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by adityab
3566 days ago
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It's not as straightforward a distinction as you imply, and certainly not grounds for attributing a lower value. In Europe (Germany in particular), you have to do a 2-year Masters degree which tends to be ~1.3 years of coursework and ~0.7 years of research culminating in a thesis. Judged by the quality of your thesis, you then try to get accepted into a group for a PhD which takes 3 years on average. In the US you go straight to a 5-year PhD program and within that, the coursework-research duration split is similar to what you find in Europe. |
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At CMU people were occasionally referred to as 'being on the 4-year plan', which meant you were like a superior alien intelligence (and, more importantly, focused on some good problem rather than, say, beer and girls or whatever you're into). But I think 7 years was typical, especially in "systems" or anything where you'd have to build something. Places that provision for 3 years total for a PhD are doing something fundamentally different, as people doing good quality PhDs at CMU were already casting around for topics quite early in those 6-7 years. I'm sure that in the long run it evens out for good people coming from good places in either system, as of course, the euro-PhD person can do 3 more years of post-doc under similar conditions.