Studying ; Is America a possibility?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tourism & Travel > Studying ; Is America a possibility?

Blut: Sep 11, 2009; if someone is in the bottom 10%~ of a guillotine

Saladman posted:

I did my bachelor in the US and my PhD in Europe.

What made you decide to do your PhD in Europe? From my understanding of humanities PhDs its quite hard to get full funding in Europe, but nearly all of them are full ride in the U.S. (pending your GRE and GPA scores being high enough). Is that wrong? Or were you in a hard science?

# ¿ Sep 14, 2014 10:07

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 13:07

Blut: Sep 11, 2009; if someone is in the bottom 10%~ of a guillotine

Saladman posted:

Mostly because it's much shorter (4 years) and it's treated like a real job and not like you're some schmuck student, so you're counted as an official employee, receive official holidays (25 days/year of my choice, plus the 10 national holidays!).

Also it's very well paid in comparison -- I made double what someone living in Boston or NYC in a PhD program would -- but this only applies to the 2 Swiss National Institutes, Norway, and some of the German national institutes. Most other countries are equivalent to US pay (most of Germany, France, UK) or worse (Italian schools don't come close to paying you enough to live on), but the first points -- real employee and shorter graduation time -- are pretty universal.

I did hard science (biology) but there's liberal arts are the same way, which makes the 4 years in Europe vs. the 8 years in the US for a (e.g.) literature PhD even more jarring. The UK is often even just a 3 year PhD program. I don't know about other countries but all PhD programs in Switzerland are fully funded (or you get kicked out after one year), and there's no salary difference between humanities and science. This is a change that happened only in like 2008 though; before that, e.g. computer science PhDs would pull in $80k/year while French Lit PhDs would pull in $20k/year.

Interesting. I know in the UK & Ireland the PhDs are shorter (3 year usually, sometimes 4 years) but its extremely had to get funding. For humanities in Ireland the funding rate in the humanities is currently running at around 12.5% of PhDs having funding - and that of approx �20,000 a year. I was under the impression that PhD stipends in the U.S. were around the same (approx $20k USD) but that with cheaper living costs they were a bit more livable. Plus if you got accepted to a program you were guaranteed funding - unlike the 1 in 8 chance in Ireland. I've had numerous acquaintances go from the EU to the US for humanities PhDs for this reason - interesting to hear an opposite experience!

# ¿ Sep 14, 2014 17:14

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