Okay, well...
Don't become an academic because you like the idea of being an academic. Being an academic very often sucks, as evidenced by the bitching you will hear from academics on here. Why did I become one? I love my research. How much research do I get to do these days? Very feckin' little - mostly I teach, prepare for teaching, spoonfeed students and do tedious and huge amounts of admin. I'm not sure anyone chooses to be an academic - it just sort of happens. You start doing what fascinates you and your peers and mentors spur you on, and next thing you know you are hugely academically qualified but are earning less than your contemporaries who went into graduate employment.

How does one fund pgrad studies? Grants. (Enzyme will tell you a different story though he'll probably also recommend the grant route.) You chose a course/a study programme and you apply for funding. I got a European Social Fund grant for my MSc and EPSRC (the research council for engineering and physical sciences) funding for my PhD. It's not a lot of money - be prepared to have crappy part-time jobs too. I lived on about 6K a year for three years and that wasn't fun (though strangely I could always afford one bottle of wine and some nice cheese each week - priorities, I guess). There was no way my parents could ever have contributed to my pgrad education and so I went it alone.

I did not go straight from ugrad to pgrad and I (with bias) recommend to all my students that they get some time working in the real world before they return to university. This is so that they gain valuable experience, that they have a basis for comparison of life outside academia, and that they can fully appreciate their choices. Your mileage may vary, but never chose to do pgrad studies because you can't think of another job to do. That way lies frustration and high drop-out rates.

Dreaming of a life in the Ivory Towers is all very lovely, but then you get there and the ivory is actually concrete and the tower is a shitty, soot-filled office in a crumbling Victorian terrace in inner London, and you spend your days telling students how to use commas and how to spell "plagiarism" correctly.

Universities are turning into businesses. Sad but true. Fact of life. At the end of the day, if you're not bringing in huge amounts of grant money then your career will go nowhere. You have to play the game and the game is not fun.

My lovely-ex has played a blinder - he got his PhD and went into research in industry. He now gets to work on robots all day and then drives home at 5.30pm and forgets all about work 'til the next morning. By contrast, during term time I'm up 'til 1am or 2am working. Lack of specific contracted hours often means I work more than the average 37.5 week.

I wish I could've posted a more positive response, but I'm being honest. Good luck!
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Wed 20 Aug 2008, 21:23, Reply)