[sundogs]

Having a look at various masters courses and came across this.
Has anybody done of these courses - would you recommend it and what are the pros and cons?

General thoughts/ opinions from Masters / PhD students also welcome.

[hobnob]

'New route' meaning what exactly?

[sundogs]

(Original post by hobnob)
'New route' meaning what exactly?

http://www.newroutephd.ac.uk/

I came across the term looking at this course at Newcastle:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/postgrad/t...guage/iphd.htm

but there are a number of others - it's a 'thing' rather than a term I just made up.

[hobnob]

(Original post by sundogs)
http://www.newroutephd.ac.uk/

I came across the term looking at this course at Newcastle:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/postgrad/t...guage/iphd.htm

but there are a number of others - it's a 'thing' rather than a term I just made up.

To me that just sounds like they force you to do more boring compulsory 'research training' modules. I'm not convinced that's really a good thing, to be honest.

[VENIVIDIVICI]

Doesn't a lot of PhD's already offer graduate skills training as part of the training available to PhD students?

I know at UEA, PhD students have to complete a certain amount of training credits over their 3 yrs of their PhD. Students have a long list of training to choose from (generic skills + relevant technical skills training) and they have to complete it as part of their PhD programme. Students can also attend masters level courses if they need theoretical background etc.

Many other uni's, such as Imperial have similar graduate training requirements for their PhD students.

Is doing this new route PhD really that different (or even needed)?

[evantej]

(Original post by sundogs)
Having a look at various masters courses and came across this.
Has anybody done of these courses - would you recommend it and what are the pros and cons?

General thoughts/ opinions from Masters / PhD students also welcome.

I liked the idea of the integrated PhD, especially the linguistics one at Newcastle. It was one of the programmes I applied for when I finished my degree in English. However, I was rejected and unconditionally accepted onto any linguistics masters programme I wanted. I could not quite get my head around that at the time.

For your own sake, I would check with them first to see whether or not they will accept an undergraduate student. If you have to do a masters degree first before doing then doing an integrated PhD it becomes less beneficial in my opinion.

[evantej]

(Original post by hobnob)
To me that just sounds like they force you to do more boring compulsory 'research training' modules. I'm not convinced that's really a good thing, to be honest.

Nah, it gives you the opportunity to learn more before you get stuck into your thesis. One of the supposed benefits of this was to make teaching easier as you have more time and you are covering more material so you could - in theory - teach more things.

[0404343m]

It sounds a little bit like American PhDs right now, which force you to take courses that may or may not be beneficial, but we're bloody well making you take them anyway on the off-chance you learn something that might be useful one day. On the upside, I got a free lunch (which was better than British university catering) every Tuesday to listen to something totally irrelevant (like why one must be careful with Arabic source material), so I'd say all-in-all the $7 it saved me on buying my own lunch was worthwhile.

If you really have no idea when starting a PhD beyond a few woolly ideas about what you're going to write your thesis on, I'd say it's worth a shot. If not, I think it's a waste of time. I have to take one compulsory research training module each year, and I don't think I've picked up anything useful yet- although others in the same room might have. It really depends on what stage you are in your life and research and what you plan (or haven't yet planned) on working on as to whether it's a help or a hindrance to the quality of your work. Personally, I look through the courses on the go and ask to attend for the bits that look relevant, and it's never been a problem, so I can't really see the point in making more things compulsory.

[flying plum]

Im doing one - not a trademarked 'new route', but something similar. I've found it useful, because I'm a lawyer, but moving into socio-legal research, and the courses have enabled me to get good training in empirical methods. So, if you are doing interdisciplinary work, which so many people do now, I think they're a great idea. For m, structured teaching was more beneficial, and time effective, than teaching myself.

[hobnob]

(Original post by evantej)
Nah, it gives you the opportunity to learn more before you get stuck into your thesis. One of the supposed benefits of this was to make teaching easier as you have more time and you are covering more material so you could - in theory - teach more things.

Yes, I understand the reasoning behind it, but in practice even the standard amount of compulsory 'research training' modules is a nuisance and a waste of time because the contents are rarely relevant or applicable to the project you're actually meant to be doing. And when you start a PhD you should want to get stuck into your thesis, no?

As for the teaching argument, again, I can sort of see the reasoning behind it, but in practice I'm fairly certain that I'd be able to teach Burke and Paine / T.S. Eliot / Dream of the Rood already, provided I had a couple of weeks to brush up on those topics. It might be a bit stressful, of course, but it would be feasible. But obviously the reality is that no-one will ask me to teach on any of those topics because my DPhil topic marks me as a 16th/17th-century person and they'd rather have someone from the 'right' period, because it's a safer choice (and it does make sense, of course). I'm not totally convinced that would be any different if I had taken a single compulsory module on a 9th- / 18th- / 20th-century topic during my first year...

