I Satisfied My Passion for Software Dev and Open-Source by Doing a Part-Time PhD
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I did a part-time MS in the US at a relatively low-pressure school (I switched to part-time from full-time after looking at my loan level). I can confidently say that I don't wish anyone to have the experience of working all day, then coming home and working into the night on research, day after day, rabbit trail after rabbit trail. My work quality suffered dramatically between full and part time grad school.
I would love to have a PhD sometime, but I simply don't have the ability to do what I would consider adequate research when I work part-time.
edit: Oh yes. There's a collaborative environment when working in the halls of the academy. That is, IMO, an intangible and extremely valuable experience. It is not like undergrad in the US.
My general stance is to not recommend a graduate program unless you're deeply passionate about the subject and you're willing to bear a significant amount of opportunity cost.
I've supervised Masters theses and PhDs in the US at a top institution. No one can do a part-time PhD; it's just so much work. The fact that Reading is willing to sign a PhD with basically no research with one publication in an absurd venue is pretty sad. This wouldn't pass for a thesis proposal here!
It's also very sad that this person's adviser is willing to shirk her responsibility and just let him go without a proper education. Part of the problem with the UK is how funding works encourages this reckless and pretty selfish behavior on the part of faculty members for their own benefit.
A PhD is supposed to teach you how to do research, pick a big problem, break it down in several different ways, push the state of the art several times, and learn how to communicate in reasonable venues. Looking at his thesis and publication he's done none of the above.
As for the UK vs the US, I have collaborators there and have postdocs from there. A US PhD is like a UK PhD plus a postdoc. You're basically just halfway toward being able to do good research by the time you're done a UK PhD so standards are pretty low, although not this absurdly low. There's a reason why getting a faculty position in Europe with a European PhD almost requires a US or Canadian postdoc.
As the parent said part of what the PhD gives you is the access to people that are smart and capable. Being around them will make you much smarter and more capable in ways that are intangible but obvious in retrospect. Doing this remotely defeats the whole purpose. Because of this in the US you would never get into any reasonable (top 100 or even lower) grad school if you said you wanted to a part-time PhD.
That being said. A real PhD is worth it. You'll learn a lot. You'll work very hard for 5-6 years and at the end you'll be far better equipped in any environment.
Something tells me that the parlous state of higher education funding in the UK has a lot to do with this.
Now, those people still worked very hard. And there is often something to be said for analyzing existing data in new ways. Or collecting some data that extends the stuff that was already done. But there's a world of difference between that and what my advisor expected, namely that we do something completely original and groundbreaking.
> Serve the time and irrespective of the results they give you a degree
Given that, this does seem like a very weak project and I agree that a part-time PhD is, or should be, pretty much impossible really.
[EDIT] Also, bear in mind he hasn't been examined yet! It could well be knocked back at that stage, the possible outcomes usually being Accept, Minor Corrections (no need for another viva), Major Corrections and resubmit, Reject.
My post was more a lament over the damage good candidates suffer from this policy than any criticism of UK graduates in general.
It was shocking. The standard was worse than that of a disinterested hobbyist - I wish I was exaggerating - and it didn't work at all. It actually counted as his final project (or whatever they were calling it) and they passed him. He now has a Masters.
Needless to say, I rewrote the entire thing for her and it worked and she's now a PhD and I'm a co-author on a published paper. I know an awful lot of PhDs, and it's clearly an overrated qualification, but Masters and degrees are barely worth the paper they're written on.
I don't even have a degree, so perhaps I would say that, but Google agrees… ;-)
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-non-graduates-2...
> This isn't a UK PhD, at least it's not up to the standard of any rational UK PhD I've ever seen.
How do you judge without reading the thesis?, there is no thesis in the article.
> No one can do a part-time PhD; it's just so much work
You can't generalise, not everyone is the same, some people have the capacity and capability to put all in. There are part-time PhDs and there are many people who completed part-time PhDs whilst working full-time. Oxford University and many others top institutions offer part-time PhDs, it's possible and doable https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/part-time-a...
> PhD with basically no research with one publication Publications usually take a while to get through the review process, many be there are many in the pipeline, how do you know?
> Looking at his thesis and publication he's done none of the above.
There is no thesis in the article!, it's very hard to judge without reading the thesis.
