# Working on a PHD? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 7, 2022, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-on-a-phd/965814 "2022-06-07T17:42:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2022, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-on-a-phd/965814/61 "2022-06-30T22:43:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > At my grad school, it was normal for PhD students to get a “Masters en route”. Which I did indeed end up falling back on. > > It’s possible in principle to fail a defense, but if that happens, it’s because something has gone very, very wrong: If a student is going to fail their defense, the advisor and committee should know that well in advance, and delay the defense until the student is actually ready. While getting my PhD, I qualified for an MS after passing the quals. I already had a (useless) MS and it cost $50 back then to apply for it. I kept the $50. I watched an almost failed defense once. The prof was an ex-industry person brought in as chair late in career. Was about to retire and hadn’t had a PhD student yet so this was their last gasp at that. The topic involved a ton of simulations with quite predictable results. Very, very meh. But there was one slide … The graph was completely different from the rest. The question was quickly asked what happened there? The student had no answer but guesses. Wait a second. You do all these runs. One goes differently. You don’t notice it and you don’t try to find out what happened? Time to put things on hold. No “fail” was issued. Just a halt to things. Once it was sorted out it was turned into a pass. (Something just went wrong during the run.) But it was all a gimme. There was nothing there worth a PhD. Just a sop to the outgoing chair. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-on-a-phd/965814.md?page=3)