This thread and the “Dr.” thread seems to think that a Masters is a 2-3 year effort.
Not in my experience in CS. Got mine in 1. Typically 1-2 years. Even if you get a consolation Masters for not quite making it in the PhD program, that’s usually 2 years.
I agree that most Masters Theses are not worth much, research-wise. Just a review of relevant literature with some comparisons, etc.
I have seen a few that do have some nice original research, not common.
Rarely would a thesis (of any type) be rejected completely at the defense stage. It takes a fairly incompetent advisor to let a student defend a bad thesis. And since the bar is so low of Masters theses, it would have to be a big error that causes rejection. E.g., someone found out there was plagiarism going on or some such.
The big issues are the student flaking out (not be able to do the work required, deciding to do something else, etc.) or the advisor flaking out (deciding the student or topic was no longer worth their time, leaving the school, etc.).
By far the most common problem is that the student just can’t write a good size document.
Or a good document, period. I saw the output of one doctoral student who dropped out halfway through writing their dissertation; apart from being poorly organized, they wrote like they talked (“…and so then we went to the field and set up the equipment, but the clamp didn’t fit very good…”), which is generally frowned upon at this level. I’ve seen the output of another whom I suspected of being dyslexic; they just couldn’t seem to put out a “final” draft that wasn’t rife with spelling and grammar errors.
Presumably if the story in the OP is true, the excuse-giver would have been enrolled in a masters program at the university and I believe the school will tell you whether a given person was enrolled and when. I don’t think you need permission of the person to find out whether they were enrolled.
Both for my Spanish university (ChemE) and the American one (Chem), the process of writing your thesis included reviews by your advisor, who wouldn’t let you defend/present it until he considered it was ready. You could still fail the defense if one was required but doing so would have been considered an enormous black mark for your advisor. The advisors made sure things were in the right format, tables properly tabled, and any reference needed actually present.
The Scottish program (Computer-Aided Translation), epic fail. All the advisors went on vacation for the whole time we had to write the thesis, so there was nobody around to actually advise any of us. There was no review by the advisor and no defense. My thesis was flunked for not explaining what Translation is. I wrote a thesis comparing multiple computer-aided-translation programs, explained what a CAT program is, what a market study is, the ISO standard I’d used to compare the technical aspects… but alas, I had not spent two pages explaining what Translation itself is. To me that would have been as absurd as spending two pages explaining what Chemistry is in a paper about the relationship between solvent polarity and sugar/transition metal complexation constants (and now I’m wondering if there is such a relationship and if anybody has written an article about it ;)).
Since I’d taken that course as a sabbatical and needed the degree about as much as a bull needs a pink bra, I was happy to get a “graduate diploma” and give that university a virtual middle finger.
Not all master’s degrees are created equal, though. For example, the traditional research-based M.S. (Master of Science) is generally more highly regarded than a non-research based M.E. (Master of Engineering), which is a professional degree.
In my experience in engineering, you can get an M.E. in one year (full time), which usually consists solely of an extra year of coursework after the B.S., with no research required. The traditional, research-based M.S. in engineering usually takes 2 years (full time) for an organized, disciplined student who lines up an advisor and a thesis topic right away, and who is not distracted with a lot of ancillary duties like working as a TA. Otherwise, it can easily take 2-1/2 or 3 years.
In my case, I completed my M.S. on a part-time basis while I was a Naval officer working a full time job. It took me 6 years. The coursework alone took 4 years, taking one class per semester. (I had planned to take more classes than that per semester, but life got in the way, as I also got married and we had a child.) The remaining time was spent on my thesis.
The first issue I ran into is that graduate students are beholden to their advisor, and most advisors will try to get as much work as possible out of them. My advisor actually wanted a lot more work completed than was reasonable for a master’s degree, but after going back and forth with him for over a year, I finally put my foot down and said, “I have less than a year before I get out of the Navy. I have to complete this degree by then. The next step in your research is . I’m going to complete that work this summer, write it up, and you’re going to be happy. OK?” He replied, “OK.”
The next issue I had was that I needed a long, uninterrupted stretch of time to conduct my experimental work, so this took some planning. Once I had everything set up and ready to go, I took 2 months of leave (i.e. vacation) from the Navy and worked around the clock at my lab at the university.
My thesis did consist of some original research, and while it was a lot of work, it was absolutely nothing in comparison to what Ph.D. candidates go through. I’ve known Ph.D. students who worked on their dissertation for years. In some cases, they had to start over from scratch due to false starts.
At the other extreme, I knew one grad student in my department whose master’s thesis did basically consist of a review of existing literature and data collected by others, and whose thesis read like a glorified book report. I thought that was pretty lame.
“…Schematics were finalized and equipment was obtained, but unforeseen problems were encountered in the field when the clamp structure was found to have fitting difficulties with the other equipment…”
To what extent can you get another chance to revise and resubmit your thesis? E.g. is it mostly a matter of requesting permission, waiting a semester (or two), filling out some forms, and then going for it again, or do they actually kick you out of the program and make you reapply for admission to graduate school as if you were never there? Do you have to retake all the preliminary coursework again (e.g. “Hard Stuff 650”, etc.), or can you be readmitted straight into your thesis? This question especially concerns minor problems in the thesis like forgetting to include a minor section or making a math error. It doesn’t include situations where the thesis produced is an incoherent monument to incompetency.
Not sure about Nava’s Scottish program, but in my experience in the U.S., if the research and thesis are basically sound, your committee would pass you with revisions required (either major or minor). For minor revisions, you likely wouldn’t even have to defend again.