> A US PhD is like a UK PhD plus a postdoc No comment, I'm quite sure this debate has taken place in many forums https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-compare-pursuing-a-PhD-in-E...
And of course if you have to attend classes, it will be difficult doing it part-time.
> Being around them will make you much smarter and more capable in ways that are intangible but obvious in retrospect.
As part time you can still meet those smart people at the university or by attending conferences.
He's on google scholar. We can see his abstract, citations, and other publications. His website also lists his github.
That's more than enough to judge his productivity.
>As part time you can still meet those smart people at the university or by attending conferences.
Conferences are very clique-y. If you are just some shmuck showing up off the street you're not going to be able to get access to those smart people.
Hell, I have all the relevant credentials and still get shut out of conversations at conferences.
These same people go to conferences, but they are busy there--they have talks to see, posters to visit, and friends/collaborators/funders to catch up with. In contrast, when you're "around", it's possible to muse and mull things over with the grad student waiting for her turn in the darkroom or the postdoc brewing coffee. "Hey, did you see this paper?" or "How do we know that <X>, anyway?"
I'd worry that a part-time student would miss out on a lot of these opportunities; by definition, they're around only part-time and most of that time is "business time."
I did it while married with two kids, and a third born in the middle. I effectively worked on it part time, because I was consulting at night and on weekends to make ends meet. After my four years of coursework, we returned to Israel; I flew to Chicago 3-4 times each year (at my own expense) to meet with my advisor and make some progress.
These were extremely difficult years for me, and for my family. I was working extremely hard, sleeping very little, and making very slow progress in my research.
Oh, and my advisor didn't know that I was working during my years on campus; if he had found out, he would have revoked my funding and/or have me thrown out of the program.
My wife and children were very supportive in every way, and I appreciate that. They even agreed for me to go away for the entire summer to write my dissertation. (Which my advisor didn't even look at until six months later, but that's another issue.)
I'm glad that the author feels good about doing a part-time PhD, but what I did to myself and my family isn't something that I wish upon anyone unless they really want a PhD.
That said, I should note that I'm happy (and extremely proud) to have finished. By the skin of my teeth, perhaps, but I managed to do it.
That completely depends on the subject and on your expectations. A PhD is not very well-defined in terms of energy you have to invest, nor is it a good indication of intellectual capacity needed to complete it in a reasonable amount of time. PhD programs are just too different to say anything meaningful about these things. Also your supervisor plays an important role, which is usually another unknown variable.
Barring that, I think it's going to be difficult or impossible. My current (wet) lab would not consider a part-time PhD student. Most of the experiments we do are time-consuming and can't really be done piecemeal like that. Theoretical stuff works a bit better, but I think there is a lot to be said for being "around."
For someone who might eventually want to do a PhD in the space of software, I don't exactly know what you'd do. I normally just take a problem, and write software to fix it. How is the process changed when I want a degree from it?
I'm assuming I can't just bring in a flash drive and say "Yea I did some reading and did some stuff, here is the implementation of my new X for the Linux kernel. It speeds things up by a factor of BIG_NUMBER."
When you understand the answer to this question you're well on your way to a PhD. The PhD is not about implementing something. Although an implementation is sometimes/often a part of it. The real problem is to read a lot, get a grasp on what people understand about a topic, think about it, and say something new and interesting. That might mean coming up with some new algorithm, or a cool observation that solves a problem, or a theorem, or an experiment on humans that shows something interesting, etc. Finding good questions, learning how to ask them in the right way, and how to squeeze out what's actually doable and important from them, that's the point of the PhD. When you can do that from beginning to end, you're ready to graduate. Historically, this was what a PhD thesis was. Your first end-to-end piece of research.
As for the first few questions. That's why you have a PhD adviser. Someone who can help you pick your first few questions. Guide you on the path to getting answers, finding new questions, getting a handle on what's known, etc.
My biggest advice is find a topic you're interested in, read a few papers about it (google scholar is your friend), find a few people that work on that topic, read 1 paper from each, and when you apply for grad school in their department say something meaningful about what they've done (don't suck up, we know and it doesn't impress anyone) and what you would do instead/in addition. When people pick grad students they like to know that the student they're picking is smart, motivated, and knows enough to say something interesting about their work. It sounds daunting but it's doable. Particularly if you do summer research while in undergrad or do a good masters thesis. Good luck!
