Choosing a UK PhD
Selecting a British University for Your Doctoral Research Degree
Selecting a doctoral programme can be difficult. Some basic rules, hints and pointers to help you select a place for PhD study in the UK.
The student has obtained a good Batchelor degree or, increasingly, a taught Masters and is wondering what to do next. One option is to go directly into employment, increasingly important now that student debt is becoming both common and increasingly large. A second is to take a break and travel on a late, or perhaps a second, gap-year to broaden the mind before settling down. The other option increasingly being taken is to pursue a research degree with the idea of gaining an MPhil or a PhD.
Selecting a place to study can be difficult and will depend on a whole variety of factors, most crucially the topic into which the student wishes to research, their motivation for choosing to pursue a PhD, and the ability of a university to offer both the required facilities and appropriate supervision. That selection is difficult enough if the student is selecting a university in their own country. It is much more difficult if their chosen place of study is overseas. Here are some simple pointers to help students (including international students for whom there are some important visa issues) seeking to study at doctoral level in the UK.
Search the Net
First, check out the university’s website. Browse around and see what sort of feel there is to the place. Does it look as though research students are valued? Are there lots of things going on? Are there events at which research students are welcome? If there are no indications, then potential students shouldn’t be afraid to email potential supervisors, the Graduate School, or the Student Union or Association and ask. Some will have a Graduate Students Society or Association and these will be good sources of information. Alternatively, it is perfectly reasonable to pick up the phone and speak to people at the university. The student will be paying high fees. Any university worth its salt will want to address their concerns and reassure them that this is the place for them.
Do a Background Check
Second, to make sure that the university is genuine (and this applies to applicants for undergraduate study as well), check out that the awarding body (which may be different from the institution at which someone is applying to study) is a member of either Universities UK or GuildHE. If the awarding body does not appear as a member of either of these organisations, it is time to check things out a lot further and very, very carefully.
Quality Assurance
Third, it is possible to get a sense of a university by checking out the various reports on it which have been undertaken by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). These do not relate directly to graduate provision, but will give a flavour of what the place is like.
Examine its Code of Practice
Fourth, each University should have a copy of its Code of Practice for research students (or a similar name) easily available via the WWW. This code should be based on, and address the issues raised in, the QAA Code of Practice (Section 1). This nationally agreed code, which is generally accepted as identifying good practice, can be found here. It is very important to check out the institution's own code. The importance of the institution’s Code of Practice is that it provides the details of what the student can expect (and what is expected of the student) during their period of study. It is a significant part of the legal contract between student and institution.
Fifth, there is a student-run postgraduate organisation, the National Postgraduate Committee (NPC) which can offer advice and which has a website containing a number of useful resources for students in the UK.
There are also a number of sites, for example, graduate-education.org, where you can get news and advice on issues to do with postgraduate study.
Finally, probably the best way of finding out what somewhere is like is by asking someone who has already been there. Perhaps one of their undergraduate tutors has studied in the UK and knows the reputation of its universities, departments and, even, individual academics. If that is the case, the student should talk to them. They’ll be able to provide a first-hand account and, possibly, put the potential student in touch with people currently in the UK.
Following these basic hints will help to ensure that the UK postgraduate experience is as good as it both can and should be. Now all that's left to be done is choose an appropriate topic for the research component of the doctorate!
