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Who Do SO MANY Americans think "The UK" and "Africa" are countries?

chinup said:
you dismissed it as 'america bashing,' and seemed a bit defensive- posting information that had already posted regarding the calibre of US universities on a global stage.

i didn't say a 3.5-4 year program is stronger. i said that the undergrad programs in countries where this is the length of a phd are stronger.

all phds compete on a global stage for academic jobs. so, the outcome of a phd from a good university anywhere should (and roughly does, research trends and student attributes obviously impact this though) give you the same opportunities. in order for that to happen for US students, they need to spend upwards of 2 years longer on a phd. this suggests that there preparation for their phd program was lacking compared to other countries. were US PhDs to be of a much higher standard, you would expect people from the US to dominate every academic department globally, which is not the case, they end up on an equal footing, so the benefit of the extra time is 'catching up' not 'overtaking.'

phds are extremely stressful, fucking awful tbh, and can be expensive if you don't have funding. if they could get away with doing them in the same length of time as european students, i have no doubt US students would. so there must be a reason. and the reason is that US undergrad degrees do not prepare you as well for research in a field than european phds.
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What about quality of life while getting the degree. You said yourself it’s stressful and pretty miserable. So you spend more time, but maybe spreading the effort out is more obtainable and results in less burn out and maybe even greater retention.
 
neversickanymore said:
What about quality of life while getting the degree. You said yourself it’s stressful and pretty miserable. So you spend more time, but maybe spreading the effort out is more obtainable and results in less burn out and maybe even greater retention.
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based on what i've heard, so limited to specific subjects and obviously only people i've spoken to about this, its way worse in the US. 6 day weeks are more frequent, as are 12 hour days.

do you have any evidence that quality of life is better in US PhDs? for reference the first two years of US PhDs are usually tuition. there are no standard years of tuition in Europe for a PhD cos you're expected to be ready to start learning how to be a researcher. getting two years extra tuition probably does make the research part less stressful. but its more money and more years out of your life. the actual research part of US PhDs takes the same length of time, if they didn't need the extra tuition, which is the implicit assumption in your question, why take them if that extra preparation isn't needed?

here's some data for you:

apparently 20.5% of european PhD students quit

whereas nearly 50% of US doctoral students fail to graduate

if you're going to keep pursuiing this line of argument i'll need to see some data regarding attrition rates and the purpose of the extra tuition in US PhDs.
 
It was a question not a statement @chinup and no I don't have a profound interest in the problems facing PhD candidates and am not going to put any effort into this discussion.

That and the fact you presented almost no evidence for your claims. Just seems like a waste of my time.

Edit: better presentation.
 
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neversickanymore said:
That and the fact you presented almost no evidence for your claims. Just seems like a waste of my time.
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erm, where is the evidence for yours? you are correct, it is a waste of time, but not for the reason you think. you claimed that i was 'America bashing' with no evidence and the burden of proof falls on you to provide that evidence, it seems you are unable to so your claim does not stand to scrutiny.

theres further anecdotes here about the courses US phd students have to sit being roughly equivalent to UK Masters courses:

American PhDs, why do they take so long? - The Student Room

www.thestudentroom.co.uk

everything else i've found points to the same, i.e. that the taught component in the US system takes a long time, with no one having the guts to explicitly spell out why that component is needed.

neversickanymore said:
medium.economist.com

Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

The disposable academic
medium.economist.com medium.economist.com

Wink wink. @chinup could this be a reason why many people never finish and also a reason it "takes" six years in the USA.. more free labor.
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lol good luck getting a post doc (and therefore any research job) without a phd. we know its free labour, but the pay off at the end is worth it.

i read that article when it first came out. the article doesn't focus only on US PhDs and in fact discusses issues on a global scale so i don't know why you think its relevant to the current discussion.
 
@chinup

We are just not communicating well. With some strong views and emotions.. I’m just going to refrain from posting right now
 
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chinup said:
phds are extremely stressful, fucking awful tbh, and can be expensive if you don't have funding. if they could get away with doing them in the same length of time as european students, i have no doubt US students would. so there must be a reason. and the reason is that US undergrad degrees do not prepare you as well for research in a field than european phds.
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I've never heard this before. I guess it varies from field to field. But in my field, there's certainly no stereotype that European students are more prepared out of undergrad than American students, and there's no preference for European students over American students in Canadian Ph.D. programs. I think Europeans just have a better sense of how to enjoy life and realize that spending 60+ hours a week for six years of your young life on a degree is insane. But an American Ph.D. (at least in my field) is considered a stronger qualification than a European one, at least in the U.S. and Canada.
 
Well we are taught that the UK is somewhat like the USA. A federal conglomeration of states.

The laws are not the same in my state Kentucky as they are in neighboring Indiana is the reason for that.

Africa is a continent. I've never heard anyone refer to it as a nation.
 
I have not met any Americans who hold the view that Africa is a country

The UK is more complex as a conglomerate of several countries - Britain, Whales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland

Further adding to the confusion - wikipedia describes the United Kingdom as a Country.

Maybe it's because the brits are confusing.
 
The United Kingdom is a country by the dictionary definition, more so than the individual ‘countries’ it is composed of really.

The dictionary defines a country as a ‘nation with its own government occupying a particular territory’. Wales has NEVER had it’s own government or a uniting ruler of any consequence . Scotland had a uniting monarch that could be described as government for a couple of hundred years at best in the 12th and 13th centuries. Before that it was an amalgam of different clans with their own territories and rulers, after that it came under control of the English. Northern Ireland was of course a part of the kingdom of Ireland originally, which was technically a country with an independent parliment but this was a client state of England. It was then a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and ruled directly by westminster. Only in the 20th century did Ireland become partitioned and the ‘country’ of Northern Ireland be one of any significance when the Republic of Ireland became independent and NI became a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and NI.

Wales, Scotland and NI now all have their own parliaments and a degree of power, but this power is a devolved power granted by westminster. Other than Scotland for a short time none of these places have fit the description of being ‘a nation with its own government occupying a particular territory’, only England has really fit that bill for any significant period of time. So yes, the people that live in these different places for sure all have a strong individual unifying heritage and identity (except NI but let’s not get in to that), but only England and Scotland for a short time hundreds of years ago has ever really fit the bill of what we really define a country as in modern terms. The United Kingdom on the other hand fits the definition exactly.

Whilst there are significant differences between the political landscape of the US and the UK, and I know fuck all about politics so I can’t really make them clear, in basic terms they are very similar. They both consist of individual territories with significant ability to self-govern, but whom are controlled or superseded by a uniting central government with a single head of state and United armed forces etc.
 
Africa--Continent. Egypt, Ethiopia etc--Countries
Asia--Continent. India, Pakistan etc countries
And so on...
 
jasperkent said:
Getting back to the Texas thing....

I've uttered the following statement many times over the last 40 years and always
gotten a hearty laugh from whomever heard it. BUT I changed the state in question depending on what was going on at the time. Other places named include:
Alabama
Mississippi
Florida
California

Texas is okay, but I prefer the United States.
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I love it! I'll have to use that when the opportunity arises. Although... some parts of Texas seem like a foreign country. Lol.
Peace.
 
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