Case of non-research Master not accepted for Phd study at OZ Universities

[durain]

Noted this reddit post.
Someone with a MSc in Business Analytics from Guglielmo Marconi University, and a MBA with distinction from a UK university facing problem getting into a Phd program with Universities from Australia.

Quote : "Guess what! Now that I have two Masters degrees, I was confident of getting admission into the PhD program, however, now the universities are claiming that I need "Masters by Research" as a pre-requisite to get enrolment into a PhD program."

Is it really true that  a Master by Research is a pre-requisite for Australia Phd program?

link here : https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comme..._do_a_phd/

[Alpha]

Writing a dissertation is very unlike taking courses.  Someone who can read a book, analyze the contents in some way and then answer questions about the material is not necessarily able to conduct original research.  Most Australian universities offer dissertation-only PhD programs.  The entire program consists of your dissertation.  If you've never done original research (such as a Masters thesis) then simple coursework is not seen as adequate preparation for a doctoral program, at least in some places.  I'd guess that there's a program somewhere in Australia that doesn't require a Masters thesis.  That person is advised to keep looking.

[bjcheung77]

Hmm, interesting indeed.. the poster got a tough crowd of answers below to the year old posting... I agree with them though!

1) tl;dr Your title sums up your problem. It's your preparation, not Australia, that appears to be deficient.

TBH, as a collective we could not care less about your PhD candidature. It's not a popular vote. Individual institutions are responsible for making the rules and for selecting their own students, not the citizens or the Government.

Perhaps you might have done a better job of researching the rules for each institution of interest to ensure that your skills and attainments were a good match. When you have failed to satisfy them, you blame the entire country rather than accepting your own failings and lack of preparation as the problem.

That seems an odd response for a good researcher and as a retired academic, I would hope accepted PhD candidates display better research skills and better understanding of their own responsibilities."

2) I keep seeing you saying "I checked the website..."

Not once have I seen you say "I contacted the PhD department and asked for suggestions on Masters courses" or "I contacted a university to check if this course would lead to acceptance into a PhD program".

This is not a case that you "might" be the one to blame, you are the one to blame. At every step and turn you have made assumptions and been passive in your actions, intead of putting yourself forward and making extra certain that the steps you were taking the ones you needed to take. There is absolutley no-one to blame here but yourself.

If I was looking to accept a PhD student and heard this tale, I would reject you, because you have proven you are not prepared to do thorough, careful research before committing to a course of action, and you will blame everybody other than yourself when it inevitably fails.

3) Added to this, despite what you may assume, it’s not easy to be accepted as a part time PhD student: some universities and faculties flat out won’t consider it, others only if the student presents an exceptional case.

Other than it being more inconvenient for them as far as scheduling goes, particularly if you’re working with others, part timers are less likely to get the PhD done in the requisite time compared to those doing it full time (because obviously life and other commitments) and there isn’t funding from the Commonwealth if you go over time

That’s why if you notice, the vast majority of part-time PhD students either started as full timers and then changed (usually because they’ve had kids or health issues), they work at the University itself in some capacity or they’ve actually made some agreement for alternative funding whether by another grant or scholarship or self funding it.

[ss20ts]

Every school has its own policies on what is acceptable when applying to doctorate programs. Both of the degrees mentioned are often times considered to be business degrees which don't usually have the same amount or type of research as the humanities and social sciences have. PhD programs aren't designed to be easy to get into. They don't accept everyone who applies. I'm already researching doctorate programs and even those that aren't PhD programs are selective at most schools. There are programs with openings for 5 new students. 5! If less than 5 apply that doesn't mean that you're automatically accepted. It's not easy to get into most of these programs. They want the best and brightest....those who can provide the best research. Research is what a Phd is all about.

We see tons of people on here say they don't to write any papers for their bachelor's degree. There are people who do not want to write papers in master's programs. It's pretty much a guarantee that you'll be writing a lot of papers in grad school. Grad school is about applying the theories you learned as an undergrad. Doctorate programs are all writing. The dissertation is no joke. It's like writing a research book. Think of how many people on here don't want to write papers. I've seen a few posts on social media of people wanting a doctorate but don't want to write papers. I'm not even sure how you'd complete a doctorate without writing any papers. Schools weed those people out as they are looking for researchers not test takers.

[sarahmac]

Noted this reddit post.
Someone with a MSc in Business Analytics from Guglielmo Marconi University, and a MBA with distinction from a UK university facing problem getting into a Phd program with Universities from Australia.

Quote : "Guess what! Now that I have two Masters degrees, I was confident of getting admission into the PhD program, however, now the universities are claiming that I need "Masters by Research" as a pre-requisite to get enrolment into a PhD program."

Is it really true that  a Master by Research is a pre-requisite for Australia Phd program?

link here : https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comme..._do_a_phd/

Since this forum is mostly Americans it is also important to note that a PhD in most other countries is very different from the US set-up. PhD's tend to be much shorter because you're expected to have completed the master's stage before applying. The PhD is then just a research dissertation. No classes other than perhaps some skills seminars. It is a job.

