[kingkongjaffa]

Where are you in the world that the level of sophistication of the work being set is such that this heuristic holds true?

I suppose a BSc thesis or design report etc. is supposed to be more of an exercise in demonstrating some understanding and creating something, but beyond that I would expect some fairly novel impact from an MSc and definitely from a PhD.

I'm very surprised by this as the quality of MSc theses and PhD theses at the universities I attended were all fairly novel, and even if the supervisor had suspected the same conclusion, the amount of work to arrive at that conclusion is non-trivial when doing research.

I fear this devalues the contribution of what these young researchers are doing. I know many people who went on to very good research positions and even founded companies based on their Masters or PhD work.