Having tried and failed to finish a PhD in the UK, I wish universities over here took the approach that I see in these snapshots of requiring PhD students to still take classes.
tldr: Courses are fundamentally for young adults that can't manage their own time..
My anecdotal experience was that courses are sort of idiotic at the PhD level. The course work is incredibly distracting from your research and projects. It's really hard to get into a flow state with your work when you have to do a bunch of homework. My productivity during the semesters I did course work was an order of magnitude lower.
The lectures are interesting and sort of useful.. but they're not a good use of time. At the PhD level you should be comfortable enough to just pick up some textbooks, read them on your own time, do some problem sets and learn on your own. B/c that's essentially what the professors are doing to prepare the course material in the first place..
Your advisor should just assign you some reading or something. It should be enough
Seminar style courses where you intensively interact with a professor are maybe an exception.. Maybe..
US PhD programmes include the MSc before the PhD proper. Given that the UK MSc is mostly taught, it lines up with the timeline described by the author (1 year of coursework followed by 4 years of research).
Interesting - I guess I'd assumed at that level the courses would be grad courses and not coursework heavy.
I think for me the problem was "unknown unknowns". If I knew I needed to know something, I could pick up a textbook and learn it, but that doesn't help if you don't even know something exists.
contrarian1234|4 months ago
My anecdotal experience was that courses are sort of idiotic at the PhD level. The course work is incredibly distracting from your research and projects. It's really hard to get into a flow state with your work when you have to do a bunch of homework. My productivity during the semesters I did course work was an order of magnitude lower.
The lectures are interesting and sort of useful.. but they're not a good use of time. At the PhD level you should be comfortable enough to just pick up some textbooks, read them on your own time, do some problem sets and learn on your own. B/c that's essentially what the professors are doing to prepare the course material in the first place..
Your advisor should just assign you some reading or something. It should be enough
Seminar style courses where you intensively interact with a professor are maybe an exception.. Maybe..
maleldil|4 months ago
zelos|4 months ago
I think for me the problem was "unknown unknowns". If I knew I needed to know something, I could pick up a textbook and learn it, but that doesn't help if you don't even know something exists.