<p>OK OK let’s not make this a Brits/Europeans vs. Americans fight.</p>
<p>I’m curious about something related to the article. Could the Brits please give their opinion of the graduate education at Cambridge, specifically, what they believe to be its unique shortcomings? The girls did a woeful job of pointing them out, blinded as they were by their ambition and sense of entitlement.</p>
<p>I agree with you Mallomar - this is getting way out of hand. I take issue with the authors of the article and people who blindly accept it out of national or institutional pride, but I actually LIKE Americans on the whole.</p>
<p>I am not a grad student as such, but I am a medical student who started at Cambridge and transferred to Oxford after getting my bachelors. I live and socialise mostly with grads, but I have no direct experience of being a grad here. I would say that the American system is likely to be better, since you spend 5 years instead of 3. On the other hand, it’s widely known that part of the reason the course is longer is because you are making the transition from a liberal arts degree rather than a single honours degree. In fact, many PhDs in the UK now take 4 years, but that is because they recruit students from a range of academic backgrounds; the first year is used to bring everyone up to speed in the subject area (through lectures and seminars) and gain experience in different labs before starting your project, rather than launching straight into it as is usually the case. Anyway, due to this msimatch between the US and UK styles of undergraduate education, it is actually quite uncommon to do your undergrad in the UK and then do a PhD in the US, even though from the funding side it may be quite enticing. </p>
<p>I think if you have the time and money then an American PhD is the way to go, but we all have finite resources and lifespans, and personally I would stay in England because the people I know taking PhDs seem to have few complaints.</p>
<p>Hope someone else can be a little more specific than me! As I say, I am not a grad so that doesn’t help…</p>
<p>In the medical field, things are drastically different in the UK and Europe from what they are in the US. The same goes for architecture, law and other professional fields. In the US, students go to professional schools after college.</p>
<p>I do not think that grad school is where Americans make up for the difference in high school education. That difference is made up in college where something like one year’s worth of courses are set aside for general education requirements (hence, the ability of students with A levels, Arbirtur or Baccalaureat to gain Advanced Standing).</p>
<p>The big difference is that American colleges allow students to pursue electives and related fields or change their minds midway. Not so European institutions where the 3 years of college (as opposed to the American 4-year system) are devoted to a single field of study. The two approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Setting aside the need for students who change their minds to start all over again from the beginning, Amercan students are more likely to have breadth and to have a more multidisciplinary approach. European and British students come to grad school knowing a lot about a particular field but very little about other fields.
American grad schools train students to be capable of teaching more broadly and encourage a more multidisciplinary approach than European ones. This allows for a more comparative perspective than is the case where students are train deeply but narrowly in a single field. From what I’ve read, European universities are trying to move toward a more American style of training.</p>
<p>As for Ph.D dissertations, I have heard several Oxbirdge dons complaining that funding issues hugely compress research and writing. This has an impact in fields where fieldwork or the learning of new languages is a key component of a research project. The funding constraints clearly have an impact on the scope of dissertations and the range of sources that students can use to write them. While places like Princeton, Harvard, Yale and others guarantee funding for five years, students are more likely to take 6-8 years to complete their dissertations, depending on the field (4-5 for math/science/econ, 7-8 for the humanities and social sciences).</p>
<p>I don’t know how “uncommon” it is for UK grads to seek to do a Ph.D. in the US. I personally have seen a very strong spike in the number of UK and European students doing Ph.D.s at American universities. Part of it has to be funding, part of it has to be the availability of fields that are not strong in Europe, and part of it is the ability of students to combine different fields of study.</p>
<p>Thanks for your informed commentary marite.</p>
<p>Marite, you obviously talk from some experience. That said, I do have a couple of points to make in reference to your post. </p>
<p>Firstly, you say that British students arrive at grad school knowing a lot about their field and little about others. This is broadly true, but I think you make too much of the multidisciplinary approach as an advantage of a liberal arts education. I think it is a great thing to be broadly educated, but if you’re arguing for a liberal education because you think it prepares you better for any career, then I really think it depends on the career. For example, if you’re a scientist, it is unlikely to help you that you are knowledgeable about American history. What will help you more is a knowledge of other branches of science than your own. This is in fact exactly what you get if you study science at Cambridge, because you study the “Natural Sciences” rather than an individual discipline. Arguably, this is a much better grounding for a science career than a liberal arts education, as it is equally broad but more concentrated on the end goal of producing a good scientist. I would also draw your attention to the fact that university courses in the UK are a lot more flexible than they used to be, and I think some people may not be aware of this (although you probably are). Most courses are now composed of modules, and you follow your interests within this framework - admittedly the modules will all be relevant to your chosen concentration in some way, so it is far from a liberal education. As for Cambridge, which is where I studied, it has always been possible to switch concentrations midway through the course, although this comes with an inevitable loss in specialisation that most wish to avoid.</p>
<p>Secondly, this spike you mention does not indicate that it is a common practice for British students to do their PhDs in America, only that it has become less uncommon. I can honestly say that no one I know has chosen to do it, so I remain somewhat skeptical.</p>
<p>SteveUK:</p>
<p>I was not speaking about undergraduate education but about Ph.D. training which remains broader in the US than in the UK. In fact, the Ph.D qualifying exams, typically taken after two years of coursework, are designed to train graduate students to teach, not just to write their dissertation. And so they are expected to know about a lot more than the topic of their dissertation and to be more theoretical and comparatie in their approach.
