Funding a masters - how?

Money_saving_Martyn

Hello everyone!

I'm thinking of doing a masters. The one I want to do costs €20000 (it's a triple degree all singing and dancing thing) and I was wondering how people fund not only the course fees, but living while they do it.

Do post-grads get access to student loans and grants in the same way?

I know scholarships exist....

Any advice welcomed!

cazziebo

sponsorship probably. What field are you in? Any sponsors would have to be convinced of the value of the research.

I'm working with a university just now because my company wants to fund some research into employee participation/business culture. We are also applying for funding from the government's Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme. The university want the research so they agree to give some tutoring time for free. The student will be an employee of ours and become involved in some projects - the longer term aim is that the person comes to us as a permanent fulltime employee once they have finished their studies.

More about KTP scheme (with vacancies) here

http://www.ktponline.org.uk/

mcpherson_2

Hi,

I did a masters a few years ago. There are scholarships available, and these can be provided by a company (particularly for vocational courses) and also sometimes the university, but quite often this will be for fees only.

There are Career Development Loans available for people undertaking masters. They were only provided by three banks: Barclays, Co-Op and an other (Google will be your friend here). If accepted, you normally get a decent interest rate which is not applied until you start paying back the loan. You usually start repaying the loan 12 months after the masters has finished. It can then be deferred even further if you are on a low income - but note that I wasn't able to defer despite earning not much more than £10k pa at that time. Note that the maximum loan allowed at that time (2004) was £8k, it may have increased since. My course fees were nowhere near your's (£3.5k I think) and the course was only for 12 months.

For the rest of the money I had a part-time job for part of the year and also undertook psychology experiments at the university (about £6 for 20 mins-1hour) which would run every now and again.

Also incidentally, I'm now doing a KTP

rubuhoeikanaika

There are a few main routes to masters funding in the UK:

- research council funding (easy or hard to get depending on your discipline)
- loans
- university scholarships (easy to get a few grand but rather hard to get one that pays all your fees+living costs)
- employer sponsorship

Your best bet is the 'finance' section of the web page of the university you want to go to.

Lara44

Hello Martyn

Something that helped me was to be very honest about all the figures - working out exactly what I would need to earn to fund fees and living costs.

I studied part time 2 days per week, and worked for 4 days. It was hard but worthwhile, and as my MA was in a different area it gave me useful extra time for the new knowledge to sink in.

Your fees are really massive at £16,000 plus around £10,000 to live per year, that's a massive £2166 per month! Is there a cheaper option? My fees were £1500 per year, and I earned £800pm, of which £600 was rent and living and £200 for fees.

I lurked around the debt free wanabee forum which was really helpful, loads of ways to minimise expenditure- small ways of earning and saving money really really added up.