How to Get a PhD (5th ed.)

This book is a handbook and a survival manual for PhD students. If you are intending to embark on a research degree it will introduce you to the system and, by increasing your understanding, help you to improve your choice of university, college, department and supervisor.

If you have just picked this book up and you are already a research student, then you should read it thoroughly – and hang on to it so that you can refer to it frequently. You will need to do this because we shall be discussing the skills and processes that are crucial to obtaining the PhD degree.

If you are a supervisor, or contemplating becoming one, the book is highly relevant to you too, because it deals with the educational processes that it is your responsibility to encourage for the successful completion of your students’ research degrees.

If you are a senior academic administrator, the relevance of this book is that it provides a guide to procedures and systems concerned with research degrees which will enable you to evaluate the adequacy of the provision your university is making for research students.

Phillips, E. and Pugh, D. (2010)

How to Get a PhD. 5th edn.
Buckingham: Open University Press