Sponsored PhD

jennifernil

Is money paid to students undertaking a full time PhD taxed as income?

melancholly

no -it's usually called a stipend and you pay no tax on it and still have the tax free allowance to go before any tax is paid.

(unless you get funded through being a research or teaching assistant, in which case it works like a normal salary)

jennifernil

Thank you. And now a supplementary question..........

Would this student be liable for Council Tax?

ollyshaw

Nope, you are exempt from council tax too (assuming you are a full time student)!

I have recently completed a PhD (and there seem to be a few others lurking here too), so if you have any more questions feel free.

Olly

melancholly

might get more responses to these kind of questions on the student board though - there a quite a few of us who have finished or are still doing phds and spend too long on there avoiding work!

jennifernil

Thanks for the replies, I thought I might get more sense on here than on the student board!!

DD has the chance to apply for the sponsorship and is waiting for clarification of the details, I just wanted to establish a few facts first as she is bound to come to me for info/advice.

As there seems to be a few knowledgable folk here..........is the loss of 3 years salary worth it in the long run? Are the job prospects that much better? She already has a firm job offer for after she graduates, on a starting salary of £25k.

melancholly

it all depends on the job she wants to do.... for some jobs a phd will make a huge difference and for others it won't. i don't think it would ever do any harm, but at the same time it clearly doesn't guarentee employment.

a big factor will be on how much she wants to do the phd - if she gets funding and will really enjoy it, then it's likely to be a good thing, regardless of the outcome in 3 years in terms of jobs. it's much harder work than an undergrad degree or a taught masters so if the only reason for doing it is better job prospects, then it's probably not a great idea as 3 years of resenting the work would be horrible.

so that's not much of an answer, apart from saying it depends on her! sorry!

the job market is also hard to predict - i graduated in 2002, just after 9/11 and hardly anyone was doing major recruiting, but now everything's back to normal (or thereabouts!)......

jennifernil

Thanks for that! At the moment she is in year 4 of a 5 year Masters, year 5 is a research year. (we are in Scotland) She has a firm job for September 2008.

It is unclear (to me anyway) at the moment whether this PhD is to be instead of the 5th year of the Masters, meaning she will graduate BSc in July, or after it. It is to be based on what she did in her project work this year, which she did enjoy, so I think she would enjoy the PhD work.

It may be that there will be the chance of a job with the sponsoring company at the end, these are the sort of details she needs to look into. I have heard that you can be over-qualified for some jobs, maybe too specialised in a narrow field? BTW, she is doing Software Engineering.

She rang me as soon as she got the news from her tutor, wanted to know what I thought. We support her at the moment, so I said as long as we are not expected to contribute anything it has to be her decision!

I would just hate for her to spend 3 years on a small stipend only to find that her job and financial prospects were no better, one has to be a little realistic and think about stuff like mortgages etc too!

ollyshaw

Hi Jennifer,

I would say there are many pro's and cons of doing a PhD.

A book like this would really help if she can find it in her lib

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Get-PhD-Handbook-Supervisors/dp/0335216846/ref=sr_1_1/026-5738223-6998824?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176471885&sr=8-1

Also she should ask whoever her supervisor is if she could talk to a couple of PhD students and young postdocs. Make sure they are not 1st year PhD's as this is the good times!

For me the biggest pros and cons were:

+sense of satisfaction at the end of it all!
+knowing I had done some good work
+having a sought after skill set

-watching my mates climb the pay scales at work while I was broke
-constant criticism and feeling like it would never end
-mental exhaustion after 4 years of it!

Olly

jennifernil

Hi ollyshaw, I will pass that on to her. Can I ask, what was your degree in?

ollyshaw

A "Systems Biology" PhD in a computer science department.

Olly