What a PhD Really Means in the US National Security Community

Re:What a PhD Really Means in the US National Security Commu... by pc86 on Thursday January 28, 2016 @01:45PM (#10990223)

I think the implication that you can get an online Master's from a reputable school (Johns Hopkins, Georgia Tech, MIT, etc) by "copy paste answers off the Internet" is pretty baseless. The posts on /r/OMSCS seem to point directly to the contrary at least.

The idea that being in a physical room and speaking to a professor in person makes you more worthy of a degree is simply not accurate. A degree should be a measure of academic ability, not a measure of physical proximity and willingness to put ones life on hold for a predetermined amount of time.

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Re:What a PhD Really Means in the US National Security Commu... by noamyoungerm on Thursday January 28, 2016 @04:27PM (#10991499)

> willingness to put ones life on hold for a predetermined amount of time.

That is almost the definition of a degree. During a degree, every class expects you to devote time and resources to learning. The degree programs we see today are structured in such a way that they expect you to drop everything else and learn (or research, in graduate studies).

If you can't 'put your life on hold' in order to study you won't be able to do it quickly or coherently enough to generate the large body of knowledge that a degree represents.

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