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

[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.