Re: How to make money fast (in science fiction)

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:14:05 GMT, Rich Weyand
<weyand@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
<news:hbKdnaz49PRkfWzanZ2dnUVZ_r6rnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> in
rec.arts.sf.composition,rec.arts.sf.science:

> In article <1mm40ir0naj91.1cpdus4zwien4.dlg@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> b.scott@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:

>>On Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:04:05 GMT, Rich Weyand
>><weyand@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
>><news:PKOdnVANqeP-wmzanZ2dnUVZ_v6rnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> in
>>rec.arts.sf.composition,rec.arts.sf.science:

>>[...]

>>> Oh, and have him go to college in Europe.  University here
>>> is more formalism  -- you gotta do the 4 years/120 hours,
>>> etc., and the PhD can take 5 to 8 years  more -- whereas
>>> in Europe he could test through a bunch of stuff and
>>> probably be out start-to-finish with the PhD in four
>>> years.

>>He can test out of a bunch of stuff here, and a PhD in
>>mathematics needn't take anything like five to eight years:
>>what takes the time for a well-prepared candidate is finding
>>a topic and producing a dissertation, and he wouldn't have
>>that problem.

> Perhaps, but I still think Europe would be a faster track.
>  My father-in-law  got his PhD in Leipzig at age 22, and
> there were a lot of others like him.   Granted, he was
> somewhat exceptional and he cut in a fast crowd (Werner 
> Heisenberg was his thesis adviser IIRC), even so I think
> it would be a faster  route for our hypothetical
> antagonist, and the OP's interest was in speed.

> My father-in-law's PhD was in physics, in one of Europe's
> best universities.   When I was in Urbana, one of the
> US's best in physics, most of the PhD  candidates were on
> waivers when they got their doctorates -- required when
> you  did not complete the PhD within seven years of
> admission to graduate school. They were typically 30-31
> years old by the time they got the doctorate.

Different generation, but I can't resist mentioning that my
father took a total of six years and four months to complete
an undergraduate degree at Reed College and a PhD at Urbana
in chemistry.  (Mind you, he was still something like 29
when he finished: he benefited from the original GI Bill.)

> My wife says the PhD in mathematics is faster, about five
> years when she was in Berkeley's graduate program, but
> still a lot slower than an exceptional student could do
> in Europe.

At Madison I was done with all requirements, including the
dissertation, in three and a half years, though I stuck
around for another semester.  (I was having fun, and the job
market had just turned really bad.)  A friend of mine who
was there at the same time did his in either three or three
and a half years.  If I hadn't been drafted and had to take
a two-year break between my first and second years of grad
school, I'd have turned 25 just as I finished.

If I'd known it all going in and known what I was going to
do for my dissertation, I could easily have done it in two
years; in that case I'd have been just 23, and that with a
full four years as an undergraduate, which wouldn't have
been necessary.  (Had I been in a hurry, *I* could have
knocked at least a semester off that without any trouble,
and quite possibly a year; the alien should should certainly
be able to do so.)

[...]

Brian