EPSRC: Doctoral Training Accounts (DTA)

Eligibility Criteria

We award doctoral training grants to universities rather than to particular departments. You can fund students jointly between different departments and between different universities. You can partly fund students using money from other sources like departmental funds, industry, public sector organisations and charities as long as you stick to the 50% rule.

Offered Benefits

Collaborative Training provides doctoral students with a first-rate, challenging research training experience, within the context of a mutually beneficial research collaboration between academic and partner organisations in the private, public and civil society sectors.

A collaborative doctoral project funded via a DTP may be converted to Cooperative Awards in Science & Technology (CASE). There is also flexibility for collaborations that don’t meet the requirements for CASE. To have funding from a DTP, a studentship must be at least 50% EPSRC funded. This section provides further guidance about this 50% rule.

The conditions of research council training grants include that:

"48. For any studentship where funding is drawn from a Training Grant (TG) or Training Account (TA), either:

1. For a fees-only student, all the student’s fees must be funded from the TG or TA of a single Council
2. Where a student is eligible for a full award, at least 50% of the total cost of the studentship must be drawn from the TG or TA of a single Council. The remaining costs may be funded from other sources, such as the research organisation’s funds or from research partners. Joint Research Council funding of multidisciplinary awards is possible on the basis of 50:50 funding from two Councils' TG / TAs across the period of award; in that case one of the Councils must be designated as the majority funder for monitoring and information purposes. A student must not be expected to bear the cost of any shortfall in funding."

• The total cost of the studentship refers to the full level of support provided to the student (from all sources) over the period of their studies and includes fees, stipend and incidental costs.

The 50% rule applies over the full lifetime of the studentship, including part time study and any extensions.

• The DTP funding used to provide a studentship can be drawn from more than one DTP or DTPs from more than one research organisation.
• With EPSRC funding, neither CDTs or Industrial CASE can be used to supplement DTPs. DTP funding may, however, be used to cover extensions that take the end date of an individual studentship beyond the end of a CDT or Industrial CASE training grant. To use DTP funding in this way, it must meet the 50% rule.
• Where a student is eligible for a full award, they must receive it (in other words, they cannot be fees-only) otherwise the 50% rule will not be met. No part of the stipend or fees or incidental costs of the project should be paid for by the student either directly or indirectly.
• Where doctoral training is collaborative, the information provided through the Je-S Student Details should include project partners and the proportion of costs provided from the DTP(s) and from other sources.

To provide some examples a 4 year studentship could be DTP supported through a range of different funding models, such as:

• Example 1 - 4 years funding at 100% on one single DTP
• Example 2 - 1 year funding at 100% from each of four separate DTPs
• Example 3 - 4 years funding with each year 50% from DTP funds, 50% from other sources (for example, industry or research organisation)
• Example 4 - 2 years funding at 100% from other sources (for example, industry or research organisation) followed by 2 years funding at 100% from DTP funds

Where the 50% rule applies, then as a rule of thumb the total DTP funding, at 2015/16 rates, is at least £35 thousand for a 3.5 year studentship or at least £40.5 thousand for a 4 year studentship.

CDT directors have had separate guidance about studentships which are incorporated in a centre for doctoral training.