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In the US for science the most common path is 4 year BS, 4-5 yrs PhD with no masters in between. This felt about right for me personally in terms of being prepa

In the US for science the most common path is 4 year BS, 4-5 yrs PhD with no masters in between. This felt about right for me personally in terms of being prepared to do research on my own. However, I do not feel that a PhD really qualifies one for teaching at all. Most professors are not trained teachers. They are just experts in their field that primarily want to do research and teaching is a requirement of running research group. This is a really weird setup. Most professors that run a research group are okay teachers because of their passion for science, but they are not formally trained educators. They just have a lot of education. I will say that I have had some discussions with PhD admissions faculty and they say that it is very hard to select which undergrad students to accept PhD programs. Essentially none of the metrics they have -- GPA, GRE scores, courses taken, etc -- have any predictive power for how "good" of a researcher a given student will be. Perhaps if they had to do a masters first it would help.

analog31 9y ago
>>> In the US for science the most common path is 4 year BS, 4-5 yrs PhD with no masters in between. That was the path I followed in physics, though I took a bit longer to finish. I had friends in fields (e.g., psychology) where they had to do an interim masters. In my view, the result was that the masters became a hoop to jump through, and one that saddled the literature with studies that weren't really very meaty. Personally, I'm leery of anything that makes the degree take longer. The reason is that grad students face the constant risk of things that can force them to quit without anything to show for it. For instance your advisor can spontaneously quit, or for that matter, drop dead. Your research can get "scooped." You can run into health or family issues. >>> Most professors are not trained teachers. Most college teachers are not professors. A few years ago, I taught a couple of college courses for a semester. If you want things like teacher training, then you have to make college teaching remotely career-worthy.
- dhimes 9y ago
  When I did my physics PhD 5 years was the advertised time to finish, but it took most people 6 or 7 years. The faculty/administrators who worry about such things knew it was a problem and were actively working to fix it, so maybe they've made some progress? The whiz kids at certain institutions got out more quickly of course, but that was not the norm. The programs were being accused of false advertising by not "updating" their time-to-complete numbers.

analog31 9y ago

>>> In the US for science the most common path is 4 year BS, 4-5 yrs PhD with no masters in between. That was the path I followed in physics, though I took a bit longer to finish. I had friends in fields (e.g., psychology) where they had to do an interim masters. In my view, the result was that the masters became a hoop to jump through, and one that saddled the literature with studies that weren't really very meaty. Personally, I'm leery of anything that makes the degree take longer. The reason is that grad students face the constant risk of things that can force them to quit without anything to show for it. For instance your advisor can spontaneously quit, or for that matter, drop dead. Your research can get "scooped." You can run into health or family issues. >>> Most professors are not trained teachers. Most college teachers are not professors. A few years ago, I taught a couple of college courses for a semester. If you want things like teacher training, then you have to make college teaching remotely career-worthy.

dhimes 9y ago
When I did my physics PhD 5 years was the advertised time to finish, but it took most people 6 or 7 years. The faculty/administrators who worry about such things knew it was a problem and were actively working to fix it, so maybe they've made some progress? The whiz kids at certain institutions got out more quickly of course, but that was not the norm. The programs were being accused of false advertising by not "updating" their time-to-complete numbers.