A recent study showed that “there’s a fair bit of evidence that full RSS feeds reduce activity on a blog.” Read about the experiment and results at Cognitive Daily.
It’s funny how some people perceive the strength and authority of your degree based on WHERE you obtained it from, instead of WHAT you did, and HOW you did it. Like the following conversation that took place recently:
“It doesn’t matter to me, whether to do my Ph.D. locally, or overseas.”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter to you?! Why not take the opportunity to do it overseas? You don’t have to pay for it anyway.”
“Well, from WHERE I’ll be getting my Ph.D. is not as important as WHAT I’ll be doing, and WHO my Supervisors will be. I mean, it’s OK if I had to do it locally, I don’t mind it. What I’m trying to say is that it’s not *that* ultimately important that I do it somewhere far far away, that’s all.”
“Don’t be crazy, everybody wants to do their Ph.D. overseas. You’re short-changing yourself if you think of anything less than flying to a foreign soil to do it.”
“Well, I’ll keep my options open, I’m just saying that it isn’t a priority to me.”
So tell me, am I weird to NOT insist on pursuing my “higher education” overseas? With the government’s intention to increase the number of Ph.D. holders in the local universities by 2010, I foresee a lot of tutors or research fellows or lecturers with an M.Sc. being sent overseas. Which means a LOT of money will be spent on them (imagine paying an allowance to a student staying in the UK for 3 to 4 years, then multiply that with somewhere between 6 and 8, you do the math) — but that’s not what I should be worried about.
What I’d like to stress, in case you didn’t get it earlier, is that I’m not against the idea of doing my Ph.D. in the US or UK. In fact, if given the opportunity, I believe I’d be one of the first few who’d sign the papers. But that doesn’t mean that I’m willing to compromise on the subject matter of or the approach to my research.
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it’s all in the mindset i think - ppl always think that overseas means better. it’s very obvious in everything these days. but i frankly think it depends on what you want and what they can offer u. so in another words - i agree with u.
eh…u got new smileys!!!
Uh… actually I agree with Cognitive. I tend not to reply to a blog if I’m not on the site, and I generally read more through RSS feeds, so… ^^;
Yvy: I know you’ll love them! They’re cute, aren’t they? Matching somemore
Pat: Yeah, but there’s also the other side of the story. Some people think that by providing only partial feeds, subscribers tend to unsubscribe..
I think that what you study is what you study and for my case I never did find much use of what I studied in what I’m doing apart from the stress and strain of working nonstop without sleep for days and weeks
Information and knowledge wise, I started with zero and learnt everything from scratch despite what I have learnt
well, a PhD is always a PhD no matter where you are taking it. I wouldn’t compromise what i want to achieve just because the so called status is higher with overseas PhD. I agree with you, get what you want on the subject matter as well as your research approach. =)
a year ago, i wouldn’t have agreed with you. but now i see your point. but then again, doing your PhD overseas might give you more advantages in sense of facilities?
zeroimpact: “… without sleep for days and week..” *faints*
ColourfulWorld: Yeah, give me five!
silveraven: Well, there are always 2 sides to a coin