Siamo ricercatori di dottorato con consigli per noi colleghi: non venire in Irlanda
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/05/29/we-are-phd-researchers-with-advice-for-us-colleagues-dont-come-to-ireland/
di JackmanH420
Siamo ricercatori di dottorato con consigli per noi colleghi: non venire in Irlanda
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/05/29/we-are-phd-researchers-with-advice-for-us-colleagues-dont-come-to-ireland/
di JackmanH420
11 commenti
Imagine coming all the way here just to realise how lacklustre everything here is đ
âŹ25k tax free. They’re students. It’s plenty.
I wonder how much it would it cost them to do the PhD back home in the US?
We should really do better targeted funding, the amount of surveys I see posted here about some boring psychology issue by some person doing an arguably pointless masters, why arenât we doubling funding for stem phds?
I feel for these people. There is an option to do the PhD part time as well. I did that and worked full time. It took me six years to get it but it allowed me to continue to maintain a good standard of living, save, travel and get the same qualification. I imagine it wonât be as straight forward as that for many but itâs a path I would recommend if you can pull it off.
Hmm. In the US youâll pay 200k for your PhD – and theyâre complaining that you only get PAID 25k here
This needs to be shouted from the rooftops. The universities see themselves as businesses and their customers are the students. They are (with very few exceptions) set up to serve their bank balance, not their students. There is a culture shift needed or they will rot
Lots of ignorance in this thread, but I’ll add one thing that no one seems to be mentioning which is workload.
As a PHD student, you’re expected to do a considerable amount of work on top of your own research. Someone used the example of a CO in the civil service earning roughly the same amount after tax, so let’s use that example.
A CO works roughly 35 hours a week, 23 paid leave days, pension entitlements and let’s face it on the whole it’s pretty easy admin work.
A PHD, on top of conducting their own independent research, which needs to be unique, high level and fully organized with practical work on top depending on your field. You’re also expected to teach undergrad, not lectures but smaller work including workshops, grading papers and giving advice to students. Some PhDs will also be asked to do research for their supervisor as additional work.
So already, we’re well above simple admin work, and we haven’t even started writing the roughly 120,000 words most PhDs take up.
You think that’s 25k worth of work?
The stipend has always been pants. If you want a decent lifestyle do it part time. Academia is not known for its wealthy lifestyle from the get go.  You need to really engage with the supervisor youâre going to be working with to understand the workload and opportunities if any for topping up via extra work. Some phd students have to teach and are not paid for this on top of the stipend – I would say if the place operates a model of no opportunities to top up and you teach willy nilly then avoid it.
Not sure about these folks in the article but when doing it part time I talked to my supervisor about the financial woes – BEFORE I signed up – and they got me onto a part time lecturer panel, random innovation vouchers and jobs around the teaching stream that I was allowed to assist with that paid.   There was also a few startups on campus in a business development hub- these got 3-9k vouchers for projects from the state. You could do these and get paid the amount tax free for the work and also top up your income – these were super lucrative. Mine was in computer science so yes it lends itself to this kind of work more easily then other fields. Last revenue stream was exam papers – you could review exam papers or volunteer to peer review at 1-2euro per exam booklet, that shit adds up. Sit on the couch with a big mug of tea and fly though the exam papers checking grades or grading. With something like programming or maths these were easy to fly through. Two sets of exams a year – plus two sets of repeats which paid more per paper. Winner winner researcher  is getting dinner đ
With these somewhat unpredictable extra jobs I got to top it up for basically x3/4 times the stipend and had a decent wage. Over time I managed to make the classes somewhat relevant to what I also needed to be proficient on so it added to my knowledge.Â
The real scary gotcha is if I had of gone full time it was against the rules to work another job during the core research hours and Iâd of been up shit creek as I just would of collapsed under the volume of the phd work itself and these extra jobs if I had to do them late at night etc.Â
I did teach night classes in the college for awhile but these were exhausting so I went back to part time in the days  – there were some bizarre health issues to teaching the night ones for me like I always ended up eating a lot more and crappy food. So I put on a bit of weight plus didnât have the energy for exercise – so I bailed on it back to days.  It was also a young manâs game – I have kids now and no way on earth could I be out of the house at those times now during their bedtimes etcÂ
I hate to say it but maybe if theyâd done a bit of research firstâŚ. These folks agreed to these terms and then get annoyed after the fact. A bit like being told itâs going to rain tomorrow and then getting annoyed when you get caught out in it.
Looking up what the authors of this piece are studying and I have to be honest, I think weâll be fine without more people researching âhow dominant eco-modernist and technocratic approaches to environmental protection can be challengedâ.
Probably should revoke their grants and use the money to bid for top US medical researchers frankly.
That women’s back hurts from carrying her hole