Are there sample "this is what a thesis for a PhD should look like" papers? Where is the standardization?
There is no standardisation. The level you are assessed against is set by your examiner.
Don't focus on the thesis or the software - those are just ways to express your novel idea, which is what is being assessed.
But yes you can do whatever you want, as long as you have a good idea and can show it works.
Sure. Best way to get an idea is to just look up previous theses. They're basically all available online. "phd thesis cs" on google is a good place to start and just filter out the non-top-tier departments. Although these days many people just take their publications, reformat them, and that's their thesis (this is more common in the US and much less common in Europe). This saves a lot of time and makes people a lot more productive.
Are you a professor? Then you do whatever you want. If you're not a professor, you do whatever the professor wants.
> How do you choose a topic to look at?
The intersection of what interests you, what you can actually execute on, and what you can publish.
> What do you study on this topic and what is the output supposed to look like?
You figure things out and tell a story.
> I'm assuming I can't just bring in a flash drive and say "Yea I did some reading and did some stuff, here is the implementation of my new X for the Linux kernel. It speeds things up by a factor of BIG_NUMBER."
That's a systems paper! You have to write up a bunch of stuff about what your implementation does and why it's cool, why it's correct, why it's safe, perhaps prove those things, and empirically evaluate BIG_NUMBER in a well controlled and designed experiment.
In my field you would have to develop new physical modelling, apply it to an industrially relevant experimental case and show that it is indeed an improvement. The tricky part is figuring out a new model that none of the thousands of smart people before you have come up with.
But I do still yearn for academia. A part-time PhD is something that I've thought about often, but I've found it a little tough to find anything substantial on how one goes about getting started. It was such a smooth transition the first time around, I had a fully-funded position lined up before I finished my Masters.
My educational background was in Physics. My Master's was in computational physics, but all my software knowledge was self-taught, from a young age.
I would love to research getting into a Computer Science PhD, but I don't know where to start. Especially given the time since I was in my Masters, 6 years ago now, and being a different field, is it viable? Realistically, should I be looking at a part time CS MSc beforehand?
I've been kind of curious about part time graduate studies- maybe at the masters level.
I clowned around, partied in college. As a consequence I never made any lasting relationships with my professors, and had a fairly mediocre academic record.
I did have a lot of fun in the 'intro to math research' course I got to take.
So I've toyed with the idea of taking a class a semester, maybe as a non-degree student in an effort to shore up my now rusty mathematical skills and build rapport with professors whose work I find interesting.
Even if it doesn't pan out, I get to study stuff I like and still have a solid job.
EDIT- I guess I'm fishing for other people's experiences in part-time post-bacc studies.
(I will note that full-time study is expensive in terms of opportunity cost. In the end, I'll have spent a few years making a quarter of the income I otherwise would have.)
Some classes will be better than others but all provide great mental stimulation that I find lacking in the corporate world. Even now, after taking several MOOC classes, I am contemplating a 3rd MS.
PS: I wish I could do the PhD but part time programs are hard to come by. Also, it is much easier to get your employer to contribute towards your MS than a PhD.
1. zero value to others
2. Udacity and others may be good too, I only have experience with Coursera
Never thought a part-time PhD was possible (US), but maybe its worth thinking about.
It greatly helped broaden my horizons professionally. The writing experience you get doing journal & conference papers is excellent. Your analytical & critical thinking skills will get an immense boost and you will know how to critique, publish & communicate well. And when it is all done you will understand why some call a "worthless academic adventure" is one of the best things you should have undertaken years ago.
To anyone on the sidelines - do it. Don't think, do it - there will be times when you think you can't and just have to quit. But have someone around who can support and kick u back in. I have an awesome wife who pitched for me every step of the way... Also have someone to provide you with the motivation to finish. I had an impatient 3 yr old :)
He seems to have completed it in 5-6 years, which is average for full-time PhD students, so my question is what got left out? His google scholar lists a conference abstract, and his thesis. No citations. His github projects have a total of 1 pull request. Now this isn't a personal attack on the author, just trying to tally what kind of productivity a "part-time" PhD produces.
If I someone looking to hire a recent PhD. I'd look at what kind of work they authored (software/publications), and what kind of impact it's had. A PhD isn't just a line on resume, it's your statement of how useful you can be to the software/scientific community. If someone claiming a PhD title showed me 6 years of work with no meaningful impact. I'd be skeptical to say the least.
