't ask for. Because if the longer time frame may actually be an advantage rather than a disadvantage, it's a win-win situation and you need to sell it to them that way.

Depends where you are - just looked at an institution known to me, let's put it that way, and the social sciences funding is indeed full-time only, the reason given being the intensity of the research projects. Hmm, I'm not going to comment further on that one here.

Just looked at the Research Councils out of interest and the ESRC offers part-time funding but over 5 years (not six as you might expect), but it is at least there. Is this a route open to you at your chosen institution? The ESRC also do collaborative doctoral scholarships, which would allow you to get some experience of a non-HEI if you are not wanting to go into academia, not sure if they are available part-time.

I agree that funding is discriminatory if you have a young family and want to do it part-time, add to that the structural inequalities of seminars and conferences being in the evenings or weekends and perhaps requiring travel and the expectation that you contribute to the research culture, and yes, let's just say postgraduate study does favour the mobile and commitment free, or at least those with domestic support.

Do you know any of the academics well where you want to study and do they rate you? What possibility is there of getting a PhD linked to a project grant, where there might be more flexiblity about how that is done, depending on the length of the grant of course?

As to the suggestion of doing it full-time, I would really only do this if you are prepared to and can commit the time. It depends on your institution, but universities are concerned about progress and completion because of things like the Research Excellence Framework. You will be expected to do a full-time study schedule, especially if you have a studentship, and complete within the required time.

I don't think it's discrimination not to fund part-time projects.

"However a lot of the studentships(funding) are not applicable for part time phds. Surely this indirect sex discrimination? "

It is hard, but I don't think its indirect discrimation. A lot of people who do PhDs part time, do so because they have another job. (Ie. research scientist or Stay at home mum). If they were going to give funding to a stay at home mum then they would have to give funding to those who are in work.

What I find shocking is that people who do a PhD part time are only allowed five years to complete it, but those who are full time are allowed up to four years to submit their thesis.

In my experience those doing 50% FTE part-time PhDs are allowed seven years to submit rather than four for full-time students, which seems reasonable. It may depend on the university?

In practice, OP, if you are a very good candidate and the research project is genuinely better done over a longer term period, the university may be able to fund you itself and give the other funding to other applicants. I would focus on trying to find a sympathetic supervisor who also has some clout and political nous.

As for the structural issues, I think that there is some good work being done, e.g. links between Athena SWAN awards and funding/REF. However, everything in HE is changing and/or financially squeezed currently so that equality is not an issue at the top of everyone's agenda right now. We certainly have quite a way to go in some respects.

I think that's an issue in itself, if the project needs too long for the time frame. Part of planning a PhD is writing a proposal that is doable in three/four years. I'm Arts, so we don't have the same issue of it being a problem to wait for results, but if someone said they wanted to do a project but it'd take more than three years, they'd be told that it wasn't a suitable project.

Is it something you can split into two chunks? If you can say there's three years of work for the PhD, and you have plans for the postdoc, that'd surely look great!

I may be wrong here and Annie may be right, that it's not a drawback ... but in either case you'd need to explain it to the people allocating funding, not just apply for seven years instead of three.

This is a bit disengenuous, but apply for the FT studentships, and then 1year (or even just 6months) in, ask to transfer to PT mode. It's likely that it's easier for the HE institution to agree than to have you quit and try to reappoint.

Um ... that's not a good idea! You could lose your funding entirely and you'd also be depriving another full-time student of funding unfairly.

Is that the case, LRD? How does that square with legislation about flexible working being given due consideration and the employer needing to make a business case against it?

If it's structural inequality that PT opportunities don't exist, I'm not certain that it's really that unfair for there to be 1 less FT place and one more PT place, if the OP is the strongest candidate for a funded position.

You wouldn't lose the funding just by asking to transfer to PT mode, and the OP has said she "could" do FT, just that PT would be better. So she could make the case for that 1year in rather than at interview. (Or she could find that FT mode is great and want to complete asap when she has actually started).

...if said employer intends to decline the request, I mean.

It's not employment, ennis. But I don't know how it squares up.

I don't at all like that there isn't more funding for part-time work, but funding is a really horrible situation anyway.

I do know my funding is only there on condition I finish within five years tops. I can't change to part time and keep it. Them's the breaks.

In fact, being cynical, I would assume one reason why PhDs are still funded, rather than students being employed and paid a salary, may be to avoid legislation about having to let people go part-time, I don't know?

So who does a PhD student or a post-doc have a contract with - the fundIng body or the university?

I always thought it was the university as isn't pension scheme membership via the university etc? But I don't know!

I have mine with the AHRC, I think.

I don't have a pension scheme, so don't know how that works.

Sorry, not very helpful!

I only know the experience side of it, not what the legal situation is.

Btw, post-docs are totally different - they are employed. We're not.

Research councils certainly used to have clear provision for maternity leave within the studentship, so that legislation was adhered to; so the time scale for completion would be extended if there was time-out taken for maternity. Also most HE-institutions have provision for suspension of studies for various reasons, which can also increase the total completion time. (So LRD, if you needed study suspension, surely your studentship would be paused and then restarted, even if there's a clause that PT is barred).

Clearly the small-print would need to be checked regarding the studentship payments, but it might be worth checking.

But maternity leave isn't the same, is it? The research councils say up front that they don't usually have funding for part time students, and that if you get full-time funding, there is a time limit within which you have to finish. Maternity leave is simply taken out of that, so it doesn't count.

This is about someone fully intending to work on an eight year project, not someone who's one year into a full-time project and has found her situation has changed.

Surely a supervisor will notice that the project needs eight years not four when she applies? I don't think trying to get around the rules is a good idea, I just don't see how it could work.

Thanks LRD.

Annabella, can your DD's father go part time? How mUch holiday do you get with the PhD, is it 8 weeks? If so you could cover most of the school holidays and perhaps by finishing early some days and late others, see your DD after school some days?

Btw, I'm not unsympathetic and I hope it doesn't come across that way.

It's just that the OP is describing a project she thinks will work better over 8 years, and that seems to be separate from gender issues and from people needing to work part-time for practical reasons.