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Topic Title: US v. UK v. France v. Swiss v. Wherever PhD
Created On Thu Jan 15, 09 03:53 AM

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skibum1981
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Posts: 29
Joined: Feb 2007

Thu Jan 15, 09 03:53 AM

Duke it out...

No seriously, there's been a lot of debate I've noticed regarding which PhD is held is the best. Maybe there's two questions that should be asked given the same general subject area of PhD:

1) Which PhD is the more rigorous
2) Which PhD has the best reputation

Having been a student at a top American grad school for engineering, I can tell you that a lot of the researchers don't really take UK PhDs as seriously, as they view the extra 2-3 years of coursework, quals, RA/TA duties, etc., as quite necessary in terms of development. I must admit the idea of getting a PhD in 3-4 years seems downright fishy to me, but perhaps I am mistaken.

Also, ARWU seems to favor American PhDs heavily, apparently at least in part of the research that's pumped out by such institutions:
Engineering/Technology: http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ARWU-FIELD2007/ENG.htm
Natural Sciences/Mathematics: http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ARWU-FIELD2007/SCI.htm

So what do you all think?

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skibum1981
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Fri Jan 16, 09 12:57 AM

Hmm, anyone want to chime in here?

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ChicagoGuy
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Joined: Apr 2007

Fri Jan 16, 09 03:57 AM

I think there are several threads that discuss this but some of the points people make are that
1. Application to most European PhDs require a masters degree so you can argue they take the same amount of time.
2. American PhDs usually have more requirements such as qualification exams.
3. American PhDs cover a wider scope of material (from all the required graduate coursework).
4. American Phds are more standardized.
....
I think people usually have a bias on this issue, depending whether they are from the US or UK.
you should try searching for past discussions on this subject.

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Yossarian22
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Fri Jan 16, 09 06:17 AM

I have a PhD. from a UK university, I work in NA now. I find that some of the NA guys are not very good. I worked at MIT for a while as a grad student and I didn't find a big difference in standard. The grad quantum course was only slightly deeper than what I did as an undergrad and talk about being spoonfed with all the study group carry on. I can't do this one can you help... I think the undergrad system in NA is a little lower standard than anywhere in Europe - take this comment with a pinch of salt ; )

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skibum1981
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Fri Jan 16, 09 07:14 AM

Yossarian... did you do any research while you were at MIT? I don't know how the courses work in UK in general, but it's seems that the majority of impact research seems to be done in the US. This has nothing to do with Americans being better or any crap like that; most of the grad students at top schools in quant subjects in the US don't seem to be American as far as I can tell...

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HyperGeometric
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Joined: Mar 2004

Fri Jan 16, 09 07:31 AM

I would add Econ/Finance to the list. In these areas, if you have a PhD from UK, there's nearly no chance of getting a top academic job (tenure track) in NA. Rest of the Europe is even worse. LSE and LBS are the only two exceptions as rarely someone from these places might be able to break into NA job market. Also, almost all top PhD programs in the NA pay tuition and stipend to doctoral students. Of course, this is rarely the case in the UK for non-EU students unless they're funded by external scholarships. Funding matters. NA unis are much better funded than European ones. Yes, if republicans were there for another term, things could've been comparable across Atlantic.

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DominicConnor
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Fri Jan 16, 09 12:00 PM

As it says in the Guide, I find myself as the nearest thing to an expert in the utility of PhDs that there is.

The fact that I don't regard myself as an actual expert, reflects the fact that no one who could themselves do it better, does do it.

But here goes anyway.
skibum is an American, so I will introduce him to the word "bollocks", which is how I view the statement that UK PhDs are not treated as seriously as US ones.

I do not doubt that some US academics feel that way, but I do not perceive a consensus.

But looking at the ARWU, I find little that makes me think that they have the right idea at all.
For a start, funding is given heavy weight.
WTF ?
Does maths benefit from greater funding ?
That's arguable, but what I note good negatrive correlation between the funding of CompSci places and the quality of the people I see from it.

Also funding gets a higher weight than publications by the ARWU. Bizarre.

An interesting point, which a quant really ought to spot, is that FX rates change. Yes they do, honest.
Thus normal vol in $, �, etc could dramatically alter the rankings. That means Imperial could move from 27 to 35 and to 20 within a semester.
Anyone here believe that reflects any real underlying reality ?

Then we have purchasing power parity of course.

I'm not saying money is not useful, but as a predictor of the quality of PhDs it sucks harder than gay porn.

