S. Worthen | Weblog

dissertation is the title used in the US for PHD and thesis for MA, opposite in UK. But only annoying people get picky about it.

My Doktorvater, aka thesis advisor, regularly calls the thing I wrote (tm) a thesis. He's from the US and I wrote it in the US. British colleagues also call it a thesis. I'm not sure that the line is quite as cut and dried, but you can always say "doctoral thesis" I suppose. Of course, I was lucky -- my program only required a thesis for a terminal MA. If the MA was granted as part of the PhD program, there was no thesis -- just grueling exams (written and oral), a dissertation prospectus, and a defense thereof against all comers (really -- department faculty and anyone else on campus at the postgrad level and above who wanted to ask questions).

I don't know if it's a hard and fast rule, but this is the terminology in my department too. A `dissertation' is usually a shorter document of about 20-80 pages (my MSc one was 60 pages) submitted for an MA/MSc or sometimes as a final-year undergraduate student.

Properly, though, the thesis is the point you're arguing, and the dissertation is the written document which contains the argument. But this distinction is usually glossed over, and the word thesis (or `big papery thing tied up with string - like the thing we burnt' (tm S Baldrick and E Blackadder) as it became known in our office) generally refers to the dissertation itself.

Now, in the UK, there is no coursework for a PhD, nor are there exams usually.
No, they throw us all in at the deep end, right at the beginning (my supervisor said ``Here's some of my recent papers. Have a read through and see if anything appeals'' which was as close as he ever got to suggesting a research problem for me). Although in our undergraduate degrees we specialise (usually in one subject, sometimes in two closely related subjects - and no requirements to take any courses which aren't specifically relevant to your chosen subjects) right from day one, too, so I guess the theory is that we're ready to start doing research right away.

In practice, though, everyone has to do some background study (reading and/or specialised graduate-level courses) to get up to speed in their chosen area. This is why many departments require PhD students to register for an MPhil or MA/MSc to start with, and then transfer to PhD after they've jumped through the required hoops - typically, some sort of oral exam or written report at the end of the first year. Some others require first-year PhD students to effectively do an MA/MSc in the first year (a couple of terms of graduate-level courses, plus exams), making the MA/MSc dissertation the first chapter or so of the PhD thesis.

But it varies from department to department, and university to university - there's no standard scheme of qualifying exams, like in the US, for example.

Here's the bottom line:
"dissertation" has more letters and syllables than "thesis", therefore it sounds more complicated and important to me!!