Britpick Question

[amberfocus]

Are your university degrees the same as ours?  I'm meaning Bachelors, Masters, PH.D, that sort of thing.

Comments

[shinyopals.livejournal.com]

Those are definitely all terms we use. I'm pretty sure a lot of the similarities end there, though! XD

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Thanks. All I really needed was what they were called so that works.

[solarflar3.livejournal.com]

Yes, we use those terms. Wiki has some information that will give you an idea of our system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_degree#United_Kingdom

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's helpful.

[crimedoc1.livejournal.com]

Generally yes, except that Cambridge and Oxford are a bit different. I went to Cambridge so I can mostly speak to that University's policies.

At Cambridge the first degree is the BA. But a Master of Arts degree is NOT an earned or taught degree at Cambridge. You may be admitted Master of Arts after at least six years have passed from the end of your first term of residence, and at least two years since you received the BA. So basically, if you earn a first degree from Cambridge, you eventually can say you are an MA, even if you never went to grad school! I believe Oxford has the same thing, although I think you have to wait seven years, not six. In both places, you do have to pay a fee, but it's fairly nominal I think.

The earned master's degree at Cambridge is the M.Phil. It generally requires one year of full time study, although some programs require more.

Mine took one year. There were two ways to earn an MPhil in criminology. The first (most common) method involved attending a series of seminars and writing 3,000 word essays at the end of each seminar, and writing a short (18,000 word max) thesis.

The less common way of earning the MPhil (and the way I did it) is to take the MPhil entirely by thesis - no coursework required. You need special permission for this - I got it because I already had a Master's degree from an American university. For this, you have to write a 35K word thesis on a topic that the department approves. And you go through an oral exam (viva) at the end of the year - you are examined by one member of the faculty of the dept of criminology and one criminology prof who is a faculty member at a different university (someone came down from Manchester I think to do my viva). Now you also have to do a couple of other essays as well, but that wasn't required when I did the degree.

And then the doctoral degree is the Ph.D At Oxford, I believe they call it a D.Phil. instead. That is basically a research degree. Some departments require PhD student to attend a series of seminars, others do not. In criminology, the Cambridge PhD involves three consecutive years supervised research in residence, writing a dissertation of up to 80K words, and passing a viva. As with the MPhil one of the examiners is from your department, the other comes from another university.

One big difference between American and English graduate work is the oral exam. In the US, you do have to go through an oral, but your examiners are your dissertation committee. So basically the professors who have been working with you on your dissertation are the ones examining you. This has never made sense to me. At my oral for my US MA degree, one of the examiners asked me why I hadn't done something or other - I remember thinking to myself, "Why didn't you suggest six months ago that I do this?" And of course, your committee is a bit biased - they've been working with you for a couple of years so they've got a vested interest in you passing. Also, in the US, the orals are open, so anyone can attend and can ask questions! Frequently, PhD students will attend the oral of another candidate, to get an idea of what to expect. I recall telling all of my friends NOT to show up - I was nervous enough without a lot of extra spectators around!

In England, the examiners are NOT the profs who have been working with you. My supervisor was not allowed to be my examiner because presumably he was biased - he wanted me to earn my degree since he'd been supervising me for the pas three years. The internal examiner is a faculty member you have not worked with (in my case it was the chair of the dept) and the external examiner comes from a totally different university (Univ of Manchester in my case). The idea here is that they are unbiased and can evaluate your work objectively.

Sorry this got so long!

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Wow, that was a lot of information. I mostly just needed to know if Tosh said she had a Masters from Oxford it would make sense, but I'll keep the rest of it in mind for future reference.

[crimedoc1.livejournal.com]

LOL. Sorry - info overload I suppose. :-)

I find the whole MA thing at Cambridge weird. Basically they are saying that a first degree from there is so much better than anywhere else, that we'll give you a masters degree as well! It can lead to some underhandedness if a Cambridge grad applies for a job outside England - they can say they have an MA, put it on their resume or vita, and most people won't know that they didn't actually DO a master's degree.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

No worries. I am sure at some point I'll look back through all of it and need it for something. I often do with the answers to my britpicks.