Yeah, that’s what I figured in the end. Don’t think I’ve heard the term pokey used that way in a long time.
On the other hand, it is a good safety net if something unexpected happens like your adviser dying. Writing a Masters is also good practice - much shorter and simpler than a dissertation, and usually on a simpler topic. Most of the CS / EE resumes I see for people with PhDs have masters also, but I agree it is not essential.
Like I said, you usually can get a Masters if you can’t make it all the way thru a PhD program. E.g., at most places I was at it was just credit hours + passing the qualifying exams (for PhD track folk). If I decided to quit during my thesis years, I would have paid the $50 and taken the degree. (And head to Silicon Valley and become rich and … Oh, right. Fantasies don’t count.)
BTW: Writing a Masters thesis isn’t all that common. I never supervised one. Most profs I knew didn’t have the time to deal with them. So the students just did courses and exams.
Well, like I said, I had to write a thesis for my honours, so I had that experience already without doing a Masters. But I can’t imagine going straight from an Bachelors to a PhD without real research experience.
Must be a local thing. My daughter is in a Psych/business PhD program, and her adviser bugged her to do one. Only took her a month or so, since she had lots of studies done already. And I can’t recall seeing a resume for someone with a PhD who didn’t have a Masters.
Anyhow, Masters can be significant - look at Claude Shannon - Wikipedia]Claude Shannon’s.
During my grad school days, we used to call this “being let off with a Master’s.”
Must be a local thing. My daughter is in a Psych/business PhD program, and her adviser bugged her to do one. Only took her a month or so, since she had lots of studies done already. And I can’t recall seeing a resume for someone with a PhD who didn’t have a Masters.
Anyhow, Masters can be significant - look at Claude Shannon’s
(repost to fix link)