If I may offer the perspective of a U.S. citizen studying for the Ph.D. in
Scotland. . .
I would reiterate Julian Martin's comment that a British Ph.D. is certainly
a real option, but it is an option that should be considered very carefully
and individually. In my case, I had little choice, as there are only a
handful of Universities worldwide that offer satisfactory instruction in all
the languages I require for my thesis. (Old English, Old Irish, Middle
Welsh) Another factor for me was that as a student who switched to History
from Chemistry half way through my undergraduate career, my undergraduate
marks were not high enough to attract scholarships from any U.S.
Universities which I might apply to. If you are self-funding, the British
Isles are by far the cheaper option. This left me with only three serious
options, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Dublin.
I would say that the main advantages of a British Ph.D. are the easy access
to research materials and the monetary savings if one is self funding. The
main disadvantages would be that postgraduate study here is less broadly
based, (although this can be solved by individual effort) there is limited
opportunity to network with U.S. academics, and there is little or no
opportunity to gain teaching experience while studying for the Ph.D.
(Edinburgh, happily, does provide opportunities to teach.)
Cheers,
Mike Davidson
Dept. of History
University of Edinburgh
9407990@iona.sms.ed.ac.uk
P.S. As you know Paul, warm beer can be avoided by going north of the
border. . . 8-)
Sincerely,
Sharon D. Michalove
Assistant to the Chair for Undergraduate Studies, Dept. of History, UIUC
309 Gregory Hall, 810 South Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801
217-333-4145 mlove@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
http://www.spcomm.uiuc.edu/history/fac_dir/mlov_dir/michalov.html
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Observe a cat entering a room for the first time: it searches
and smells about . . . it trusts nothing until it has
examined and made acquaintance with everything.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
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