Most students never see this fee, because they receive funding that pays it directly as well as paying them a stipend. There are various funders - the largest

Most students never see this fee, because they receive funding that pays it directly as well as paying them a stipend. There are various funders - the largest is the government (via Research Councils UK), but universities also provide a limited number of scholarships, as do charities like Cancer research UK or the Welcome Trust. The tuition fees are limited by what the funding agencies are willing to pay: e.g. for 2017/18, the EPSRC has an 'indicative fee level' of £4,195 (and a national mimum stipend of £14,553 paid to the student) [1]. > Is there a program designed to provide easy/guaranteed credit to PhD students? Not really: banks do not consider the stipend to be a salary, so when assesing loans treat PhD students as if they had no income at all. [1]: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/skills/training/ http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/skills/training/