In article <34030BF7.502C873B at ag.arizona.edu>,
Bart Janssen <bjanssen at ag.arizona.edu> wrote:
>>However, (and this comment will probably get me into a flame war) my
>impression is that despite a long BSc and long PhDs the average PhD in
>the US is not as knowledgable or skilled as the average British or New
>Zealand PhD.
I must obviously not have enough to do, because there is no point in
starting a flame war . . . so I'm going to try not to.
Nonetheless, this statement doesn't fit my personal experience or that
of people I know. It is hard to compare the two systems, and I have
known plenty of outstanding PhD's from both systems. However, I've heard
a graduate of the "British" system lament that she didn't get the chance
to broaden her training when she was a graduate student. She wished she'd
had the chances at coursework, etc. that she saw the US students taking
advantage of.
>What I think is the problem is that US high schools don't put enough
>pressure on students to build a solid body of knowledge before they go
>to College. This results in College level classes that are essentially
>the equivalent of high school classes. This in turn leads to graduate
>student without the necessary background to really start their PhD "at a
>run".
It's possible that what you're seeing are students who have broadened
their education at the undergraduate level. There are a lot of
distribution requirements and so forth that students take in their
first two years. These are not "remedial math" and "remedial english" as
it sounds like you are suggesting; rather, they are courses in a wide
variety of fields that one might not otherwise be exposed to. Throughout
the U.S. educational system there is less "tracking" of students and less
forcing them to choose early on in their education what they are going
to do with the rest of their lives than I have heard is the case in
British and other European educational systems. We don't have the 11-plus
exam, we don't divide our high school students into Gymnasium and Hochschule,
etc. I realize that this outlook, keeping one's options open for a long
time, and so forth, has its pros and cons.
Personally I liked it and would not want to have been labeled
at age 11 or 12, but I have European friends who claim the system works
well, even when students are sorted that young. I'm not ready to take
a strong position and attack an entire educational system based on my
own personal preferences.
I don't think everyone is ready to start their PhD "at a run."
Not everyone views life as a race. We are fortunate to be enjoying
increased longevity in the late 20th century. Some people may want to
stop and smell the flowers before joining the rat race. I'm not convinced
yet that starting the PhD "at a run" is something that should be
institutionally strived for.
In addition, the work load at College is
>ridiculously low, with simply too few hours spent in lectures and
>virtually no lab training at the undergraduate level.
Here I don't know how to respond except to wonder where you are getting
your information from. As an undergraduate in a major research university
in the United States, I had
coursework-based lab training in physics, chemistry, and biology, and
worked in a lab during the summers. At a more technically-oriented place
where I am now, the undergraduates spend so much time in lab that many
worry about their social development. I interviewed for a job at a small
liberal arts college, and much of what I was asked and what would have
been expected of me as a professor would have been the design and
administration of highly detailed and complex lab courses. Universities
companies, and government labs have summer programs and internships for
undergraduates.
Look at
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~surf/
for more information about one such program.
As far as "the workload at college is ridiculously low," I read that and
think of the 6 hours of sleep a night I got in college, the all-nighters
my friends pulled, the beaten down, stressed out look I have seen on the
faces of undergraduates at exam time at every institution I have been at,
and I wonder, what planet are you on?
I am not claiming my experience is necessarily representative. I have
been at or seen close-up various good institutions, public (UC Berkeley,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; SUNY Buffalo) and private (Stanford
University, Princeton University), technically-oriented institutions
(Caltech), and hospital-associated labs (Roswell Park Memorial Institute).
I have friends in the Biotech industry. In this limited experience,
I have not seen anything like what you are describing.
I can only conclude that for you to say "virtually no lab training at
the undergraduate level," you must be "virtually" misinformed.
It sounds to me as if you are generalizing from one or two bad experiences
with US PhD's, and I'm sorry you had those bad experiences. Maybe a little
bit of research into the topic would be helpful.
.
Karen
