text: Hey, what about working?  I'm a Canadian professor and I funded my PhD studies by working part-time.  And Canada has a great program that facilitates the hiring of PhD students by companies--and not just students from the natural sciences and engineering. I've just worked with a PhD student in management on a project for a start-up (a start-up that I co-founded by the way).  Looking for hard-outs as a PhD student only leads to looking for hand-outs as a prof.  If you have something useful to offer you will learn a lot by working.