A PhD studentship generally involves being employed for 3 years as a "research assistant", on a lamentably low salary (say, about the same as your annual allowances!), but you get to do cutting edge research and (assuming that the quality is high enough) you get a Doctorate out of it at the end.
The technical demands are pretty high, they sometimes will have somebody without an MSc, but it's almost unheard of to take somebody without a BSc or BEng. The only person I know who did a PhD without (so far as I know) any previous degrees was Darrol Stinton - look him up, you'll see why!
G
Last edited by Genghis the Engineer; 4th February 2006 at 23:04.