In the United States, you can start a Ph.D. program right after getting your Bachelor’s degree, but in Europe, you need a Master’s degree first (usually two years of study).

Master’s degree in the EU = two years; doctorate in the US = three years (Ph.D.)

Consequently, the duration is almost the same. The primary distinction is that in the United States, students may begin work on a doctoral degree immediately after undergraduate work. In contrast, in Europe, students must first complete a Master’s degree (typically includes its research component) before choosing to pursue a Ph.D. For instance, some people have two Master’s degrees but were told by a US institution that they needed to do a full five years of doctoral work before they would accept them. Still, they would only need to finish three years in Europe (or New Zealand, which follows the European system).

To maintain funding, Ph.D. candidates in the United States must often teach extensively during their five-year program. Allowance and a stipend are more common in Europe. Experience is not always gained via teaching. If you have to teach while pursuing a Ph.D., your research may suffer since you can’t devote as much time to it. In the United States, a Ph.D. applicant will spend the first two years taking classes before receiving “confirmed enrollment,” during which time they will refine the focus of their research and devote the last three years to its completion. Comparable to the European model, roughly. The distinction is one of logistics and financial arrangements. In a nutshell, scientific progress has been made in both Europe and the United States, demonstrating the efficacy of both systems.

Some Ph.D. experts claim that the longer time commitment and different finance structures used by European and American colleges lower the quality of the Ph.D. They state that, on average, European PhDs need more extended time in post-docs, have a lower publication rate stemming from their Ph.D. theses, and have less effect in their respective fields. Due to the European financing model’s emphasis on a 3- to 4-year degree completion period, students may be tempted to skimp on quality throughout their study or focus on less challenging issues.

As a result of not being allowed to graduate until your advisor gives you the green light, American PhDs have better publishing records than their international counterparts. In addition, before your defense, you must have published at least two high-quality works in peer-reviewed engineering journals as first authors. It makes no difference how long you’ve been enrolled in the American Ph.D. program, whether three years or ten. The value of your effort will determine your success. American schools also have more significant funding than their European counterparts so that students can access higher-caliber resources.

Since there is less time crunch for American Ph.D. students, they can devote more time to doing a comprehensive literature study. Both breadth and depth are encouraged by this. In the United States, a student’s coursework and research must be done simultaneously, unlike in Europe, where a master’s degree and a doctorate are two independent degrees. These considerations may help explain why European PhDs often engage in more extensive post-doctoral training. In contrast, their American counterparts are more likely to enter the R&D workforce in business or become professors in higher education immediately after graduation.

To sum up, American Ph.D. programs are more challenging than their European counterparts, but the benefits of post-graduation employment, research quality, and training quality more than compensate for the added difficulty. Then, many believe that the length of time spent in a Ph.D. program has no bearing on the quality of the degree earned. Many American Ph.D. candidates have successfully defended their dissertations in under three years. But plenty of people also wasted 7-8 years in the program and are now really sorry they did.

Finally, more extended study periods do not result in better quality PhDs. Everyone with a doctorate knows at least one fellow researcher who toiled away at their dissertation for years.

An individual who aspires to get a doctorate said, “my supervisor has a saying, if you know what you’re doing, you can accomplish your Ph.D. in a few weeks.” Most PhDs are based on a small number of key findings and a large amount of filler; thus, rewriting one’s dissertation from scratch would take no more than four weeks. So the issue becomes, how long do you need to fail before you succeed, or how long do you need to try something else till you find what works? On average, this lasts roughly four years. If you’re spending much more time, you’re either not doing it correctly or at risk of becoming a grandfather Ph.D. candidate.