Student support
You are charged annually for your tuition fees. You will be expected to pay 50% of your fees at the start of Term 1 and 50% at the start of Term 2. The fees you are expected to pay should be shown on your tuition fee notice. If you are unable to pay your fees in full by the dates shown, please contact the Student Fees team by logging a call through SID. It is important to discuss your ability to pay with the Fees team in case alternative payment plans can be set up.
If you are studying at an FTE other than 100% or 50%, your fees require a manual adjustment. This may not be shown on your tuition fee statement when you register but can be applied later in the academic year. For example: you are studying at 60% FTE and you started as a Home fees student in 2023/24. The Home fee for 2023/24 starter will be £4,712pa for a student studying at 100%, and £2,356pa for a student studying at 50%. When you register your fees may only show on your tuition fee statement at £2,356, and later in the year will then be manually adjusted to add the additional 10% of £471.20. Unfortunately the system won't email you when the manual adjustment is made to the account. You should be prepared to pay for the manual adjustment, and you will be sent an email when the deadline to pay the additional 10% has passed.
If you are funded and your studentship is administered by the University, you can view your tuition fee statement on iExeter. If you are being charged for fees that you are not expecting to pay, please query this with your PGR Manager. This example below shows that this student is fully funded for this academic year and no tuition fee payments need to be made by the student.
If your funding finishes part way through the academic year, you should expect to see a balance for the remainder of the year e.g. funding finishes 31 March, you would see 50% of the tuition fees for the academic year showing on your account. As you may be expecting to submit your thesis by your funding end date, or transfer to continuation status[1] at that point, you still may not expect to need to pay those tuition fees. However, our Fees system will expect 50% of that year's tuition fees to be paid at the start of Term 1 and 50% at the start of Term 2. PGR Managers can ask the Fees team to not chase you for unpaid fees in Term 1 and Term 2 if you are expecting to submit or transfer to continuation status after your funding end date, however, the fees will still show on your account. If you are unable to transfer to continuation status or submit by your funding end date, you would then be expected to pay these fees.
UKRI funded students would not normally be expected to pay tuition fees throughout their period of study, so please contact your PGR Manager if fees are showing on your account.
If you are funded and your studentship is administered by the University, stipend payments will be paid direct to your bank account monthly in advance. You can view the payments that are due to be made to you on iExeter.
Click into the ‘Student record and registration tab (SRS)’
Click into the ‘finance tab’
Click into the ‘online statement’.
You should be directed to the Student Statement Management System (SSMS)
You will be asked to log in with your University credentials
You should be presented with a ‘dashboard’, where you can view ‘Payments to be made to you’ and payments to be made by you.
To view your scholarship or bursary award, please click into ‘Payments to be made to you’
You should see a view as per below screen shot.
Please filter by the current academic year.
If a payment that you are expecting is not showing, please query this with your PGR Manager. It should be noted that for budgeting purposes you should expect payment by the 1st of each month, however, quite frequently you will receive your stipend payment at the end of the previous month – this is because we normally make payments on a Friday (where this is a normal working day). However, if the 1st of the month is a Friday, you will receive your stipend on that day. For budgeting purposes you may want to have regular payments going out of your account in the first half of the month rather than the latter.
Payments made under a studentship award are not regarded as income for tax purposes and the University of Exeter is not deemed to be employer of an award holder. The University does not make any payments for students’ National Insurance contributions. For information about tax and National Insurance, please see the Inland Revenue’s guidance on Income Tax and Students: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/students/index.shtml.
The stipend payments will be suspended during periods of interruption (exceptions below). If the stipend is paid to you for a period of time during which you are not registered on the programme of study, we will seek reimbursement for any overpayment that has occurred.
Exceptions:
1. Payment can continue during interruptions for medical reasons for up to 13 weeks (in any 12 month period) and this will also increase the length of your funding. The ‘12 month period’ is calculated from the date of your first interruption. The policy can be found at https://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/doctoralcollege/funding/currentpgrs/)
2. Limited periods of maternity leave, shared parental leave, and adoption leave in accordance with the Maternity Funding Policy (Annex C of the Student Pregnancy, Maternity, Paternity and Adoption Policy).
If you discontinue or terminate your studies, you will not be entitled to any support from the date on which studies ceased. If an overpayment of your stipend has occurred, we will seek reimbursement.
Your stipend payments will automatically stop when you submit your thesis. However, if you are funded by a Research Council your stipend payments can continue until the end of the quarter (if you submit early) but only if you remain engaged in research or training during this time. UKRI quarters are January to March, April to June, July to September, October to December. For example, your funding end date is 30 September. You submit your thesis on 10 July. If you remain engaged in research and training until 30 September, you can continue to receive your stipend payments.
To continue being paid post submission you need to email your supervisor giving details of your plans post submission and requesting payment until the end of the quarter. If your supervisor is satisfied with this, they should forward the email to the PGR Support team with their authorisation and the team will make the payment arrangements with the scholarship payments team.
Please note that if you are part of a Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) they may allow for payments beyond just the quarter. You should check your DTP handbook for specific details and quote this in the email.
For specific details please select your department or programme of study from the links below.
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
The University, in partnership with its alumni community, has created the Success for All Fund to help you if you are experiencing unexpected financial challenges affecting your ability to study.
You may be facing financial hardship; be struggling to pay for IT or a learning disability assessment; or have bills to pay while waiting for your first grant payment to arrive.
All registered undergraduate and postgraduate University of Exeter students in financial difficulty are eligible to apply, irrespective of fee-status. Priority will be given to students undertaking their first degree who are from low-income households or without family support. The majority of funds are means-tested, and you will be asked to provide evidence in support of your application. Please note, funding will not be given to pay your tuition fees.
Further information and instructions on how to apply can be found here.
Health and wellbeing are crucial ingredients of effective study as well as a rich and fulfilling student experience but staying well in body and mind is not always easy at University.
For students with disabilities and long-term health conditions we understand that you may need support to manage your health and wellbeing, as well as your studies, while at University. We recognise that it is much more difficult to learn and enjoy student life when practical and personal difficulties arise. Wellbeing Services can offer a range of services to support students personally and in their studies when difficulties occur.
Full details on support services for PGR students can be found here.
There is a wealth of information of specific PGR Support in the Doctoral College Webpages.
Details on specific support and facilities relevant for your programme can be accessed from the links below.
Study space and IT equipment
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences