Hi all

Can you tell me if a PhD at a particular University is better than another. eg is a PhD at Manchester better than Salford etc?

thanks!

That's actually quite a complex question as it really depends how you are qualifying "better" and I'm assuming you're talking about reputation.

A PhD viewed from within the academic world will be a mixture of how well the supervisor is viewed, how well the department as a whole is viewed, usually fairly independent of the University itself although not completely. But it's less about specific university.

A PhD viewed from outside, sadly to say, is often viewed by name alone - people will recognise the name of the university, and probably little more (unless they're clued up, which they mostly aren't).

So that's a general answer.

hi all - any other comments?

thanks all

your PhD does not matter no one is going to read it apart from maybe 4 people at most ever. What you should be more concerned about is your publications especially if you are in the life sciences. from reading through various phd thesis it does appear to be very dependent on who your examiners are. In all i think the whole PhD process is a farce as its so dependent on who your examiners are a realtively average phd can pass with no corrections while a relatively good phd can be made to undergo many corrections depending on who the external is. So trying to jugde the quality of a PhD by anything other than publications is in my opinon a waste of time as to use an analysis from experimental science you are not comparing like with like and hence no comparison can be made its a futile exercise.