Is a PhD degree from a European university considered equally valuable as one from the US?

Question

I earned my PhD in continental Europe. Except going to a few conferences outside Europe, my network, collaborations and events were all in Europe so I was pretty much living in a European bubble. I am still here, but now that I am in a faculty position I started collaborating with people from everywhere and travel quite a lot outside Europe. As much as I try to avoid generalizing and I am aware that much is field dependent, there are some things I noticed about the general perception of European PhD degrees (and this can probably be extended to universities in general) outside Europe:

• Students from Asia (especially from China and Korea) I met said that they prefer going to the US for a PhD, and Europe is only a second option because of less prestige.
• When I was considering applying to positions in the US, a few people told me informally that I don't have good chances as those who apply with PhD degrees from US universities, without even considering my CV.

But my experience is conflicting and makes me confused:

• I visited a few universities in the US, and noticed that people doing a PhD are treated as students rather than as employees, financially they struggle and most of them have to work on stuff other than research (taking courses, teaching). Frankly the whole system looks miserable to me. In many European countries they would be employed with a decent salary and benefits, focus only on research, have a better travel support, among other benefits. If one was given the choice between the two, I don't understand why anyone would go to the US to do a PhD instead of Europe (no hard feelings) and consider it a better option.
• Judging from job applications I get from fresh PhD graduates around the world, on average those with a PhD from the US are not better than others (I am aware that this might be biased because good PhD graduates in the US often prefer staying there).
• American PhD theses I have seen are not as good as those from Europe. For example, in the Netherlands most PhD students must publish a few journal papers before they graduate (some have 4-5, and this doesn't include conference papers). The theses are usually of high quality, and are even published as books. Looking at recent PhD theses at elite US universities like Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley and MIT, I cannot help but consider them less good and with less contribution.

This will likely strongly depend on the field, but in general I find that the average PhD experience, student wellbeing and quality of work in Europe is no worse than in the US, if not better. Yet, people worldwide seem to favor US degrees.

Is a PhD degree from a European university considered equally valuable as one from the US? If not, why is there this gap and lower perception of PhD degrees from Europe?

Answer 1

One simple answer is no, the two aren't equally valued, because the two are also not even regarded as equal. As a trite example, consider that many European countries (especially the German-influenced ones) are very picky about which letters you can put before or after your name. I have a dual-degree, so I am "allowed" to use Dr. as a legal part of my name in Germany; but my officemate with a solely American Ph.D. cannot. The way in which doctorates are made is also vastly different-- the U.S. requires coursework and then research, (often) mixed with lots of (often underpaid) teaching duties, while European doctorates typically frontload on the research and are light on teaching responsibilities. Those different experiences produce different palettes of qualificiations and skill sets. It's no wonder that if you're primarily paid to do research, you'll probably produce a better thesis than someone who had to perform teaching duties 20 hours a week.

However, there's also the danger of regarding "Europe" as a monolith. I've heard anecdotes from some Italians who struggled to get funding to finish their degrees without taking on big teaching duties. (But see comments by @MassimoOrtolano.) Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria all suffer from "brain-drain" as young folk go west for education. And I get the sense that when people say "Europe" in the context of academia, they're almost always, knowingly or unknowingly, referring to Germany, France, and the UK. Few other European entities have as much economic, political, or historical influence as those three.

Along the same lines, Europe comprises dozens of different languages and cultures. Asian students are more likely to already know English than French or German (or Dutch or Polish or Finnish...) and therefore will seek a degree in an English-speaking country. American culture and accents are more familiar to the world than, say, British or Australian, because of the movie and music industries. (The UK is also not super stable in terms of immigration standards at the moment.) Seeking a degree in the U.S. is then just plain easier-- you don't have to spend time learning a new language or adjusting to a new culture. For these students, it may be that because English is the de facto language of science, the notion of what's considered "prestigious" just followed blindly.

Answer 2

There's a pretty huge variation in (objective) quality of Ph.D.'s in the same University, with the same supervisor even. And pretty huge variation in perceived quality on top of that. So whatever is any objective or perceived difference in "average reputation", conditioned on U.S. vs Europe, it is less than the variance inside those populations.

What is true, I think, is that people love making value judgements based on perceived ranking of institution and (inside the field) on the advisor. The very top universities in the world, though of course there is not universal agreement what they are, have pretty global name recognition. But once you go below that top tier, awareness of who's who gets a lot less outside of home continent, overall and in many disciplines. Being in North America, I'm likely to know what's 2nd tier vs 3rd tier around here (and I mean that without criticism of either one), while I won't have a clue between 2 Italian universities, for instance. I expect someone there will have a firm opinion about that, but much less clue about University of [U.S. State #1] vs University of [U.S. State #2]. This will result in a "reversion to the mean" bias in my impression of candidates from far away, unless I take the time to look into their specific situation. And since we're all trying to hire "the top", reversion to the mean bias is a negative bias in this instance.

Finally, it's worth noting that the conditions for study at U.S. Universities actually vary widely. Yes, you are more a student than an employee. But (this is 20 yrs ago) I got paid a very decent living stipend in return for teaching 3 hrs a week, rest research; others might have much higher and precarious teaching loads and a less good stipend; and in some fields you pay high tuition and scrape together a living from non-University sources. So I don't think you can generalize meaningfully.

