US vs Europe PhD Programs

PhD programs in the US and elsewhere are often not directly comparable. Doing a PhD in the US typically involves 1-3 years still taking classes. Doing one in the UK means starting thesis-forming research immediately. Not really the same thing at all.

American PhDs applicants typically don’t have Masters degrees, so 5-6 years elapse between completing undergrad and finishing the PhD. This appears comparable to the 1-2 + 3-4 years for masters + PhD in Europe.If you want to assert that this process is universally too long, what makes you think that?Not to get too personal, but I notice that you got your PhD 8 years after your Masters, albeit in 4 years after starting. Are you sure the intervening extra 4 years didn’t help?

>Doing a PhD in the UK helps, in and out before the funding dries up in 3-4 years is expected along with no class requirements and no masters needed (can go in straight from Bachelors)I think this is the key sentence for a US perspective. 2 years of course work + 3 years of research for 5 years total is common in STEM fields.

PhDs are fundamentally different in the US vs Europe. 4 years after BS is really the bare minimum in the US and 7+ years is fairly common; wikipedia claims that 13% of PhD students in the US decide to keep working on their PhD after 10 years.

No that’s the same in the UK. You wouldn’t normally do both an MS (we’d call it a MSc) and PhD - you’d just get on and do the PhD.And what’s more four years is the limit - the intention is three.So in the UK most people go from zero to PhD in six years total, rather than ten or more in the US. And we still manage to get papers into top tier venues in that time so it doesn’t seem to be too short.I know someone in Austria who got a great PhD in two years with multiple top-tier papers! Tha

As somebody from the UK, six years feels such a long time. Our PhDs are usually three years, although there's more specialisation earlier on at the undergraduate levels, and people might have done masters first, so you are launched straight into research pretty much when you start. You generally have four years from the start to submit your thesis and three years of funding, although I don't know if that has changed at all since I did mine.I knew two years into my PhD that it wasn&#

It must depend upon your subject and university in the UK. As a physicist, I have never known a student to obtain a PhD in less than 3 years. My students have taken 3.5 years minimum. There's one guy in our department who should get his PhD soon, after 8 years.What you're describing is maybe how they are funded - but not the reality in my experience.

I guess that makes sense - in the EU a masters degree is usually required for a PhD which is not the case in the US. That accounts for 1-2 years at least.

While PhDs without masters are common in Europe, universities may have doctoral training centers that have an extra years to act like a masters. My wife went straight from undergrad at Oxford and her PhD was four years instead of the usual three with the first year consisting of short courses & projects.

GP assumes with no reason the "starting from an undergraduate degree", where the article is quoting 5 years for the PhD only, not for masters + PhD.