Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonytrary | Hacker News Reader

Three years is not nearly enough time to finish PhD thesis work as an experimental physicist. Even if the goalpost was lowered for a PhD, a three year PhD program in physics would just be a glorified masters degree.

Plus, if it's even easier to get PhDs, we'll just end up with even more people having PhDs and the status associated with the PhD will be even lower. PhDs are becoming relatively commonplace, and the vast majority of them are not in academia because either there's no space for them, or they're simply not good enough.

Meeting someone with a PhD is no longer surprising. It's not "wow, you must be a renowned researcher" anymore, it's "wow, you were able to do lots of grueling work for 30k a year, and now you're in industry doing what everyone else is doing".

View on HN

The University of Cambridge disagrees with you. You arrive with a Bachelor’s or a Master’s, start immediately on research and should be done in three or four years.

https://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/degreesoffered...

A single cherry-picked university in the UK may disagree, but what I said is generally true for American universities. When I was a grad student in physics, everyone pretty much took 5-6 years at minimum; this was true for every single grad school I got in to.

I've heard that universities across the pond have different tracks for grad students, so that might be responsible for the discrepancy.

It's not cherry-picked, actually; the historical standard in the UK is three years. However, it's not common to do any qualifying exams or courses in a three year program. There's a new trend of so-called "Centres for Doctoral Training" where students take four years, and get a year or courses and qualifying exams at the start.

Consequently, UK PhDs are often quite a bit more junior than US PhDs -- although it works brilliantly if you're an academic high-flier, as you show up and start doing research on day one, leaving with a doctorate three years later.

Yep, things are very different in America, our PhDs in physics take 5-6 years.

That university is ranked as 21st in the world on the ranking least favourable to it and in the top ten globally on all others. Its system of graduate education is comparable to other U.K. universities, like Manchester, Imperial, Edinburgh or Durham. You are expected to get a doctorate in three or four years, you generally start research immediately but there are exceptions that will have taught courses and you need a great Bachelor’s or a good Master’s to be admitted.

The only real difference between the British system and that in mainland Europe is that you will find it difficult to impossible to get onto a doctoral programme without a Master’s. You’ll still be expected to finish within at absolute most four years and to start researching from the word go.

As far as different tracks for graduate students go, same as in the US. North Florida State and Harvard both award doctorates, ditto for Anglia Ruskin and Cambridge.

In the US, it is different. You get into grad school with a strong bachelors and are expected to get your masters on the way to your PhD. Some people come in with masters, but the vast majority from the US are applying right after their 4 year bachelors and are expected to take graduate-level physics courses and rotate with groups for 1-2 years before starting their thesis work.

> mainland Europe is that you will find it difficult to impossible to get onto a doctoral programme without a Master’s

Not true in the US at all. It is very rare for a student to finish in 3-4 years here in the US unless they are absolutely stellar.

It's not a single cherry-picked university. Three or four years is standard in the British Isles.

As a PhD in experimental physics, I totally agree.

That said, I still think they have room in making it a shorter length PhD. Not 3 years, but there are several groups where less than 6 years is rare, but 6-7 is normal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com