Answer 3

In mathematics a European PhD seems to be more valuable than the US degree as far as the research potential is concerned. The US degree gives you a noticeable advantage when it comes to the consideration of your teaching record in the US. For some reason the American students are viewed as "special" (though after 20+ years of work in the US I failed to figure out what exactly is so special about them: they cheat just as much as we did in Russia, they are just as susceptible to brainwashing as we were (though the content of the brainwashing is different) and they have about the same abilities and levels of motivation on average and in the extremes). So, if you have a US PhD, this usually means that you have a couple of years on your American teaching record as a TA and that is often highly valued nowadays whether justifiably or not.

Another advantage of the US degree (if you want to work in the US) is that you automatically get some connections (through your advisor, conference attendances, seminar talks, etc.) so you are not a total stranger never heard of before when it comes to the job search and, under the usual situation when you are one of several OK candidates in the pool but not a superstar, this gives you a higher chance to get selected not in the first round, but in the second or the third (once I cannot get somebody from the top of the list, I'd rather vote for someone familiar to me than for a grey horse when there is no big difference in credentials).

The US system may look miserable or great depending on the university, your adviser, and the source of funding. If your adviser values you highly and can throw some money from his or her grant into the game, you may have a really great life. If not and you are at some teaching-oriented college, expect to be treated as a cheap work force.

That is (my impression of) the US situation. If you want to end up in some other country, listen to what people from that country say.

Answer 4

I would say, from what I understand, the answer depends on who is doing the valuation. I have seen people claiming certain school/countries has a bias towards phds from the US. I have also heard that it was better to do your PhD in US if you want to stay in US afterwards and it was better to do your PhD in Europe if you want to stay in Europe. It is hard for me to elaborate further without expressing opinions. I think there is some truth to American Universities being more prestigious. They are much more name recognized for one reason or the other. My impression is that American Universities were significantly better as there had been huge brain drains to US and good educational acts such as the G.I. bill while Europe and other potential contenders were recovering from the WW2 and other political instabilities. Also, I would say this is a passing trend. contemporary US politics seem to go in the direction that

• makes much harder for underprivilaged Americans to get decent education
• makes it very hard for successful foreigners to come into their system
• less welcoming for academics to stay (let it be xenophobia or let it be widespread misinformation on factual topics such as climate science or medicine)
• makes harder for American Universities to compete fairly with foreign ones on graduate admission

I think what you are observing is "the heart of academia" shifting from US to Europe. European graduate programs are, I think, much better. To my experience, they are free and easy to apply, they do not require meaningless paperwork (for admission), they usually offer good benefits (healthcare, maternity benefits etc.) and many more things that you have listed. There are also some issues with the European system that still make America more of a "hot spot" when it comes to applications. The biggest example is that European system usually only gives stipends to PhD applications (and PhD programs require masters degrees) whereas the American Universities usually offer a way to earn money (even though it is seriously underpaid with little benefits). People who wish to apply abroad after their bachelors can not apply the European programs unless they have sufficent external funding for a masters first. It seems like there are some German innitives dealing with this issue (DAAD, Berlin Mathematical School etc.).

In short, I believe the American Universities and their PhD programs were far better. Hence they have a huge name recognition and prestige attached to their names. However, I think currently they are equal to sub-par with European programs and they are overvalued with very few exceptions. It usually takes a few generations for peoples' perceptions to change. I think overtime, with this trend, American Universities and their PhD programs will be valued more according to their actual quality (at least by foreigners). But in the meantime we have overvalued schools/programs living off their former success. You may also check this answer for my opinion on the subject with expilict examples.

Answer 5

I'll add my 2 cents and address this point of yours, which the other answers have not really talked about yet.

Students from Asia (especially from China and Korea) I met said that they prefer going to the US for a PhD, and Europe is only a second option because of less prestige.

1. There are more "big name" and "elite" universities in the US (and the UK) than Europe. In continental Europe, basically the only places with an "elite" ring to their name are ETH Zurich, ENS, and the Max Planck institutes. Compare that with all the Ivy League universities, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, etc. The US also has a huge list of mid-level universities like UCLA, UIUC, Duke, Northwestern, etc. that also outrank pretty much anywhere in (continental) Europe, as far as global name recognition is concerned. Obviously, this does not reflect that research is better in the US than in Europe, but for various historical reasons we are in this situation where essentially all the "elite" universities in the world are clustered in the US (and the rest of the anglosphere)

2. In much of the developing world (and even in the more wealthy parts of East Asia), the US is very much still seen as the land of opportunity, to an extent that is perhaps hard for Europeans to understand. The US is seen as the place to go, if you are talented and ambitious and seek to advance your career. Canada, Australia, or the UK, would be seen as the next best option. If you go to Europe, you would be seen as someone who wanted to go to a western country/ a developed country, but couldn't make it to the US. I am not saying that this view is correct, but that is the way things are.

Answer 6

I got my Ph.D. from a small university in Northern Ontario (Canada). I have been working in the private sector and know very little about getting into academia.

To the best of my understanding, your likelihood of success is determined by the quality of your publication record. Then the pedigree of your education comes second.

I've found there is always one-up manship that goes on between Europe and the US - and not just on the basis of academics. European patents are purportedly harder to get than those in the US.