Postgraduate: Out with the Old, in with the New ; Courses in Social Sciences and the Methods of Funding Them Are Changing. Anne McHardy Finds That Students Now Want Degrees That Will Lead to Jobs

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A PhD student at the University of Reading is analysing driving behaviour and is funded by the AA, while another recent graduate was funded by the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association to look at behaviour and guide dogs. Their fellow PhD social-sciences research students are funded predominantly by the Economic and Social Research Council, the largest funder in Britain of postgraduate research degrees. But funding, as with everything else in the postgraduate world, is changing.

Reading University - where a new social sciences block, the Centre for Brain, Behaviour and Health, is under construction - is a microcosm of the flux everywhere in the social sciences. The …