I’m not sure what happens in the case of a thesis committee actually failing a candidate. In such a case, you probably would have to start over, though any courses you had passed would still be valid.
I would think it would be rare for things to get that point. I assume that it would likely only happen in a case where “the thesis produced is an incoherent monument to incompetency.” Alternatively, I guess it might happen if a candidate ignored everything they were told by their advisor and insisted on defending anyway. Other possibilities are if the candidate was unable to demonstrate (in their public defense) that they had a firm understanding of their research and/or the field in which they were studying, or evidence of plagiarism.
ETA: All of my comments here only apply to U.S. graduate programs. I hasten to add that I’m not saying that any of this was remotely the case with Nava’s Scottish program. That sounds like a rather different situation.
I think “differently regarded” is a better description than “more highly regarded.” If you want somebody to work on novel solutions to new or emerging problems, then an MS (or likely a PhD) is your target. On the other hand, if you want somebody to fill a traditional engineering role in an existing business structure then the additional coursework an ME takes is going to be much more valuable than the original research an MS degree would bring. The ME coursework is typically focused as much on the management, economics, and legal environmental of engineering practice as it is on more traditional engineering classes, and that background can accelerate an engineer along a traditional career path.
Full disclosure: I have an MS and PhD, in no small part because I hated the conventional engineering career path. Still, an ME is great preparation if that’s what you want to do.
Fair enough. If I wasn’t clear, though, I meant “more highly regarded” primarily in the sense that an M.S. in engineering usually requires more work and takes longer than an M.E.
In practice, though, from what I’ve seen, most non-academics in industry don’t care about the difference between the two degrees, and generally treat them as equivalent (though the M.S. abbreviation has more name recognition than an M.E., a difficulty which is largely alleviated by simply spelling out the degree on one’s resume).
In any event, my master’s coursework was identical to what an M.E. would take, with the added work of a thesis. Regardless, because I was planning to go into industry (as opposed to academia or research), an M.E. would have likely done just as much for my career as an M.S. However, my grad school department didn’t offer an M.E. as an option. They only offered an M.S. (thesis option) or an M.S. (non-thesis option with a “special project” and an examination). As I mentioned previously, I was planning to do the latter, but got talked into the former mid-stream by my advisor. (At the time, he actually told me that a thesis master’s was “more highly regarded” than the non-thesis degree, but in retrospect, he was likely biased and any truth to that likely only exists in academia or in a research field.)
You are missing what it the most likely reason, which is feuds and politics between the advisor and another faculty member, which the student gets caught in. That’s why smart grad students make sure the lion is their advisor.
I doubt an incompetent thesis or one where the advisor’s guidelines were not followed would make it to the defense level.
BTW, not all MS degrees are research. I know of a well respected university which churns out tons of MS graduates each term, doing pure coursework and minor projects, and paying. I get a flood of their nearly identical resumes in my inbox every day during resume season.
Feuds and politics can definitely cause problems for grad students caught in the middle, but in my experience, would rarely cause a candidate to be failed following their thesis defense. About the worst that would typically happen at that point is a bunch of “just asking questions” during the defense that might result in more work and revisions required of the candidate.
Where feuds and politics do often cause problems for grad students is more typically when students are trying to get their research done, and feuding faculty members are hoarding lab space and/or other resources (funds, lab equipment, etc.).
For example, for my research, I needed several hundred gallons of deionized (DI) water. The faculty member who controlled the DI water unit in my building refused to allow me to use any of the water, because I supposedly needed far more than the capacity of the unit. Never mind that this was B.S., and that the unit was hardly being used at the time. The faculty member in question also refused the offer of my advisor to replace any filters/membranes, etc. that might be used up. The answer was no, and I wasn’t about to create problems for myself by going to the department head. (And my advisor was definitely not the “lion” in the department, so he was no help.)
So I ultimately got my DI water from the chemistry department, which had a tech who was happy to provide me with much DI water as I needed. (It only cost me a six-pack of beer.) The only problem was hauling it across campus. I used 20-gallon containers (as they were the largest I could lift), wheeled carts, and a pickup truck. It still took forever.
Later on, I serendipitously discovered that one of my many building keys provided a back access to the first faculty member’s lab, with its water deionization unit. This time I didn’t bother asking, and besides, my DI water needs at that point were small (just rinsing equipment, etc.). I just made sure I only got water from the unit after normal working hours or on weekends. By that point, after working around the clock for months, I was ready to beg, borrow, or steal whatever I needed to complete my research. :o
I think that at some point, many (most?) graduate students get that way. If you don’t persevere when presented with obstacles, you never get your degree.
My experience is your committee is almost always not going to let you defend your thesis if they think you’re not ready to do it. I say “almost always” because I have heard of it happening though.
True story. My wife recently retired after 30 years as an assistant professor at Chulalongkorn University. She told me of one case where this lady entered the graduate program. This lady had obtained a job that required her to obtain this master’s degree. If she failed to get the degree, she would lose the job. It was a research track, I’m not sure if there were even any classes to take. But whether there were or weren’t, shortly after she started the program, she up and disappeared. They never heard a word from her again … until two years later, when she showed back up and said: “Well, here’s my master’s thesis, it’s all finished.” This was extreme even for Thailand. They told her that’s not how it worked, and there was no way she was going to be awarded a master’s degree. They’d even thought she had dropped out of the program. So then her employer started calling up and bugging them to accept the degree, because they couldn’t lose her. In the end, she was finally rejected of course.