8

I am a UK citizen in my final year of an undergraduate degree in the UK. I am considering doing a Master's degree in mainland Europe, which would be two years long. However, I am also looking into the option of returning to the UK later for a PhD and am concerned that this will make me ineligible for funding.

Most of the funding bodies for the hard sciences seem to require that a potential PhD student has been "ordinarily resident" in the UK for the past three years, but it is unclear how this applies to students. For example, if I claimed that my parents' house (where my bank accounts etc are still registered to, as I do not have a stable address as a student) was my "ordinary residence", and that I had returned to the UK on short trips over the course of my masters degree, would that be accepted? Could I claim that I am only in Europe for the purposes of study and my "ordinary residence" is the UK because that is where I hold citizenship? Or once you finish an undergraduate degree and study abroad can you no longer claim this?

  • It may depend on whether they mean "for a certain length of time (say, 6 months) in the past three years" or "for the past three years". For your own sake, this really seems like a question best posed to the funding bodies themselves. –  Sep 28 '16 at 15:33
  • They only say "for the past three years", i.e. for the whole of the past three years. My confusion is more with the term "ordinarily resident", which I think has a legal meaning, though I haven't been able to see what. For example, it's unclear if I am ordinarily resident if I live for 360 days of the year abroad but have bank accounts and electoral roll details in the UK, and state that I am only abroad for the purposes of study. –  Sep 28 '16 at 15:41
  • If it has legal meaning, then maybe http://law.stackexchange.com/ ? But I'd still suggest going to the funding bodies directly rather than relying on other peoples' (potentially unreliable) advice. –  Sep 28 '16 at 15:44
  • 1
    Expats.se is the best place for this question. If you would like it moved there, you can flag it for moderator attention. – StrongBad Sep 28 '16 at 16:15
  • 2
    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this question is a legal question about UK immigration law rather than academia. –  Sep 28 '16 at 17:57
  • 2
    I think this is specifically relevant to academia because often there are exceptions for various legal situations when the person is a student, and legally my rights will be the same, I am only interesting in the funding situation. I was hoping someone who had done a Masters abroad and a PhD in the UK could comment on if there were any loopholes and how things worked, but that might be a fairly small number of people on this site. –  Sep 28 '16 at 19:43
  • 1
    @user62493 as a moderator at both academia.se and expats.se, I think you will get a better answers at expats. – StrongBad Sep 29 '16 at 03:05

1 Answers1

9

From What is my Fee Status? - University of Cambridge:

Being absent from the UK/EU due to study abroad is usually considered a temporary absence and does not affect ordinary residence if the home/permanent address is within the UK/EU.

Also, this "Determining if a person is properly settled in the UK in order to establish if they are ordinarily resident here" document from the Department of Health says:

Finite periods of volunteering, missionary work or study abroad while the person remains a UK resident will not prevent a person being ordinarily resident

ff524
  • 191
  • 1
  • 3
  • Thanks, this is helpful. If the graduate studies page from Cambridge considers that to not affect residency, it implies that the funding bodies probably take a similar view. –  Sep 28 '16 at 19:46
  • I'm a Brit and did my masters abroad and can confirm this. – the other one Oct 07 '16 at 14:07