In my thesis, I'm finding footnotes get placed just below the lowest text on the page. This means that the footnotes won't necessarily be placed at the end of the text box (of height \textheight) but on a half-full page will be quite a long way from the "foot" of the page.
Is it possible to make the footnotes go all the way to the bottom, for example by setting the footnote spacing as in this question to a rubber length? I've tried
\setlength{\skip\footins}{1cm plus 25cm}
which puts all footnotes 1cm from the text as there's no need to expand the rubber length for layout purposes, and
\setlength{\skip\footins}{25cm plus 0cm minus 25cm}
tends to cause footnotes marks in the text to be the last line of the page, being especially unwilling to shrink this rubber length.
Perhaps there's something I'm missing about rubber lengths (like a way to make them more or less 'rubbery'?) or a way of using \vfill to position the footnotes?