German universities are vastly better funded than British ones, but score badly. That's not an exclusive club, the UK is well below average in funding amongst developed nations.
Yet it has a disproportionate number of "top" universities in all tables, and even though I am sceptical about all such lists, such a consensus says something.

If money was the only thing that drove educational performance, America would be top of pretty much every league table, instead it has about the highest illiteracy rate, the highest innumeracy rate and 40% of the population believe in Intelligent Design.
But it spends a lot... Of course, it might be if the US spent less, 70% would believe that cavement kept T.Rex as guard dogs.
That's why such a large % of people doing numerate PhDs in the US are not victims of the US education system.
That's already changing, and will hurt America far worse than thousands of suicide bombers.

In some fields of engineering, such as electronics, US PhD are of course the gold standard, which accounts for some of the funding of course given that it has direct commercial applications.
America also does very well indeed in biomedical research at all levels, again this is partly driven by funding, but it underlines the basic flaw in the ARWU approach that is blurs cause and effect.

Treat rain as a cause of better crop yields.
More rain on average ups the amount of wheat you get from a Canadian wheat farm.

However, when buying the wheat you don't give a fuck whether it is doen to more rain, more sun, or because the farmer was more competent.
Thus the value of the output shoudl not contain a factor of the input.

That's pretty much basic scientific method which ARWU have no excuse for getting wrong.

But the real killer from the perspective of skibum's rather naive assertion, is that it does not tell you how hard it is to get into these places, does it ?
The quality of the input does affect the quality of the output, and of course to finally nail skibum's idea it does not tell you the value added by the university.
Maybe the US system is better, maybe not, but ARWU tells us very little.

It also does not tell us which places are good for which subjects, so as a decision making aid, it fails.

I regularly meet people whose PhD supervisor is almost a stranger, others who have receive a rigourous education from skilled academics, yet who have not actually done any real research.

-------------------------
Discussion on the new regulations on bonuses here.

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AbhiJ
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Fri Jan 16, 09 01:56 PM

How to define the quality of a PhD?Are you considering the quality of PhD's coming out or the quality of education received.

In UK lets consider Oxbridge , LSE. In US lets consider Ivy League and a bunch of other top universities.

The quality of education received depends on the quality of researchers.Here the top universities of US and UK are at par.

Now coming to the product that is the graduates that universities are producing.

Consider a hypothetical question lets consider from today onwards Harvard Business School decides it would give its MBA free of cost.

Can you compare the quality of students before and after the change.So funding does matter in attracting the best talent of the world.A significant percentage of quantitative PhDs are done by Asians.These guys can never think of PhDs without funding.

No offenses to anyone.

Edited: Fri Jan 16, 09 at 01:59 PM by AbhiJ

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skibum1981
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Sat Jan 17, 09 12:45 AM

Hi Dominic. If you read what I posted, I actually never stated an opinion either way (other than I viewed a 3-4 year PhD as suspicious), but rather just showed some evidence in support of the claim of the researchers who seemed to not take UK PhDs as seriously. I also stated that most of the major impact research seems to come from the States, but this could merely be of a factor of the sheer number of high quality grad institutions in the US, and doesn't reflect impactful research per capita.

I think it's a fair point to criticize some of the funding in the methodology of ARWU, but a huge weight is also given to publications, so it's not exactly coming from left field in that regard.

In terms of how difficult it is to get in, MIT's EE program accepts about 2% of its applicants, or so they claimed to me when I didn't get in. They said to me, "your application is actually very strong, but because you have no publications, we can't give you a spot." Think about that: the purpose of graduate school is to learn how to do independent research, not to show up having already done it! Especially in my case, coming from a college (where the focus is on teaching, not research), that's a pretty high bar. It may be the case that it's the same in the UK... I don't really know. I gladly went to Illinois instead ... and though they didn't publish it on the website, the acceptance rate is about 6 to 9 % there, depending on the year. At any rate, even this can be misleading because we have no idea how self-selecting the applicant group is.

Ultimately, I do not know which one is better; the purpose of my comments was to spark a little fire into individuals like yourself to get the debate going. But I'm fairly certain the US ones at the least have more requirements. In some ways, maybe that's babying the grad students too much rather than just throwing them right in; in others, it assures everyone that comes out doesn't have any gaping holes in their development.

Finally, how do you whether or not I'm American?

