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Comment by danieltillett | Hacker News Reader

UK Ph.Ds are often a joke. Serve the time and irrespective of the results they give you a degree. I feel really sorry for anyone who has a UK degree and who has done the work as your degree has been degraded by all the other time servers.

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    > Serve the time and irrespective of the results they give you a degree

I don't know what you are basing that on and maybe you've had a bad experience with this but it isn't true in my experience (which is of having a PhD from a UK university and now being an academic supervising doctoral students). Yes, there is a difference in the expectations of PhD students at a top UK university and somewhere like Reading or, for that matter, the university I work at but we still have standards I consider to be high and by no means a joke. PhDs are examined externally and the external examiner must be someone who has no ties with the supervisor, so it isn't possible for the university to give you a degree "irrespective of the results". My students publish at international events, in competition with US graduate students and whoever else, so a lot of people must be in on the "joke".

Given that, this does seem like a very weak project and I agree that a part-time PhD is, or should be, pretty much impossible really.

[EDIT] Also, bear in mind he hasn't been examined yet! It could well be knocked back at that stage, the possible outcomes usually being Accept, Minor Corrections (no need for another viva), Major Corrections and resubmit, Reject.

This is just my person experience from interviewing lots of UK graduates. The problem seems to be that there is overwhelming pressure to get a candidate in and out in three years no matter what. It is not that the average UK student is any worse than anywhere else, just that the extremely weak candidates are pushed through despite having nothing more than a weak honours degree.

My post was more a lament over the damage good candidates suffer from this policy than any criticism of UK graduates in general.

I agree with you. A PhD (then) student I know was supplied with a Comp Sci Masters student from the uni to help her set up a website for data collection across Europe. She complained to me that it didn't work and I had a look.

It was shocking. The standard was worse than that of a disinterested hobbyist - I wish I was exaggerating - and it didn't work at all. It actually counted as his final project (or whatever they were calling it) and they passed him. He now has a Masters.

Needless to say, I rewrote the entire thing for her and it worked and she's now a PhD and I'm a co-author on a published paper. I know an awful lot of PhDs, and it's clearly an overrated qualification, but Masters and degrees are barely worth the paper they're written on.

I don't even have a degree, so perhaps I would say that, but Google agrees… ;-)

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-non-graduates-2...

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