[aleph_minus_one]

> I've seen many people who are quite competent under close supervision but completely clueless on their own.

Being able to work on complicated research topics on your own is what universities are centrally preparing for.

If you really need close supervision, you likely are not made for academia or often not even for a course of studies at a university.

Yes, this is a harsh truth, but academia is really a brutal game of sink or swim.

[david-gpu]

A Master's degree is hardly academia, is it? A PhD is the starting point for a career in research, and even that does not necessarily imply academia, either.

[aleph_minus_one]

> A Master's degree is hardly academia, is it?

In Germany, the master degree is considered as such. Basically the final test before you decide for or against "the whole brutal game of joining a doctoral study program".

A professor that I know clearly said: "In a master's thesis I expect something scientifically novel. It does not have to be something deep, but if you want 'a 1 before the comma' (in Germany, the grading at a uninversity goes from 1,0 to 5,0 where 5,0 means 'failed'), it has to be something scientifically novel. The number after the mark is to distinguish whether it is really a deep discovery or not."

Be also culturally aware that in practice, for a final thesis

- 1.0 means "good",

- 1.3 means "average",

- 1.7 means "bad",

- everything below (from 2.0 on) basically means "failure" (you get a degree, but are marked as failure).

So, the professor clearly stated that every grade for a master thesis that "is not in practice a failure grade" means "some novel scientific discovery". And every grade that is better than "in practice 'bad'" means "some very non-trivial scientific discovery".

I know that many professors think this way, though most of them would phrase this more diplomatically.