You may not know any Brit who’s gone to the US for a Ph.D. I know plenty. I also know plenty of former Oxbridge dons who’ve crossed the pond. Some left because of the higher salaries; others claim that the lack of funding for graduate students in the UK is a key reason why they prefer to teach in the US.
The director of undergraduate studies at Harvard’s math department is from Oxford. For a time, he was touted as Britain’s hope for a Fields Medal.</p>
<p>Sorry, I see now. Well, that’s not something I considered but it does make sense, since PhD students have a role in teaching undergrads that they don’t in the UK. I think that’s a benefit for PhD students, since it’s valuable experience to have. It’s of dubious benefit to the undergrads who are taught by PhD students instead of the profs themselves, but that’s another argument for another day. :)</p>
<p>Fair enough, you know plenty of British students doing their PhDs in the US, but there are 60 million people in the UK and you only know a very select group. They clearly felt they had reasons for moving, or else they wouldn’t be there. That doesn’t mean everyone back in the UK agrees with them. </p>
<p>I’m not sure why you’re bringing that mathematician into this, as it doesn’t seem to have any bearing. Academics move between universities all the time, and the UK has been known to steal the odd academic from top American unis as well. Regarding the strength of maths in the UK, Cambridge has had 7 Fields medallists and 5 Nobel Prize winners in the field of Maths, and remains one of the strongest maths departments in the world.</p>
<p>Yes, I know a very select groups of UK students because the universities I am familiar with are extremely selective. And, having talked to them, I understand that they are drawn to the US by the quality of the graduate education. By the way the total population of the UK is irrelevant to this discussion, not only because one cannot expect children and old age pensioners to be attending graduate school, but also because the college population is still proportionally smaller in the UK than in the US.</p>
<p>By teaching, I do not mean only pedagogical experience; this is secondary. I mean especially field knowledge. A prof cannot be expected to teach only what s/he has done research on and written about. This is why American graduate students take Ph.D. qualifying exams, usually at the end of their second year, to test their knowledge of their general field (s). Then only can they begin to think about their dissertation topic. By this time, the typical UK Ph.D. student is nearly finished writing the dissertation. </p>
<p>The “odd academic” is just right when it comes to Americans choosing to teach in the UK.</p>
<p>Wow, my thread has taken off… lol. But what the heck, I’ll try once more: any opinions on Oxford/Harvard undergrad? Why are people saying that Oxford’s undergraduate program is its biggest strength?</p>
<p>Nelle, Oxford and Cambridge have unique undergrad programs in terms of teaching style (you get closer supervision and are generally lectured by more senior researchers than in America) and assessment (all at the end of the year instead of ongoing). Whether you consider an Oxford education better than a Harvard one totally depends on what you want out of your education. Do you value breadth or do you value depth? I really think this should be the main consideration - forget all the other crap. (And yes, if you have the time and the money, you can always have a liberal arts education and then do further study, which is arguably the best of both worlds.)</p>
<p>Marite, either you were deliberately ignoring my point about the “select” population because you couldn’t answer it, or you totally missed the point. I have a feeling it was the former, but I’ll spell it out anyway: Your population in no way represents the UK student body as a whole; it doesn’t even represent that population of suitably successful people who would be able to get places on American grad programs. Hence, you cannot make any meaningful extrapolations from their opinions alone, as it is a completely biased survey. </p>
<p>Regarding your second point, I actually agree. Ensuring PhD students have a good general knowledge of their field is a Good Thing ™, and I am prepared to take your word for it that the US programs do a better job at this. This seems consistent with American unis’ habit of using PhD students to fill in the gaps in the workforce.</p>
<p>Steve - I was going more for depth, bc. my course (biochem) requires a lot of detailed/specific knowledge.</p>
<p>If the only thing you want to do is learn biochemistry, Oxford is definitely your best bet as you will cover a lot more. You can still learn a lot at an American uni, though, and you will also have the benefit of learning other disciplines. Like I said, if time isn’t an issue, you will reach the same endpoint whichever path you choose, but the American system will leave you with some more varied academic experience whilst the Oxford system will not. But if you’re itchy to get there as fast as possible, choose Oxford and don’t look back. :)</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity… excusing my total ignorance, could anyone offer more specifics on the strength of the Oxford system? I understand that it has more “depth,” but in what fields? How do you define depth exactly? Stronger and better courses? More courses, though on par with the Americans’? More specialization in one sub-area? More contact with researchers in the field? More researching opportunities? </p>
