Take this with an enormous grain of salt, but some vague memories from conversations with UK grad students (I worked in a UK university for a few years a while back):
(1) UK undergrad programs are a lot more focused, so students tend to be a lot further along before they start a PhD program.
(2) UK PhD students are funded for a fixed time 3(?) years, and then you're supposed to be done. That doesn't always happen, of course—I knew students who went on the dole to continue once their funding ended—but the system is focused on getting them out in that period. In the U.S., on the other hand, there seems to be a lot more variability; we've all heard the stories about CS grad students that take 10 years to get their degree...
> UK undergrad programs are a lot more focused, so students tend to be a lot further along before they start a PhD program.
It depends. Definitely doing a theory-based PhD can benefit from a European (not just UK) undergrad education, but in systems or implementation, American undergrads actually have an edge (everything else being equal, which is never true).
> PhD students are funded for a fixed time 3(?) years, and then you're supposed to be done.
Truth. I didn't know anyone to get out in 5 or 6 years, let alone three (in the American system).
That is because American PhD and English PhD are fundamentally different. English PhD programmes usually have no curriculum (or only coursed to bring everyone up to the same level coming from their previous degrees during 4-year courses that are highly interdisciplinary).
In the sciences, people either do 4 year undergrad degrees followed by 4 year (usually funded) PhDs, or they do 3/2/3 years (undergrad/Masters/PhD). In the social sciences and humanities, 3/2/3 or 3/1/3 or 4/1/3 are normal, going from undergrad directly into PhD is higly unusual in these.
The US 5/6 years usually include a Masters degree, as far as I know, which is usually not the case in the UK.
We had a couple of years of light course work in my phd school, followed by research. We didn't have a masters in our path either (I don't have one). But a master degree is not very relevant to a CS phd.
We (US vs. UK PhDs) aren't that different, we compete at about the same level on completion (with typical personal variations, of course). Even the length of the PhD program doesn't seem to be as important as total length in field.
> Even the length of the PhD program doesn't seem to be as important as total length in field.
Oh, I by no means meant to disagree with this!
My point was that the programs themselves are differently structured, so comparing the actual time a PhD takes does not really work, since there are a number of possible combinations of undergrad/grad(/grad)-degrees that make up the length of an individual project. In the end, people will probably be at about the same stage, but that does not mean that going from undergrad straight into a PhD in the US and the UK work he same way. As a further example, in Germany, you were able to do just a PhD, as your only degree ever, until relatively recently. In the end, it probably wouldn't matter, since PhD is PhD (in a way), but your way there is hardly comparable!
My other observation with the same corollaries is that UK students tend to be better at getting on with things as GENERALLY they have been given more independence and have been treated more as adults during their undergrads. US university can feel a bit like high school++ at times (e.g. compulsory gen ed, I've even seen classes take attendance, constant exams with an average grade instead of a few big end of degree exams, homework, etc.).
I went to UW, one of the toughest public universities in the states. Depending on the class, our grades were almost exclusively determined by finals, but some classes (like physics) had mandatory labs and homework, which you did but they didn't help you very much (they could definitely hurt you) since the classes were heavily curved anyways (i.e. dog eat dog). Physics was also a big weed out class for engineering like Chemistry was for pre-med; 30+% of the class was expected to fail, and many more probably actually failed!
I actually found in-major comp sci courses to be EASIER than the pelim courses I took before I got into the department.
To be honest, I've heard that UK universities were easy, even Cambridge/Oxford, compared to some of the tougher US universities. But I really have no clue!
I don't have any experience with the US system, but I've heard similar things. In fact, when I started reading this article I assume the author was talking about the US system, so I was quite surprised to see it was in the UK system that she was referring too!
