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Comment by billyjobob | Hacker News Reader

A PhD is a three year programme of study. I would certainly assume that every PhD student at least has the intention to complete it in three years. Some will take longer, but this isn't desirable because the grant money won't continue to pay you after the three years are up. Some unis even have hard deadlines of four years - you can't submit after that. The finish date is therefore likely to be important to the student and therefore is a natural and logical topic of conversation. The only assumption and implication here is that you do intend to complete. If you don't then you probably shouldn't be doing a PhD. Even as a post doc, when your research really is your job, people will still ask you when is the funding completion date for each project you work on, when will you submit papers, etc.

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Where are you that a PhD is a three year programme of study? It's absolutely not the case in the United States that a PhD is expected to be completed in three years, and a hard deadline of four years would be exceptionally tight.

In Europe and Australia, a PhD is commonly a "three" year program. I put "three" in quotes because the truth is closer to 3.5 or 4. This is still very short and oddly specific to North Americans where a PhD is nominally a 4 year program, but in practice is more typically 6 (depending on whether or not you do a masters first). It is not unusual for it to take 7 or 8 years. North Americans are not being slow or lazy, they come out of it with far more research and teaching experience and are generally far more capable than the equivalent overseas. It is sort of like already having one postdoc under your belt.

Wow! Not remotely close to my experience. I don't know anyone who's finished a PhD in 3 years, and know a few who have gone on 7 or 8 years (fully funded). My perspective is US-based, mostly with MIT/Harvard PhDs.

You should probably qualify your statement, because I don't know what country/context you're speaking from.

For people downvoting this: This is correct in the UK and judging from the spelling, that's a good guess for where billyjobob is, despite the Texas sounding handle.

To avoid downvotes, billyjobob should avoid making dismissive generalizations that are trivially shown to be untrue. This detracts from the conversation. What billyjobob should have said was, "In the UK, a PhD is..."

"A PhD is a three year programme of study. "

That might be the case in the UK but not the U.S. 4 years is closer to a minimum here than a maximum, and some fields (e.g., history) it may be ten years or more.

This may be true for some fields in some countries at some universities, but it is certainly not the norm for, for example, Computer Science in the United States at any school I know of.

A PhD is a three year programme of study.

And now a lesson in international academic culture.

In European-style universities, you do a Masters of Science first, followed by a PhD. The MSc might take 2 years, then the PhD another 3. This leaves you with 5 years of postgraduate studies before you're "done" (or rather, before you have to "up or out" into a new position).

In American-style universities, you do a 5-year PhD (median is more like 6 years for certain fields where actual experiments take a long time). This will involve roughly two years of coursework equivalent to an MSc, followed by a "qualifying exam" called "quals". This exam could be either a research/engineering project or a series of actual paper exams.

Quals, or passing your MSc, is a very important time in the life of a graduate student. It marks the full transition from "student" to "worker". PhD students past quals are only nominally students, and in fact will only take courses at very advanced levels of knowledge and only to help them with research. MSc/pre-quals students still have a coursework requirement, but it's already getting more research-focused and less heavy than an undergraduate course-load.

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