I know people here have seen European masters online now and so are more vaguely familiar with the fact in European countries (standardised EU wide due to the Bologna process) a full first and second level master's tends to be a 2-year program with >60 US credits/120 ECTS. This matters because his first master's is Italian.

You can also do a first cycle and second cycle master's qualification separately in some places (i.e. Italy). There are thus a number of first-cycle-only masters that do not lead to admittance to a PhD (these are structured more like US master's degrees, and are only 60 ECTS/30 US credits). That is where this guy's MSc in Business Analytics from Guglielmo Marconi University sits.

He couldn't do a PhD in Europe with it either. 

Australia follows a very similar model to the European one, with a 2-year MRes post-bachelors. The name of the qualification (MSc vs MRes) isn't honestly that important. It is the fact they are two years long, full-time, and research-intensive.

Here is the guy's problem: an MBA is also a first-level qualification.

In the UK, master's degrees like MBA, MSc or MA are only one year full-time. MRes is a second, separate qualification. It is split like this precisely because people not going into research may not need that second level/year. You can go from an MSc to an MRes, do an integrated program at a doctoral training center, or, go into industry after your first level. Some make it into PhD programs with only the first level if they have research experience obtained separately.

So what he has, from both the European/Australian perspective, is the first year of a full course of master's study, but in two different fields (business administration, analytics). You can't add two first levels together to make a second level. All they've asked him is to go do that second year.

I work in academia. Frankly, if a student couldn't figure that out via the most basic of research and checking international qualification equivalencies... they probably aren't the best of applicants for a research degree anyway.

---

Hmm, interesting indeed.. the poster got a tough crowd of answers below to the year old posting... I agree with them though!

1) tl;dr Your title sums up your problem. It's your preparation, not Australia, that appears to be deficient.

TBH, as a collective we could not care less about your PhD candidature. It's not a popular vote. Individual institutions are responsible for making the rules and for selecting their own students, not the citizens or the Government.

Perhaps you might have done a better job of researching the rules for each institution of interest to ensure that your skills and attainments were a good match. When you have failed to satisfy them, you blame the entire country rather than accepting your own failings and lack of preparation as the problem.

That seems an odd response for a good researcher and as a retired academic, I would hope accepted PhD candidates display better research skills and better understanding of their own responsibilities."

2) I keep seeing you saying "I checked the website..."

Not once have I seen you say "I contacted the PhD department and asked for suggestions on Masters courses" or "I contacted a university to check if this course would lead to acceptance into a PhD program".

This is not a case that you "might" be the one to blame, you are the one to blame. At every step and turn you have made assumptions and been passive in your actions, intead of putting yourself forward and making extra certain that the steps you were taking the ones you needed to take. There is absolutley no-one to blame here but yourself.

If I was looking to accept a PhD student and heard this tale, I would reject you, because you have proven you are not prepared to do thorough, careful research before committing to a course of action, and you will blame everybody other than yourself when it inevitably fails.

3) Added to this, despite what you may assume, it’s not easy to be accepted as a part time PhD student: some universities and faculties flat out won’t consider it, others only if the student presents an exceptional case.

Other than it being more inconvenient for them as far as scheduling goes, particularly if you’re working with others, part timers are less likely to get the PhD done in the requisite time compared to those doing it full time (because obviously life and other commitments) and there isn’t funding from the Commonwealth if you go over time

That’s why if you notice, the vast majority of part-time PhD students either started as full timers and then changed (usually because they’ve had kids or health issues), they work at the University itself in some capacity or they’ve actually made some agreement for alternative funding whether by another grant or scholarship or self funding it.

I agree with all of this. Although I wrote a more detailed response above, the tl;dr of it is that the guy just is not qualified from the European or Australian perspective.

He needed either a two-year full-time MRes, a two-year full-time European MSc (his is a one-year, first level only, and cannot be used for PhD in Italy or elsewhere in Europe either), or a 1 year MSc and 1 year MRes.

What he instead has are two first-level qualifications.

[Sagan]

It is not uncommon for "British-style" universities to require research-based master's degrees for admission to their (also research-based) doctoral programs. A master's degree made up of a bunch of courses just doesn't cut it for prepping for academic research. (This is one reason why so many people stop at "ABD"; they hit a new experience--the dissertation--they're utterly unprepared for.) These schools see degrees like the MBA as non-scholarly, practitioner degrees, so why would a graduate be prepared for scholarly study? UNISA was famous for this, willing to accept an MA or MSc for admission into their doctoral programs, but not an MBA. However....

It's worth checking to see if the school will admit people based on their bachelor's degree (assuming it's a relevant degree). This is common at British-style universities. The student is first admitted to the MPhil and, if things go well, their admission is "upgraded" to the DPhil or PhD.