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Comment by MereInterest | Hacker News Reader

Expanding the acronym for non-academia, ABD is "all but dissertation". After the first 2-3 years of a PhD program, the coursework is finished, you're into mostly independent research, and so you've completed "all but dissertation". This is a nebulous time that could be as short as 1-2 years, and could be as long as 5-10 years. The shorter durations tend to be in the sciences, and the longer durations in the humanities.

Because the duration is so dependent on the program, and the only end is when the advisor agrees that sufficient work has been done to merit a PhD, it can stretch on without much hope in sight.

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Isn't ABD status the time from successfully proposing a dissertation to a specific committee until successfully defending that dissertation in front of that committee?

The former step is intended to clearly define what is sufficient work. In effect, it is the contract that eliminates some of the risk of the advisor's whim.

Some people say ABD is 'all but defended' as in you wrote your thesis you just didn't do a defence, some people say ABD is 'all but dissertation' in that you didn't get the point of writing the thesis. That's a pretty big difference. The former is you basically did your entire PhD, the latter is you didn't really start it.

the latter is you didn't really start it.

That seems unfair. By the time many people get started on their dissertation they have often done years of research and have gotten several papers published. Starting your dissertation basically means that you're 'done' with your PhD and ready to summerize what you've discovered.

There's also a difference in US and Europe conventions. In Europe, there's typically a 2-year MS followed by a 3-6 year PhD. In the US, these are typically combined into a single 5-8 year PhD program. So an "all but dissertation" phase in Europe is the entirety of the program, it's only the second (and most important) part in a US program.

Yeah, and so if you skip the masters then day one of your PhD is the start of your dissertation.

I though dissertation referred to the final written document you had to produce to get your PhD. Most people I know with PhDs stared writing that during the last year of the PhD program.

When you're writing papers during your PhD you're basically writing chapters of your dissertation.

In practice in the U.S. the early part of a PhD program can be very similar to a master's. It's relatively common for people who leave PhD programs to walk away with a master's degree they didn't intend to get. It's called "mastering out."

Yes you can also leave with an MPhil in the UK if it goes wrong.

In my university the first part ("successfully proposing a dissertation to a specific committee") was called the preliminary exam ("prelim"). In principle, you should do this decently early in your thesis. In practice, many advisors would tell their students "Go do 90% of the research and when you're close to defending, do the prelim". They didn't want to commit to a project and later fail to achieve it.

So with those advisors, it was normal for people to graduate six months after the prelim (because the department required a minimum of 6 months between the prelim and the defense).

> Because the duration is so dependent on the program, and the only end is when the advisor agrees that sufficient work has been done to merit a PhD, it can stretch on without much hope in sight.

At least one world famous research university has a fix for this problem of "... when the advisor agrees":

The official statement of the university is that the Ph.D. student must submit "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication".

So, if a student believes that they have done such work, then they are free to, and maybe should, submit it for publication. When the work is accepted for publication, the student can then so announce to the professor, department school, and university.

> The official statement of the university is that the Ph.D. student must submit "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication".

> So, if a student believes that they have done such work, then they are free to, and maybe should, submit it for publication. When the work is accepted for publication, the student can then so announce to the professor, department school, and university.

For many fields, this would not work. My advisor required a journal publication to get the Master's degree, and several to get the PhD. He (and many others) would have failed any candidate's defense if they had just one paper if they were in their committee.

(Yes, it's crappy).

Huh. My department requires one paper just to attain PhD candidate status.

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