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deepvalue
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Joined: Apr 2007

Sat Jan 17, 09 09:32 AM

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Originally posted by: AbhiJ[/iConsider a hypothetical question lets consider from today onwards Harvard Business School decides it would give its MBA free of cost.

this is not possible. how would the finance professors get the salary?!

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GoingQuanting
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Joined: Dec 2008

Sat Jan 17, 09 11:16 PM

Depends is the answer. Quality of the PhD can vary wildly even at top programs. This goes for both sides of the pond.

Most of it will be determined by your advisor. Does he work closely with his students or not? Is he demanding as to the quality of
the research and dissertation?

You can get a good idea on the quality by the activity level of current students and size of the research group, but it is very difficult to tell. You probably won't really know until you are inside a department which are the professors to work with.

You also get older professors who have tenure and aren't as hungry. Your best bet is to identify someone who is good but young enough where he still has the drive and take them on as an advisor.

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twofish
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Sun Jan 18, 09 09:11 AM

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Originally posted by: deepvalue
This is not possible. how would the finance professors get the salary?!

Harvard has a huge bank account. Also, it's possible to monetize the value of the MBA. We let you classes with large subsidies, and then in the process brainwash you so that when you make megabucks, you feel guilty and give us large amounts of cash. Every few months, I can this call from Cambridge, MA, in which some freshman starts a conversation about how my job is going. At this point I get out my credit card, since I know what they are going to ask next (i.e. you do know who gave you the skills for that job.)

This is the basic business model for Harvard and MIT undergraduate programs.

MIT has extra cash come in from technology industrial programs. They also heavily subsidize the classes, so that when you go out in the world, MIT has "sleeper agents" in the major banks, governments, and industries which MIT can then use for its own nefarious purposes. If someone from MIT career services calls me and wants the names and phone numbers of people in my firm that have jobs open and they want to know the secret code words to put on a resume to get them those jobs, my "preprogrammed brainwashing" kicks in, and I tell them.

This business model works, much, much better for the student than those that rely on tuition to fund operations. From the point of MIT, it also works because it requires vast sums of money, lots of branding, and pre-existing social networks, which keeps competitors out. There is no such thing as a "non-profit" university, you just have to understand the business model to make sure it makes sense for you.

-------------------------
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AtlanticNick
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Posts: 7
Joined: Apr 2008

Sun Jan 18, 09 03:24 PM

Quote
Having been a student at a top American grad school for engineering, I can tell you that a lot of the researchers don't really take UK PhDs as seriously, as they view the extra 2-3 years of coursework, quals, RA/TA duties, etc., as quite necessary in terms of development. I must admit the idea of getting a PhD in 3-4 years seems downright fishy to me, but perhaps I am mistaken.

You shouldn't assume that people don't have the experience just because it's not built into the PhD program. In theory it's possible to go straight from a bachelor to a doctorate in the UK but in practice most people would do at least an integrated "undergraduate masters" (i.e. one standard academic year beyond the bachelors) before a PhD.

In addition, many will have more experience than that. I have two friends who have started doctorates this year, one had a 1 year masters followed by 2.5 years as a research assistant in an academic lab and the other had a 2 year masters degree followed by 2 years at a consultancy/research firm (economics). While my girlfriend went straight from a (undergrad) masters to her PhD in biochem, many other students in her lab had 3-4 years of pharmaceutical industry experience or had already qualified as medical doctors before enrolling onto the PhD.

I can see why the US system might be often be beneficial to students who start a PhD at age 21 straight after their undergraduate degree but is it really optimal to force every student to go through another 2 years of coursework?

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StatGuy
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Sun Jan 18, 09 03:33 PM

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In theory it's possible to go straight from a bachelor to a doctorate in the UK but in practice most people would do at least an integrated "undergraduate masters" (i.e. one standard academic year beyond the bachelors) before a PhD.

Some of the funding bodies in the UK for Maths/Engineering based PhDs now extend their stipend from 3 years to 3.5 years to reflect the extra coursework component in UK Ph.Ds. From what I have seen the transition from masters to PhD is wider than it has been before. Some UK PhDs are already integrating a one year research masters prior to embarking on a three year research program, so this will bring the duration of a PhD to around 4 years in the UK, and perhaps even closer to 5 years in future.

