@Cosmicfish…for whatever it is worth, I have been in this situation. The grant that funded me ran out. This put me under considerable pressure to graduate. There was some talk about putting me on another grant or a TA…I honestly could have used about 4 more months of funded time. I think if I made a huge fuss about it with my advisor I could have not graduated and remained a funded grad student. I couldn’t wrap my head around fighting to delay getting a PhD though. It seemed like a bad idea…like “looking a gift horse in the mouth”. I was considerably stressed and upset about it at the time.
For a few months I was able to become a “temp employee” to keep access to e-mail, the library, most of the computer labs, and software tools I needed for simulations. I still had access to my lab (I had keys and all). I still met regularly with my doctoral advisor. I actually found consulting work with a university start-up for a couple months…it paid better than a TA and was considerably easier. The start-up seemed happy with what I did, and they seemed happy I wasn’t permanent. I used some of my own funds too. I could’ve worked more for the start-up, but I was getting so much work done on my papers that I kinda said “screw it” and used my own funds. Eventually, another professor noticed that I kept coming to the University and gave me a post-doc/research fellow/fellow…started paying me to come. A research fellow is a full staff position where I’m at. I kept working on my old research in my new post-doc/research fellow/fellow position…with my new advisor’s approval…I told him I would spend some time on my old research.
It is good to that universities graduate PhD earlier, but they need to make sure that they continue to give students opportunities to continue their research. Journal papers can take months to write and a year to get published once submitted. My university was good to me in this sense. When I was under so much pressure to graduate when I knew I wasn’t really done…Yes, that was stressful and upsetting though.