(Original post by 0404343m)
If you really have no idea when starting a PhD beyond a few woolly ideas about what you're going to write your thesis on, I'd say it's worth a shot. If not, I think it's a waste of time. I have to take one compulsory research training module each year, and I don't think I've picked up anything useful yet- although others in the same room might have. It really depends on what stage you are in your life and research and what you plan (or haven't yet planned) on working on as to whether it's a help or a hindrance to the quality of your work. Personally, I look through the courses on the go and ask to attend for the bits that look relevant, and it's never been a problem, so I can't really see the point in making more things compulsory.

to all of that. I'm not really against research training per se, but I can't see the benefit in making it compulsory and effectively force PhD students to spend less time doing their own research just so they can attend all those courses.

[QHF]

The branding and the scattering of (tm)s and the subservient tone of

NewRoutePhD™ was developed with full support of the UK Government, the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) and the British Council has been taken up by leading UK Universities across a range of disciplines.

... and the missing 'and' all rather set my back up. But that may be nasty elitist instincts subconsciously kicking in.

Skills courses ought to be a good thing, though, if they're done well.

[evantej]

(Original post by hobnob)
Yes, I understand the reasoning behind it, but in practice even the standard amount of compulsory 'research training' modules is a nuisance and a waste of time because the contents are rarely relevant or applicable to the project you're actually meant to be doing. And when you start a PhD you should want to get stuck into your thesis, no?

As for the teaching argument, again, I can sort of see the reasoning behind it, but in practice I'm fairly certain that I'd be able to teach Burke and Paine / T.S. Eliot / Dream of the Rood already, provided I had a couple of weeks to brush up on those topics. It might be a bit stressful, of course, but it would be feasible. But obviously the reality is that no-one will ask me to teach on any of those topics because my DPhil topic marks me as a 16th/17th-century person and they'd rather have someone from the 'right' period, because it's a safer choice (and it does make sense, of course). I'm not totally convinced that would be any different if I had taken a single compulsory module on a 9th- / 18th- / 20th-century topic during my first year... […]

In sundogs's case, she would only ever take one research methods unit in her first year and that is it for the rest of the iPhD; and it is specifically for linguists so it should be far more relevant than most generic research methods units.

So far as the teaching issue is concerned, I think you misunderstood my point. The idea behind the four-year programme is to allow you to study more masters level units and write a small masters dissertation at the end of the second year. Because you have to take more units, it is no longer a case of simply posturing that you could teach units outside of your specialism, but that you should be able to, and with the extra time you will have the opportunity to do just this without it negatively impacting upon your doctoral dissertation. This is helped by the fact that the dissertation itself is shorter too (50,000 words, I believe). The idea that with this broader training and more teaching experience you should be more employable.

In linguistics, this all makes a lot of sense because the different areas and specialisms all feed into one another. For English literature, it is a bit harder to appreciate, because the different areas are very defined (I cannot remember ever studying anything medieval, for example), and I can see why you are sceptical.

[nulli tertius]

(Original post by sundogs)
Having a look at various masters courses and came across this.
Has anybody done of these courses - would you recommend it and what are the pros and cons?

General thoughts/ opinions from Masters / PhD students also welcome.

It does seem to have the air of adding a Paso Doble and 50 metres backstroke to the driving test.

[hobnob]

(Original post by evantej)
In sundogs's case, she would only ever take one research methods unit in her first year and that is it for the rest of the iPhD; and it is specifically for linguists so it should be far more relevant than most generic research methods units.

So far as the teaching issue is concerned, I think you misunderstood my point. The idea behind the four-year programme is to allow you to study more masters level units and write a small masters dissertation at the end of the second year. Because you have to take more units, it is no longer a case of simply posturing that you could teach units outside of your specialism, but that you should be able to, and with the extra time you will have the opportunity to do just this without it negatively impacting upon your doctoral dissertation. This is helped by the fact that the dissertation itself is shorter too (50,000 words, I believe). The idea that with this broader training and more teaching experience you should be more employable.

So you'd be doing a two-year MA with half a PhD stuck on, essentially?

In linguistics, this all makes a lot of sense because the different areas and specialisms all feed into one another. For English literature, it is a bit harder to appreciate, because the different areas are very defined (I cannot remember ever studying anything medieval, for example), and I can see why you are sceptical.

Hmm, maybe it's suitable for some particular subjects, but I think I'll remain sceptical. Personally, I'm pretty sure I'd have hated such a class-based PhD, but I suppose this kind of structure was never meant to be applied generally.

[nulli tertius]

I see all the case studies on the website for New Route PhD are foreigners. Is there any evidence that students have the same or better levels of post doc employment in the UK as "old route" PhDs in the same subject?

[hobnob]

(Original post by nulli tertius)
I see all the case studies on the website for New Route PhD are foreigners. Is there any evidence that students have the same or better levels of post doc employment in the UK as "old route" PhDs in the same subject?

I'd say it's probably still too early to tell. I couldn't find any exact dates, but it doesn't appear as though this has been running for a very long time yet (the first conference thingie seems to have been in 2009), so only a small number of 'new' PhDs will have graduated at this stage.

