Research ReValued

Being a PhD student who is thoroughly pissed off with the state of the HE sector at present I “enjoy” collecting little snippets that remind just how terrible it all is.  Today a vacancy for a “fully funded” PhD in the social sciences advertised a stipend at just under £7k. 

I have blogged before about the rates of pay for PhD students here in receipt of a full research council stipend rate.  Some suggested the 42 hour rate wasn't right, I still maintain that it is (based on my own experiences), but for the sake of argument I will accept a lower rate in this post of 37 hours per week.

At £7k per year the “lucky” PhD student will earn a rather derisory £3.42 per hour for their time.  To put that into context, it is 74 pence more than an apprentice (on the government’s apprentice scheme) will get, but 30 pence less than an under 18 year old can expect from the national minimum wage.   I can’t find a reliable source as to the average age of a PhD student; most blogs and questions I've seen on Google suggest around 26 years old.  I would guess intuitively that that is probably about right. 

To take up a £7k per year full time PhD studentship, the student will then be earning £2.89 per hour less than any other employee in any other (legitimate) employment sector.  What a wonderful valuation of this potential student’s contribution to knowledge!

Now some may point to the fact the student also has the fees paid to the university.  Is that really something anyone in the HE sector should be pointing out however?  I can’t think of many jobs (make no mistake a PhD is a job and should be treated as such) that require an entry fee each year?  I think BA charge an attendance fee to their pilot’s course, but don’t require pilots to pay for retraining each year!

I for one cannot understand how this situation comes about in the HE sector.  Based on my own experiences, most academics in my field tend to be on the left politically, either liberal left, or some of the more rabble rousing ones, on the far left.  How can such a situation occur, academics who criticise strongly the austerity policies of this government, have a real concern for the plight of marginalised and poor, support a situation in which a vacancy is advertised that just doesn't pay below the living wage, it pays significantly below the minimum wage.  It isn't right and quite frankly is incredibly depressing.

And just as a post script to the previous piece regarding Research Funding for Studentships, in the last 8 years there has been a real terms decrease of £1,800 in the value of a full studentship.  It is all quite sad, less than noble, and frankly depressing.

The Value of a PhD

Doing a PhD is a difficult and intense task; it involves more concentration than is probably healthy.

If anyone has attended an open day or a course at a university on doing a PhD then you have probably been told to really think about it before you make your decision. I remember being told many years ago that it was a difficult and time intensive task. Well I can certainly agree with that, it most definitely is.

I think where these 'thinking of doing a PhD' seminars fall down is that they don't really stress the financial difficulties involved. Of course doing a PhD without funding is beyond the financial means of most normal people, I come from a working class background and certainly could not have afforded to do it without funding, for which I am grateful. As a side note, potential PhDers should be under no illusion, doing a PhD is a full time job.

I don't even know how undergrads manage any-more, thankfully my fees for undergrad, (although I still owe the SLC ridiculous amounts) were only £1k per year. I can't even begin to contemplate the £27k that today's undergrad students are saddled with.

But back to the PhD. If you are lucky to get funding, and a stipend, it is perhaps worth reflecting on what that stipend actually amounts to. It is supposed to aim at the average graduate salary, after tax. PhD Students don't pay tax on stipends, or national insurance (which will come in nicely when I reach pensionable age, another plus!), the amount you earn is about £13.8k per year. Translating this to an actual graduate job, it sets the relevant figure at about £16k per year (once tax and NI has been put back on). According to the Higher Education Careers Service Unit the average graduate salary is 18-24k, clearly the PhD has fallen behind somewhat.

Taking the stipend figures as a base I'm going to attempt to work out the hourly rate that universities value a PhD student.

A PhD is three years in duration, certainly in the social sciences no one expects completion in three years, three years and three months is considered an absolute minimum. You do not receive funding after the third year, so that is self funded. In addition you become a student on continuation status, which means you have to pay money back to the university, or you will not be allowed to study. At my university that fee is £300; presumably universities differ on these fees. It is well worth checking this figure out before committing to a PhD, as it is very unlikely you will be told about on any interview.

Continuation status has another lovely benefit in that, because you are so busy with your PhD, you cannot claim unemployment benefits because you are not ready for work on a full time basis. So you are unemployed, have bills to pay, but can claim no financial support. Oh and you still have to work about 42 hours a week (at a minimum) on your PhD.

Running this through the wash I'm going to estimate what this translates to in hourly income. 

• 3 years @ Stipend rate of £16k (this is the before tax rate, so that net = £13.8k) = £48,000 for 3 years 
• Minus continuation fee £300 
• 3 years and 3 months (very few holidays!) = (42 hrs per week x 52 (year)) x 3.25 (3 years and 3 months) = 7098 hours. 

Giving the hourly pay of a PhD student £6.72 per hour (sadly no overtime, or working time directive limit on hours!), this is providing you finish in the three years and three months. For this you get a pat on the back at the end and then finally you can claim job seekers allowance. The job prospects after finishing the PhD deserve a post in themselves, suffice it to say here that it is incredibly competitive and your future career is probably a series of temporary contracts, most of which won't be full time (although they will expect you to work full time).

These figures, I should add, don’t include all the incidental costs of doing the PhD either: The conferences you are expected to attend, which become more important towards the end of your PhD (just as funding is being withdrawn). Also one shouldn't forget all the free work writing various scholarly articles you have to do in a desperate attempt to get published, so that you can hope to obtain one of the temporary part time jobs that are the norm nowadays in academia.

The joys of doing a PhD? Well they can be hard to spot at times. It is sometimes described as the pinnacle of your career; well at the rate of pay above, it seems that pinnacle isn't valued at a whole lot at present. Certainly not as much as the average graduate salary in industry (based on 18k per year this works out at £8.24 per hour based on a 42 hour week).