<p>SteveUK: In the spirit of arguements :D, I will challenge your post from god knows how long ago. Of course he didn’t say he is British, you did. I assumed that that when you noted that he does not represent all British sentiments, you meant he represented some. And to represent British sentiment, would you not have to be British? Otherwise he would only represent “European feelings.” don’t think that this guy is representative of all british feeling, or indeed of their ability to reason cogently :)</p>
<p>Inaina, you might learn something by reading the comments of the Crimson article. There were many Oxonians and Rhodes scholars eager to defend the system criticized by the article.</p>
<p>Inaina, when I say that you go into more depth, I mean only that you learn more of your subject. So an Oxford biochemist leaves Oxford having learnt more biochemistry than a Harvard student who majored in it (how much more, I don’t know). I really wouldn’t like to go any further than this because I don’t want to descend into the realms of subjectivity and prejudice. The other benefits of Oxbridge don’t really come into what I mean by ‘depth’. </p>
<p>Since an example will mean more to you than rhetoric, I’ll tell you what I studied for my ‘Medical Sciences’ degree during my 3 years at Cambridge. I had 6 days of lectures per week (Mon-Sat), an average of 2-4 hours of practical classes per day, and on top of that 3-5 hours of supervisions with academics per week. We were expected to read our coursebooks in advance of the practicals, which sometimes took a long time (e.g. for anatomy it took at least an hour). We also had to either produce an essay or complete a worksheet for each supervision, depending on the subject and the inclination of the supervisor. The academics who supervise you can be anywhere from a PhD student to a Nobel Prize winner. It really does vary a lot, depending on the college’s strength in that discipline, but for me, most of my supervisors were ‘Readers’ - a Reader is higher than an average ‘Professor’ (using the American technology) but lower than someone with a Professorial chair (the only way to be called a Professor in Britain). Personally, I wrote 3 essays per week in my first year on anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, and had some one-off essay assignments in medical sociology, epidemiology and medical statistics. In my second year I wrote 4 essays per week on neuroscience, pharmacology, pathology and reproductive science, with a couple of one-off essays on topics in medical ethics. We did work exceptionally hard and we focused 100% on topics related to medical science. I can accept that there are other places in the world where people work as hard - but harder? Frankly, that blows my mind. In the third year we chose one scientific discipline (I went for neuroscience) and worked only in that area, and it was a lot more chilled. We carried out one research project, and spent the rest of the time attending lectures (only about 6 per weel) and then reading scientific papers referenced during those lectures (but this was quite a task, because there could be up to 10 references in a single lecture, and while some of these were short, some were up to 50 pages long - no kidding, have a look at the Journal of Physiology and you’ll see!). After reading the references, we wrote essays on titles that we came up with ourselves and then discussed them with the lecturer concerned for about an hour (in practice, most lecturers were happy to provide possible essay titles!!). I’m sure none of this sounds alien compared to what you do in the States, but my point is that we focus 100% on our area and we really do go for it. There is no room for saying you can make up for this difference in a liberal arts course by working harder, because quite simply we worked flat-out already, even in the vacation periods. I know liberal arts degrees are a year longer, but correct me if I’m wrong, the liberal arts emphasis extends beyond the first year? I do actually have a friend from Cambridge who took a Harvard course on biochemistry while on the Cambridge-MIT exchange, and his impression was that the course was superficial compared to the biochemistry we learnt in the first year, even though this was a third year course. That’s another point actually, he took a third year course because he was currently in his second year at Cambridge - and this was one of MIT’s rules, not his own choice.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’ve now gone rather further than I intended and will probably receive some more private hatemail from Hedoya, but you did ask, and I provided…</p>
<p>
Inaina, I accept your challenge! I’ve quoted the exchange above, to save us both a headache…</p>
<p>So, what do we have? Firstly, Rodin says some rather stupid things that don’t help in any way whatsoever. Then, you remark that the “self proclaimed epitome of British intelligence” can’t spell. The irony isn’t lost on me, but if that’s not you calling him a Brit, I don’t know what is. 
