Master's courses fees and funding
Find out how much your Master's studies might cost, and explore the different ways of funding your degree
Before you start a postgraduate course such as a Master’s you need to think about the costs involved.
When budgeting, you should take into account your tuition fees, other study costs and your living costs, including rent, food and household bills, plus socialising, travel and insurance.
In this section, we shed light on the cost of uni for a postgraduate student, and point you in the direction of scholarships, bursaries and other sources of funding that could cut the cost of your studies.
How can I fund my Master's?
Hear from our in-house Student Finance team and current students about how to cover your tuition and living costs as a Master's student.
6 Essentials for funding your Master's study
1. Tuition fees
Tuitions fees for Master's courses vary depending on the subject.
For most UK students, fees typically range from £7,800 to £10,900.
For international students, fees can be higher.
2. Fees
Most UK students use a postgraduate master's loan from Student Finance England to cover their tuition fees and living costs and the good thing about that is they don't have to start repaying it back until they're earning over £21,000 the April after they graduate.
The University of Portsmouth does allow me to pay in instalments rather than one big sum, and it does make it much easier
and manageable for me to fund myself for my master's.
3. Scholarship
You could get a £3,000 scholarship.
This is a discount off your master's tuition fees.
4. Discounts
Portsmouth graduates, both UK and international can benefit from a 20% discount on their tuition fees.
So the discounts really help me out because it's taken a little weight off my shoulders.
Without the discount, I wouldn't have been able to do this postgraduate degree.
It's been a great help for just general living, rent, so it was a lot easier life at uni.
It’s just giving me more time to do what I love at university.
5. Additional Funding
For additional funding, you can explore research councils, charities and trusts online or check out the alternative funding guide.
It's a great research facility that lists funding from over a thousand organisations.
As an international student, I can work up to 20 hours a week and that helps me to get some pocket money for my daily expenses and I can focus on my studies as well.
Once I graduated from my undergraduate degree, I was able to work full time as a game designer all the way till the end of summer so that I could save up and fund my master's study.
So I'm a self-funded PhD student.
I did my master's in pharmacy.
It was really important to have the alumni discount and it meant it was less pressure for me to have that funding in place.
6. Student Finance
So there's also additional financial support for those students who have caring responsibilities, such as a parent, those students who have a disability, and those students who have been care leavers.
So any student here has access to the student finance team where they can always find out more information about how to fund their studies.
Having that discount for a master’s really helps a lot more people get into that field of study, which has broadened the range of people who are able to do it.