Self-funding via loans

Hopefully this is a the right place for this post. It's about school and funding so I think it is.

So, I'm self-funding my PhD course using federal student loans (stafford and Plus). I wanted to know if anyone else has done this and if they were able to find supplemental funding or any other financial help.

I know that the US will be discontinuing subsidized loans for graduate students (sadness). So that'll add a few thousand dollars to my debt by the time I leave school. I'm just starting my PhD program and it will probably be 3-4 years before I'll finish my PhD (3 years if I can help it). Now that I have real numbers from school and the financial problems in the US I have sat down and really looked at my finances. As a full-time student I would be leaving school with about $126,000 dollars of debt (for 3 years of school and the deferred interest for the 3 years isn't added). Once the interest is added for the deferred years and then looking at a repayment calculator for consolidated loans at the end of the day my PhD will be costing me well over $300,000 (with all the years of interest added).

Another option I have is doing my PhD work as a part-time student but actually working to finish my PhD in 3 years still. I don't know if that is actually allowed or possible but it was just an idea I had. It would substantially lower my tuition as part-time students only pay half the amount of tuition. Even so the amount of debt I would have after that is still substantial.

I'm just really worried and I've seriously been thinking of scrapping the whole PhD in England idea and heading home. I'm working on sandflies and leishmania (medical entomology). The projects and research I could do here would be really interesting and I want to do work that will benefit people globally. There isn't as much global/international emphasis in research back home and I wanted to do research that doesn't just focus on problems in the US. So the research I do here will not only be really, really interesting but have the added benefit of having a global perspective. On the other hand science PhD students in the US typically receive fellowships that pay for their schooling and give them a salary. I'd be paid to go to school basically.

Is this viable? Has anyone else completely self-funded themselves getting a PhD here in the UK? How would life be afterwards with that kind of debt burden? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Usually you can't get a visa if you're doing it part-time, so that's a non-starter. In addition, you still have to pay for 6 years even if you finish in 3, so it won't actually save you any money. You'd also still be limited by student visa working regulations of 20 hours a week.
I've not heard anything about stopping subsidised loans for grad students (can you provide a link?), but usually once you're in the programme, the terms you started with carry on for your entire time, so you may not have to depend only on unsubsidised loans. You'd have to speak to a loan adviser to be sure though.
I was going to self-fund, but I ended up getting an overseas research student award (ORSAS, now defunct sadly) which paid the difference between EU and non-EU fees, and a studentship from my uni, which paid the rest and a stipend. (Note: I still ended up with $30k of subsidised loans to pay off.) It's worth asking your supervisor if the school can provide any funding, and how much teaching work you could get (demonstrating and tutoring pays fairly well).
Also remember, you can get on an income-dependent payback plan which can end up being written off after a certain amount of time, so in the long run, you may not actually have to pay back the $300k.

Another option I have is doing my PhD work as a part-time student but actually working to finish my PhD in 3 years still. I don't know if that is actually allowed or possible but it was just an idea I had. It would substantially lower my tuition as part-time students only pay half the amount of tuition. Even so the amount of debt I would have after that is still substantial.

Unfortunately, you cannot study part-time on a student visa - it has to be full-time only in order for you to be studying legally within the immigration rules..

On the other hand science PhD students in the US typically receive fellowships that pay for their schooling and give them a salary. I'd be paid to go to school basically.

This is also the case in the UK, but unfortunately only UK and EU students can qualify for PhD studentships in the UK. [In fact, I think the funding is actually better for home students in the UK than in the US because they get about £13,000 a year in grant money without having to work for it - if they want to TA, they can do it for extra money on top of their annual grant money  (about £10 an hour, I think), but they don't have to TA in order to get their salary.]

It is possible for non-EU students to get studentships, but they are limited to ones from non-government funded bodies like charities and the university itself. Research council studentships are for UK/EU only.