Why do US/Canadian universities make you do master even if you have a first class honours from Australia?

Question

In Australia, when you want to do a PhD, you only would need first class honours (some universities even accept second class honours upper division). For instance, please see the self assessment for the Australian National University:

I guess that most of the UK universities have the same requirements (at least Cambridge and Oxford).

Why do almost all US/Canadian universities make you do a Master's (before doing PhD) even if you have a first class honours from Australia?

I think the time that is spent for studying masters, can be saved for postdoc; on the other hand, UK/Australian PhD programs takes 3-4 years but US/Canadian PhD programs are much longer.

Answer 1

The principal difference between degrees in the US and Canada and those obtained in other countries is that the bachelor's degree in the US typically contains fewer "technical" courses than a comparable bachelor's degree from other countries. For instance, a student in economics may only have twelve courses total across four years that are economics courses; the typical international student may have twice as many. This is because most US and Canadian schools incorporate a "general studies" requirement into their degrees, which reduces the amount of credits available for the major.

Consequently, the coursework phase of the PhD program is to bring everybody up to the same level—also a necessity, given the diversity of undergraduate curricula—before moving on to the research phase.

Also note that this is not a universal requirement. Some programs will admit directly to the PhD with only a four-year undergraduate degree, with no expectations or requirements of acquiring a master's degree. (This is my case—I have no master's.)

Answer 2

My experience suggests that the premise of this question is not correct. In general, US universities do not require that Australians with an honours degree to do a Masters before entering the PhD program. I did an honours degree (in pure Math) in Australia less than a decade ago, and about half of my class went on directly into a PhD program in the US or UK. I have classmates or friends who did PhDs at University of Chicago, Stanford, Northeastern, University of Oregon etc, all with nothing but an Honours Degree. In general, the same is true for the most schools in the UK. For instance, one of my classmates went on to do a PhD degree in Warwick immediately after finishing Honours.

Cambridge is an exception, as all students usually take the Part III first, which is a one year long Master degree. In other places in Europe, such as Germany, you definitely need to do a Master first. The reason for the difference between the US and European systems is that more coursework is typically required in a PhD system in the US. Whilst an American PhD involves several years of coursework, a European PhD often involves no coursework at all (rather, one is expected to do research immediately upon starting the PhD). The coursework is instead done in the required Master program. As a result, a PhD in Europe takes just 3 years in total, whereas one in the US takes around 5 years. Once you add in the required Master program, the time required to get a PhD is roughly the same in either system.

Let me also add that the top schools in the US and UK are very competitive. A first class honours in Australia is by no means enough to guarantee one entry. In some cases a good Master degree may improve one's chances. But it is certainly not a requirement and most top US schools will and do accept exceptional Australian students with only an Honours degree (which is only logical, since domestic US students are only required to have a Bachelor degree).

Answer 3

This answer is not based on data but rather on my experience of both systems. I've recently spent 3 months in an Australian university as an internship in my Canadian PhD so I was able to compare.

Master degree in my field (Ecology/Biology) in North America are big research projects. They do not equal coursework even with first class honors. And honors projects I've seen would not be enough for a master degree either.

Also, in French-Canadian universities, we do not have the honor system, so I'm not surprised that first class honors are not recognized.

Edit: The previous answer also points to important difference in coursework that can explain the difference.

Answer 4

(expanded and edited from an earlier comment)

This pertains to mathematics programs. I've been in several Ph.D. programs (long story) and none of them required a Masters for entry or a Masters to be completed at some later time, whether the student was domestic or foreign. What you did have to do was pass the Ph.D. qualifying exams within a certain time constraint and/or within a certain number of attempts. There were course requirements as well, but these were generally not much of a concern (unless you thought you wouldn't pass the Ph.D. exams and needed a Masters to fall back on), and the course requirements would probably be waved or altered (e.g. by allowing advanced graduate level courses to substitute) if a student passed the exams upon entry to the program.

For the vast majority who were not so fortunate to pass the exams upon entry, the courses mostly acted as vehicles for you to study for the qualifying exams. In math at least (and in the U.S.), the exams are pretty much your primary concern until they are passed. When I passed the qualifying exams, there were 15 people taking the exams and only 5 passed, and this does not include several other people who decided to bail and not take the exams after some experience in graduate level courses (and the realization they would likely not pass the exams).

Incidentally, my experience is that as a general rule (in math), the more prestigious a department is, the more relaxed they are about course requirements and the less meaningful course grades are.

Leaving math, I suspect much of what I said varies quite a bit with the field of study.