[Jake22]

The actual idea of NewRoute isn't so bad; it sounds more like the execution is poor and a bit of an afterthought in some cases.

I know that some of the New Route PhDs I have heard of are actually quite excellent. For instance, I heard of some statistic ones which were labelled as 3+1 PhDs - the idea being loosely that the first year takes roughly the shape of a Masters course and the last 3 years are more inline with a traditional British PhD. The reasons why this is a good thing are as far as I can see:
1) Provides a broader background and thus a more well rounded scholar bringing things more inline with the American system. In my subject area, American PhDs are generally seen superior to ours since good students often spend twice the time we do and have a much wider and more thorough background.
2) It is very difficult to get funding for a Masters. Having this tagged onto the PhD and provided for is a workaround that effectively widens access to PhD positions to people who otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford the Masters.
3) In interdisciplinary PhDs (such as the stats ones I was talking about) student recruits often come from a multitude of backgrounds and are unlikely to have as comprehensive background as say, a pure maths student doing a phd in pure maths. The extra year of class work provides time to fix those holes in background and the courses can be tailored to suit the specific specialities under consideration.

[0404343m]

(Original post by Jake22)
The actual idea of NewRoute isn't so bad; it sounds more like the execution is poor and a bit of an afterthought in some cases.

I know that some of the New Route PhDs I have heard of are actually quite excellent. For instance, I heard of some statistic ones which were labelled as 3+1 PhDs - the idea being loosely that the first year takes roughly the shape of a Masters course and the last 3 years are more inline with a traditional British PhD. The reasons why this is a good thing are as far as I can see:
1) Provides a broader background and thus a more well rounded scholar bringing things more inline with the American system. In my subject area, American PhDs are generally seen superior to ours since good students often spend twice the time we do and have a much wider and more thorough background.
2) It is very difficult to get funding for a Masters. Having this tagged onto the PhD and provided for is a workaround that effectively widens access to PhD positions to people who otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford the Masters.
3) In interdisciplinary PhDs (such as the stats ones I was talking about) student recruits often come from a multitude of backgrounds and are unlikely to have as comprehensive background as say, a pure maths student doing a phd in pure maths. The extra year of class work provides time to fix those holes in background and the courses can be tailored to suit the specific specialities under consideration.

1+3 has been around for a good while now, but it's previously been used to denote the funding rather than the PhD route. I was offered 1+3 funding through the ESRC (which I didn't take) after undergrad, but the typical assumption was that you would pick one of the training MSc/MRes masters and then proceed to a conventional PhD.

Having spent time in the PhD system in both the UK and America, I'd say American PhDs do feel more like 'training', but less like 'research'. You are more heavily guided by a set of tutors, but there's no guarantee that you'll actually produce good work at the end of it all. I know people with PhDs from major American universities that can't get jobs because the dissertation wasn't great and their publications are non-existent. You can be trained all the hell you like, but it doesn't mean the PhD will be superior in terms of reseach quality or showing you know how to research. I think a more accurate statement is that Americans think American PhDs are superior. Like American politics, American cars and American businesses.

Problem with lack of masters funding is that what is still happening is that these four-year packages are still so hotly contested that they're going to people with masters degrees anyway. While these degrees still exist (and with the money they bring in, there's no chance of them dropping one year MScs), competition for places is going to mean it's an advantage to do one, and those fresh from final UG exams still have a tough time of it. Less so in some fields though.

My own take on this is still (in arts & social sciences at least) that the traditional British PhD is the best route for those who have a reasonably firm idea of what they want to do and already have a grounding in the subject, so for the vast majority of students that aren't in the groups mentioned above, the newroute is more of a hindrance than a help. This is part of the reason Americans spend three years mucking about before settling on a dissertation- they tend to come from broad backgrounds and need a couple of years intensive reading in an area to get going. The cynic in me says that after 4-5 years of university, do we really have to spend more time plugging holes in knowledge, especially since our degrees are supposed to be more 'focused'? If the UG and masters aren't sufficient to the extent we need a new PhD with more training, I'd be inclined to say they aren't doing enough at UG and particularly in the masters to prepare students. I've always found help to be there if I need it, and I'd hope that most people would go looking for assistance when it's relevant to the problem they're having rather than taking more broad classes and hoping that answers the specific questions they have.

So yeah, keep the Old Route, create training courses, and force any student that the supervisors/graduate school deem to have insufficient preparation to take them, and let everyone else get on with it.

[DynamicSyngery]

This has already taken hold in sciences; perhaps it is for humanities what is called the Doctoral Training Centre scheme by the sciences funding council.

It all seems to stem from a growing sense in government that to compete with $foreign_menace_of_the_week, PhD students need to waste a lot of time on woolly management courses and primary school-style classroom outings. The reasoning seems to be that since in other countries much more time is expended, greater productivity must therefore result regardless of what is actually being done. I find the whole thing baffling and very off-putting. The independence and self-direction is a huge reason that I, and I suspect many others, would want to do a PhD in the first place, but the trend is for PhDs to become more like middle management grad schemes.