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Comment by eanzenberg | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, unless you are at Cambridge or Oxford, getting a PhD in Europe about equates to a masters in the US.

Have you done PhD level research in either continent? This is utter horseshit...

Yes!

At least in Germany you need a masters to start a PhD and I think this is true for most of Europe. Actually, I always thought America is one of the few countries where you can start a PhD right out of undergrad.

This is true in physics--I never bothered to get a masters along the route to getting my PhD

Could you explain what you mean?

In terms of time spent? Level of knowledge in the subject area?

Americans tend to look down on anyone who has a doctorate from anywhere in Europe that isn't Oxford or Cambridge. I'm not sure it's justified, but there you go.

> Americans tend to look down on anyone who has a doctorate from anywhere in Europe that isn't Oxford or Cambridge.

Look, this just isn't true. I've heard it repeated a lot online, but I've never encountered it myself.

For context, I have a UK PhD, not from Oxford or Cambridge, and I got hired as a postdoc in a top-10 school in the US doing really exciting research.

There are differences between PhDs in US and the UK and Europe, but the differences are complex... there's no clear answer that one is better over the other.

It's a little unfortunate, because I've known Americans who were put off a UK-based PhD because they think professors look down on them, but I've seen little evidence to back it up. My colleagues come from all over the world, and they're all super smart, and everyone's treated equally and with respect. When it comes down to it, the quality of your research, and your ability to work hard, is far more important than what country or institution you're from.

(There are also a lot of anecdotes out there... in this thread, someone who completed early (congrats btw!), someone else with 20+ papers... you can be guaranteed there are people reading this thread who might be discouraged reading this. The one unifying factor with PhDs is that personal experience is highly variable, and artificial targets (finish in x years with y papers etc.) do not correlate with later success or the value of your research. So for anyone still slogging through who's reading this, good luck!)

ETH Zurich would like a word with those folks.

It's the first university I think off for engineering, I mean they have 20 odd Nobel prizes from students and profs.

Not to mention the hundred or so other world class universities.

If you spent seven years doing something someone else did in three you're be bitter about it as well :)

I think the European approach is proved sound, since people do managed to produce top-tier publications in that time.

I think the question is rather they are equivalent. For example, let's suppose someone does a quick PhD in 3 years, no masters, then all things being equal, they are likely to have less breadth than someone who took say 6 years (including masters). Exceptions abound. A rather difficult study might be to see how many postdocs a person with a 3 year PhD does compared to one with a longer PhD, or survivorship, but teasing out other factors would be a nightmare.

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