SG

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barny
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Sun Jan 18, 09 04:06 PM

As if additional coursework is useful for anything. This is a strength of the British system, we recognise that the process of "jumping through hoops" that is taking exams and doing coursework is essentially pointless after a certain level. The US system is unneccesarily long and actually is not as useful as a UK PhD in most cases, which is almost solely research based. In the US you can practically get a PhD by just doing lots of courses and a small element of research. In the UK, you need to have produced substantial original research, certainly more than just a "few" papers worth, and you can't do that research without an indepth knowledge of your subject. That's why in the UK you spend 9-5 doing research and 5-9 studying. At least, if you want any chance of finishing it within 3 years..

Edited: Sun Jan 18, 09 at 04:08 PM by barny

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StatGuy
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Sun Jan 18, 09 05:43 PM

To finish a UK PhD in 3 years is tough. Indeed there are those who finish a PhD in 2 years etc.. but part of PhD training includes taking some courses so you have a broader understanding about the subject matter rather than just know one area very well. Broadening knowledge in any subject takes time and commitment.

You don't need to publish papers to be awarded a PhD in some UK universities. Personally I don't think the UK PhDs are of higher quality as viewed by some here, i.e. not always a substantial contribution to an area but rather a extended masters thesis.

Edited: Sun Jan 18, 09 at 05:50 PM by StatGuy

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KackToodles
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Mon Jan 19, 09 10:06 AM

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Originally posted by: StatGuy..

what do people think about the dozesn of new phd programs in fnance opening up in china?

Edited: Mon Jan 19, 09 at 10:07 AM by KackToodles

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skibum1981
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Mon Jan 19, 09 04:46 PM

Masters programs, at least in Engineering in the US, are rarely 1 year if you do a thesis, though there are many 4+1 programs that offer non-thesis masters as an additional year of undergrad. AFAIK many top schools either don't have or are getting rid of non-thesis masters programs.

At any rate, at UIUC at least, 6 years is about the average of what you're looking at for a PhD in engineering.

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skibum1981
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Mon Jan 19, 09 04:48 PM

Quote
Originally posted by: barny
As if additional coursework is useful for anything. This is a strength of the British system, we recognise that the process of "jumping through hoops" that is taking exams and doing coursework is essentially pointless after a certain level. The US system is unneccesarily long and actually is not as useful as a UK PhD in most cases, which is almost solely research based. In the US you can practically get a PhD by just doing lots of courses and a small element of research. In the UK, you need to have produced substantial original research, certainly more than just a "few" papers worth, and you can't do that research without an indepth knowledge of your subject. That's why in the UK you spend 9-5 doing research and 5-9 studying. At least, if you want any chance of finishing it within 3 years..

I cannot speak for all grad systems, but the notion that you can get through a PhD at Illinois in Engineering without MAJOR publications/research is ludicrous.

Posts: 167
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Wed Jan 21, 09 07:11 PM

Quote
Originally posted by: skibum1981
Quote
Originally posted by: barny
As if additional coursework is useful for anything. This is a strength of the British system, we recognise that the process of "jumping through hoops" that is taking exams and doing coursework is essentially pointless after a certain level. The US system is unneccesarily long and actually is not as useful as a UK PhD in most cases, which is almost solely research based. In the US you can practically get a PhD by just doing lots of courses and a small element of research. In the UK, you need to have produced substantial original research, certainly more than just a "few" papers worth, and you can't do that research without an indepth knowledge of your subject. That's why in the UK you spend 9-5 doing research and 5-9 studying. At least, if you want any chance of finishing it within 3 years..

I cannot speak for all grad systems, but the notion that you can get through a PhD at Illinois in Engineering without MAJOR publications/research is ludicrous.

Conclusion: The US system outsources research in STEM to foreigners. They bring in people from the 3rd world, pay them peanuts, they eventually get a job and a green card, the professor gets tenure and his no of publication increases, and everyone is happy.

The UK system will give you a PhD if you pay for it. If you're really good you can get funding, in which case they will take you seriously and your training is as good as anywhere [especially at Oxbridge]. Someone coming from the third world in general has to pay for it, and has to go home after he's done.

As for the lists -- dunno but my sense is that if you remove funding, and leave only awards, publications, etc, then I think the result might be even more slanted toward the US. The fact is the US publishes more -- it is a cultural thing in US academia. Granted, a lot of it is garbage, but that is the research process. You need a lot of garbage to get a breakthrough.

The Swiss system is the best. Best pay for grad student, best quality of life, and superb education [ETHZ and EPFL].

Edited: Wed Jan 21, 09 at 07:12 PM by Nomade

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