Wednesday 18 October 2017
Issue 112
Halloween
Harmless fun or celebration of evil? Opinion
p. 13
Gaming on a Budget
Stephen King
Games
Screen
The horror writers best and worst forays into cinema
Top horror game picks for under a fiver
p. 28
70% of people have witnessed sexual harrassment on a night out t abou Read age it on p seven
p. 36
67% of people surveyed expected women to be on the receiving end of harassment on a night out
Alex Holyoake
Majority of PhD students lose funding, figures show
University of Sheffield student wins Council election with 49%
Ben Warner
Ben Warner
T
he majority of PhD students exceed their funding period, forcing them to live in poverty while they complete their work, figures show. In every single faculty at the University, as many as 91% of PhD students exceed their funding period, which is normally three or four years. This leaves them no option but to work, drop out, or struggle with their finances. The worst offender is the Medicine, Dentistry & Health
faculty, where 91.2% of PhD students over the last five years have exceeded their funding period. Andy Nichols, a PhD student doing a thesis in dentistry, saw his funding run out in October 2016 and since then he has had to support himself whilst trying to finish his thesis. “The main practical difficulty is funding. I’ve been really lucky to have a supportive family and alongside working part time, have just about coped. Spending a year on my overdraft limit has been really hard,” Andy said. “Mentally the hardest part of
it is the lack of control over your situation. It’s not just the lazy students who have to work beyond of their funding, in my faculty it’s almost all of them and while your friends who went on to grad schemes now have mortgages and good salaries, chances are if you do a PhD, you will be reliant on handouts from your parents just to buy food.”
Continued on page 5
A University of Sheffield student has been elected to Sheffield City Council in a by-election for the Beighton ward Sophie Wilson, the Labour candidate, won with almost 50% of the vote. The by-election was triggered when Helen Mirfin-Boukouris resigned after 13 years of service. She also works at the University, and wants to focus on her PhD. Sophie increased Labour’s vote share in the ward by 5.2% but the election also saw a big swing to
the Liberal Democrats. Their vote share shot up by 21% to 26.6%, with UKIP’s share falling by 19.2%.
Continued on page 6