My master thesis supervisor wants me to continue as his PhD student, but he has no funds at the moment. Any advice? I am currently working on my master thesis in physics and mathematics and will finish within a few months. My supervisor told me he would like to continue with my thesis' research subject and asked me if I wanted to be a PhD student in his group. However, he doesn't have any funds at the moment for hiring another PhD student, although his current PhD students are all almost finished.
He is going to look around and obviously will continue submitting proposals for grants. But unless we are very lucky, there won't be a grant within a reasonable time. He offered to help me get a PhD somewhere else and write a good letter of recommendation. I think the chances are good to obtain a PhD position somewhere else. However, I would like to find a way to do a PhD with my current supervisor.
Does anyone have any ideas how to get funding or something else I could do? This is at a university in The Netherlands and a PhD is considered as a job here. Funding is almost never arranged by the PhD student his/herself.
There are -mainly- two options in the Netherlands to arrange your own funding.
Get a talent scholarship from NWO. See here: https://www.nwo.nl/en/research-and-results/programmes/magw/research-talent/index.html
Or, as you are in beta science a very good option, is to find a company that will hire you and will allow you to do the phd externally. This allows you to gain some work experience while doing the phd. You will take longer, but you will stay connected to practice.
By the way, in my opinion, to much of this 'yeah i would love to but i dont have funding' is coming from professors. If they really want you, they should only offer you a funded position. But that's from someone who left academia :)