Speaking as someone who has graduated over a dozen PhD students in computer science...

Yes, it is possible to complete a PhD in 3-4 years, but it's not really good for your career. The bar our department sets for a PhD is that at the end of it, you should be a world expert in your specific topic.

A PhD is more like an apprenticeship, where you develop and refine your skills, your background knowledge in your area of specialization, your ability to write and do presentations, and your taste in research problems. These are all things take a lot of time to mature.

The problem with graduating fast is that (a) you wouldn't be able to do internships, (b) you would severely limit your ability to grow your social network (via workshops, conferences, internships, department service, etc), (c) you would limit your ability to deepen and broaden your portfolio of research, and (d) you limit the time your ideas have to percolate out into the rest of the research community and industry.

While I can't speak directly about your friend's experiences, learning how to do peer review and learning how to write first drafts are really important skills that can indirectly help with coming up and executing on a dissertation idea.

Taking a longer time to graduate to become the “world expert” in their field is fine if grad students weren’t paid next to nothing for the 60+ hours a week that they are expected to work. As it is now it’s better to finish as quickly as possible so they can have a real life.

I agree that completing a PhD under the time originally agreed may not be good, as you lose some of the learning opportunities that come with the apprenticeship (yes, it is) program.

However, taking more time than the standard length, whatever it is depending on the university or country where you are pursuing the title, is also something universities and specially PIs should be actively avoiding.

Maybe I have this view because I got mine in NL, where a PhD is a job with a defined length (4 years) and if you go over it, you don't get paid. So yes, it is an apprenticeship, but you should not be doing work for free in any case. Becoming an expert and the (relative) independence on how to do your research are of course selling points of the PhD, but a job is a job.

>but it's not really good for your career

Can you define that with more specificity? I find that academics have a major blind spot where good career means "the path I took" to the exclusion of all other paths.

>Speaking as someone who has graduated over a dozen PhD students in computer science

And your CV says another 6 dropped out. What was good for their careers?

In France STEM PhD are expected to last 3 year and the funding is sized like that. It is also considered as a job. It is only done if salary is funded in most cases.

Often it spill over a bit and I guess France travail (French job agency managing insurance for people losing their job) should often be cited /thanked in Phd student thesis for funding the final steps of their manuscript.

There are limited internship culture during the phd itself Afaik.

However phd is never started at Bachelor level, only after Msc that last two years and requires an internship or research projet.

I heard a person saying a bit like you that it is not enough to grow a Real expert though compared to US phd. But Oftentimes postdoc always follow for Longer and longer

Are those PhDs being paid with a decent salary? If not, I can’t agree with your statement. PS. I did my PhD in an EU country where it’s treated as another researcher job with salary and benefits

A very US-centric perspective. Whereas the folks in Europe do it in 3-4 years, come to the US and do a 2-3 year postdoc (with higher pay than a PhD student), and are ahead of their American peers.

Also, depending on where you do it in Europe, the pay as a PhD student is higher. At the extreme end, I knew students getting paid $60K/year in one country, while I was getting $24K/year in the US.

I agree with all those things, but we should be starting that training in middle school. Deconstructing arguments, making reports, giving presentations, solving open ended questions. Many of these things involve a modest amount of critical thinking, prediction and self-reflection.

It’s also a set of credentials, which might be immediately useful for one reason or other. All those other things you can do outside of a program, especially if you’ve already got the network or career trajectory to support it.