PhD funded by part-time job

[HauskaTavata]

Dear all,

did anyone fund a PhD through a part-time job in Finland?
It would be interesting to hear about your experiences.

Greetings
D.

[wolf80]

I don't know anyone who did that in my field, as it is common to only do completely funded PhD studies. As you don't write your field of study I can only tell you what you already know - the more you work the less you will be able to do for your studies and the longer you will take to complete them.

So, what is your question actually?

[bahare]

Hello
My name is bahare ghorbani,living in the iran,and got B.A in general psychology with grade 14/57 over 20,and continued my education through master in clinical psychology in Urmia azad university here in Iran and my master grade is19.5 over20,beside have 3articles which are published,and have enrolled in TOFEL exam and got 7.7 over 9.
Now I want to further my education to get a PhD degree and study in finland ,due to financial problems that I have I should get a scholarship for a PhD programme.
So I have a question may any university in finland offer me a scholarship or may I get any financial support? If so,may I get informed about the details?

[wolf80]

Hello
My name is bahare ghorbani,living in the iran,and got B.A in general psychology with grade 14/57 over 20,and continued my education through master in clinical psychology in Urmia azad university here in Iran and my master grade is19.5 over20,beside have 3articles which are published,and have enrolled in TOFEL exam and got 7.7 over 9.
Now I want to further my education to get a PhD degree and study in finland ,due to financial problems that I have I should get a scholarship for a PhD programme.
So I have a question may any university in finland offer me a scholarship or may I get any financial support? If so,may I get informed about the details?

Finland has a grant system and not scholarship programs (in the American sense) that are based on merits. You are hired for a specific time to do the research work, publications and study courses necessary to obtain a PhD. You don't need to have specific grades in your Master's to secure a grant or maintain high grades to keep the grant.

There are several possibilities to get a funded PhD:
a) A supervisor might have a research topic for which he wants to hire a PhD student, paying the salary out of his own budget (often an Academy of Finland grant).
b) A supervisor has a specific research idea, or you and the supervisor develop a research idea together, and then you apply for a grant. These grants are given by grad schools, public institution and private foundations. They are highly competitive, and nowadays it is hard to get a grant this way, you need a really good research proposal. For the first grant you would be aiming for at least two, but normally three years of funding. If your research goes well, and you already have a scientific publication or at least a manuscript, you can often secure another 6 or 12 months afterwards, or even several of these grants.
c) A private institution or company has a specific research topic and is giving a grant to a promising student to work on this. The student normally cannot decide much in which direction the research is going.


For you in specific there are the following issues:
- A Master's degree from Iran covers different fields than one from a Finnish university, and it seems you are already specialized in a specific field (clinical psychology). Finnish psychology students don't specialize in their Master's studies but afterwards, so at the same level they are less specialized but have a wider knowledge of psychology.
- You don't speak Finnish. Psychology is of course a scientific field that is highly dependent on language. Most research projects will involve Finnish people, and English alone will not be enough for this.
- Without your Iranian Master's degree being recognized by the Finnish authorities (Valvira), which will not be easy, and also speaking Finnish, you are not allowed to work as a psychologist here. This does not prevent you from doing a PhD, but even then you are only qualified for research. So, unless you want to continue an academic career and move on to postdoc positions, a PhD does not help you with a career as a psychologist in Finland (and probably most of Europe).

So you would need to find a professor who believes in your education and who has a research topic that works for you without speaking Finnish. If the professor doesn't pay you out of his budget (which in the current budget situation is highly unlikely) you would have to work together on grant applications (lots of work, it takes months to develop a research plan and write a grant application that is good enough to compete). If you would get a grant you then could apply for a residence permit (from your home country), wait for a positive result and then come to Finland to start your PhD studies.

Practically, you can look if you find offers for PhD research positions on all kinds of websites. Or even better, look up the possible supervisors in fields you are interested in, write to them with ideas for research topics and/or ask if they have topics they would need a PhD student for (and are willing to go in a grant application process together), and see if you can get one of them interested enough.

To get a funded PhD it takes a lot of personal investment, hard work and patience on your side.