He did his PhD in the UK, where 3 years is the norm for full-time.
UK PhDs are shorter for a number of reasons.
First we specialise earlier - normally just three related subjects from age 16 - I specialised on computation, discrete maths and physics - and from your first day at university you will only study your major and no other subjects such as liberal arts requirements.
Secondly, US students are still doing classes and exams while they're a PhD student. In the UK you are expected to be researching from the first day of your PhD and you don't do any classes or exams which take away time from your research.
Thirdly, US students spend I believe a lot of time doing things like being a teaching assistant, which have nothing to do with their research. I only did a couple of hours of teaching during my whole PhD. It seems crazy to me to spend time doing work like grading undergraduates when you are supposed to be making perhaps the major research contribution of your life!
Finally, I think there's a culture in the UK that you are released from your PhD as soon as you can show you can do it. So if you publish three top tier papers in two years then what else is there to prove?
Now, I don't have hundreds or thousands of citations to my work. But they are there and increasing even for papers I published 8 years ago.
I'm a self learned software engineer and very happy with where I am but would really like to get a degree in math. On top of that I keep running into immigration / visa issues without a degree and got classified as "not educated enough" multiple times. I was able to offset the degree with certifications here in Asia but that doesn't seem to convince everyone.
I come from Germany's 3-class school system and have a total of 10 years of school experience ("Realschule") + 3 years vocational school on top. Work experience is at 6 years now. Most universities don't even allow me enroll because my 3 years vocational school doesn't count as "normal school", that knocks me down to 10 years of education.
My path to a math degree would be right now:
1. Go back to school for 2-3 years
2. Enroll 4 years in university
3. Think about further studies
I don't mind the 4 years thing or longer part time, but having to put 2-3 years on top just so I am allowed to pay money / enroll seems ridiculous to me.
Anyone by chance experience with this?
Assuming three years of vocational school refers to Fachhochschule you would at the least be admitted straight into most computing degree's second or third year. Given your work experience you could probably get into some Master's degrees. Peterep down thread says he got into Oxford's Software Engineering Master's without a Bachelor's degree. His email is in his profile.
I may be wrong about this (and if anyone here can set the matter straight, that would be great), but I would strongly suggest finding out more about recognition if this may pose a problem.
I'm interested in doing this in the UK, the south if I have to show up somewhere. It would be something that requires a lot of coding and contains a heavy statistical element. A friend of mine got a full time phd where he could basically sit on his computer all day and crunch numbers. His was in biology, so I doubt I have the qualifications, but my background is in Engineering (and economics). I also have considerably more coding experience than he had.
Is there some resource where I can find some likely places to do this?
The Prospects website allows you to search for PhD courses. Here is a link to the search results for part-time PhDs in the "computer sciences and IT" category, but you can adjust the filters to narrow down the selection: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/postgraduate-courses-results?key...
I got admitted without an undergrad, although YMMV.
well...
Are there any self-management techniques to be learned from this experience? Is it something you could teach someone else to develop as a trait?
I'd wager a bet that he has a stay-at-home partner or maybe family filling in for the time he's spending on his PhD to help take care of the kids. Three kids + full-time work + all the chores of child-rearing do not leave time for a PhD.
Unless you're the kind of personality that enjoys academia, don't bother.
The most rewarding aspect of university study is the exposure to intelligent, educated people who are working on awesome projects. While I personally disliked many aspects of academia, the value of this community is hard to over state and it doesn't exist when you are taking online courses from your own home.
I definitely don't believe people should leave work and go back to university in any but the most exceptional cases, however. If I were to take three years off for further study it would cost over $300,000 in lost income and course fees alone, and I don't even make that much compared to many HN readers.
I'm studying Computing and IT with the UK's Open University. Module texts are sent through the post or are available online, and there are a mixture of online and face-to-face tutorials (which are optional but recommended). Depending on the student's module choice, however, they may be required to attend exams at an exam centre, or residential school.
I'm not aware of any ranking, but if you are interested in taking a course that is mostly online, you might want to search for distance learning courses in your country of residence. Of course, it may also be possible to study a course offered by a university from another country. The Open University has students studying online from around the world, for instance.