I think I was correct in saying that nowhere did he say he was a Brit. Come to think of it, he didn’t proclaim himself as the epitome of intelligence either, unless you know him from from another thread and I’ve just missed something.</p>
<p>As for your convoluted logic designed to back me into a corner, unfortunately it involves quoting something I never said. I never mentioned him “not representing British sentiments”. Lets face it, there are some pretty ignorant people in Britain who feel that way, but I don’t think he’s one of them. If I had thought he was Brit, I would have said what you thought I said, and not said what I actually said (so I say), and I certainly wouldn’t have bothered with the “he didn’t say he was a Brit” comment. Hence, I maintain consistency. ;)</p>
<p>Deep breath. :)</p>
<p>EDIT: In the post I made before this one, I meant ‘terminology’, not ‘technology’. I can’t edit it because I posted it too long ago. This is why I shouldn’t post in the wee hours of the morning. :p</p>
<p>SteveUK:</p>
<p>Your detailed explanation of the Oxbridge undergraduate system will be extremely helpful to students considering whether to apply to American or British universities. There is no doubt in my mind that in the fields where British universities maintain their strengths, the British system produces students who are better prepared in these fields than American students (save for the very top ones). Since, however, Rhodes scholars are supposed to take either upper-level undergraduate courses or post-graduate courses, I’ve concentrated on discussing graduate education. In the fields they studied, the British students I’ve encountered display great erudition. They also tend to be somewhat more narrow than their American counterparts. It eventually comes out even in the end, as the Brits acquire more breadth and the Americans acquire more depth.</p>
<p>I should mention that while I lived in the UK, I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation. So I got to know some of the universities and had friends who’d graduated from others. This was a long time ago, before the Thatcher cuts wreaked havoc on the universities.</p>
<p>I’m so glad I can agree with someone on this forum. Sorry for wandering a little off-topic, but like you say, it may be helpful to some people. I think I should also mention that the workload for Medical Sciences is one of the highest at Oxbridge, so if anyone who reads this is thinking of applying for something else, do keep that in mind and don’t be put off just because it sounds nightmarish. If you’re studying Socio-Political Sciences at Cambridge, for instance, this has one of the lowest workloads and only entails one essay per week, no practicals and fewer lectures! Obviously, students enrolled on this course are expected to do a lot more reading, though, and their essays are expected to be better researched. On the other hand, a similar course at Oxford called Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) is seen as one of the toughest there. The workload depends very much on the course.</p>
<p>I totally agree that in the end these things tend to even out between US and UK students, although your earlier point about US grad schools retaining breadth was an interesting point I hadn’t considered before - none of this really applies to me, but I think if I wanted to do a grad program I would choose the States over the UK, not just for the better course/funding, but also to make more contacts. Unfortunately, since I’ll be engaged in medical training in the National Health Service, I can’t see that being a possibility, either geographically or in terms of taking the necessary time out!</p>
<p>Actually yes, that was very helpful… and overwhelming! So how do you know the strength of a specific subject at Oxbridge, simply by hearing about its reputation? Is there any way to find out if a Biochem degree from Oxford (4-year course, btw) is as worthy as SteveUK’s medical one obviously was?</p>