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Part time PhD is interesting but probably very challenging.

He seems to have completed it in 5-6 years, which is average for full-time PhD students, so my question is what got left out? His google scholar lists a conference abstract, and his thesis. No citations. His github projects have a total of 1 pull request. Now this isn't a personal attack on the author, just trying to tally what kind of productivity a "part-time" PhD produces.

If I someone looking to hire a recent PhD. I'd look at what kind of work they authored (software/publications), and what kind of impact it's had. A PhD isn't just a line on resume, it's your statement of how useful you can be to the software/scientific community. If someone claiming a PhD title showed me 6 years of work with no meaningful impact. I'd be skeptical to say the least.

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> He seems to have completed it in 5-6 years, which is average for full-time PhD students, so my question is what got left out?

He did his PhD in the UK, where 3 years is the norm for full-time.

UK PhDs are shorter for a number of reasons.

First we specialise earlier - normally just three related subjects from age 16 - I specialised on computation, discrete maths and physics - and from your first day at university you will only study your major and no other subjects such as liberal arts requirements.

Secondly, US students are still doing classes and exams while they're a PhD student. In the UK you are expected to be researching from the first day of your PhD and you don't do any classes or exams which take away time from your research.

Thirdly, US students spend I believe a lot of time doing things like being a teaching assistant, which have nothing to do with their research. I only did a couple of hours of teaching during my whole PhD. It seems crazy to me to spend time doing work like grading undergraduates when you are supposed to be making perhaps the major research contribution of your life!

Finally, I think there's a culture in the UK that you are released from your PhD as soon as you can show you can do it. So if you publish three top tier papers in two years then what else is there to prove?

US CS PhD students only spend on average 2 semesters teaching (at Stanford/Berkeley/CMU, the requirement is roughly 2 terms of teaching, at MIT it's 1 term).

I posted a comment above. But I did the same thing in the US. It took me 8 years. I had an adviser that would not compromise on quality of publications and expected me to publish in good conferences/journals.

Now, I don't have hundreds or thousands of citations to my work. But they are there and increasing even for papers I published 8 years ago.

If you don't mind -- which univ and which prof?

Sure - Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Dr. Edward Chlebus.

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