Joint PhD programmes - are they worth it?

Any PhD involving different partners (industrial, academic, whatever) can be difficult. Often the different agendas/intentions of each side are not obvious from the start and only appear later, And sometimes the partners work out their own conflicts via the student, leaving the student stuck in the middle wondering who to take advice/supervision from - and you really wont need any 'extra' stress like this. Sometimes it can be fine, but in my experience,as both a PhD student and as an academic, its definitely to avoid this sort of arrangement. It certainly doesn't carry any extra prestige - you have only one doctorate and you'll be judged on the strength of that, not how many certificates you have.

Thanks for your perspective, that's very helpful. It sounds like there is a lot of politics to manage between the two departments and supervisors, which would definitely not be worth it for me either, particularly if there is nothing additional to gain, e.g. in prestige or job prospects.

I would love to do a year or two abroad, but hopefully one can do that in a more flexible arrangement than a joint degree...

My PhD is between two different institutions and I've not found it a problem at all (so far!). They're both in London but I don't see why it would be different if the other institution were abroad.

I find I get a lot of extra networking and collaboration out of it to be honest.

Thank you @redferry it's great to hear about a different experience! I imagine you have two supervisors, one in each institution? If so, how does this arrangement work for you? Is one of them your primary supervisor and the other one the secondary or is do you manage those relationships entirely independently? I can definitely imagine the networking opportunities as well as the benefit of having the perspective and resources of more than one universities on your research.

Yeah, one specialises in one element of my project and one another. It works fine for me, sometimes we all meet but more often I just speak to each seperateley, which is actually better because one of my supervisors is ridiculously outgoing and loud and doesn't let the other, who is pretty quiet, get a word in edgeways when we all meet!

haha, that sounds like a good arrangement, and I'm sure the fact that they supervise different elements of your project minimises any awkward territorial conflicts.