Topical Formal Presentation: Fill & Download for Free

PhDs in Australia are by research and are supposed to be finished within 3 years (though 4 years is much more common in reality). You are not expected to attend classes during your PhD as you are expected to already have had a rigorous education in your subject through your Bachelor’s and/or Masters degree. Bachelor’s degrees in Australia do not follow the US “liberal arts” model and hence have a deeper but narrower focus on your field. International students are usually required to have a Masters degree before they begin a PhD in Australia, while domestic students need either a Masters degree or an Australian Bachelor Honours degree.An increasing number of Australian universities are now requiring PhD students to undertake some professional development, research methods and research integrity classes during their PhDs, but these are not expected to take a significant proportion of the students’ time.Hence, Australian PhDs are expected to begin their research on day one.When they apply for a position in a PhD programme, applicants need to have identified the supervisor with whom they will be working and have prepared a brief research proposal.In the first year, students are required to prepare a literature review on their topic and further refine their proposal so that the steps, methods and planned outputs are clear. They also need to begin exploratory work on their topic. At many universities, PhD students must formally present and defend this proposal in front of other faculty from the department at the 9 month to 12 month mark. Often, they will also present results from preliminary experiments during their proposal defence. This requirement ensures that they get timely feedback before they get too far into the work and it is also a way to make sure that students who are not making any progress are not left to flounder, but either given more help or weeded out before they have invested too much time.In the second year and third year, students are expected to get on with the work that they have planned. Many universities have a “mid candidature review” at 1.5 to 2 years, again to check that progress is satisfactory. Students will be expected to have presented their work in poster and/or verbal form at conferences or other venues and (in STEM fields) will usually be expected to have prepared and submitted manuscripts for publication as journal papers.

In my first year at Bristol I did a unit called “Big Ideas in Science.”It pretty much did what it said on the tin.We investigated various ideas which are at the pinnacle of their respective fields; not just physics, but all aspects of science.We looked at some philosophy behind science, with the ideas of people like Karl Popper and Eugene Wigner.The assessment was done in two parts: you had to write an essay that was related to the topic at hand, and then participate in a 2 hour long seminar. There were also formal presentations at the end of the year.I loved it not only because it allowed me to branch out into different areas of science, but it allowed me to actually talk about science: something I love doing, but is sadly overlooked by many degree courses.If anyone ever has the opportunity to take a similar class, I’d recommend it heartily.

Economics doesn't really work like that - there isn't this closed shop mentality, and the way that outsiders are excluded is by most of the best journals tending to favour a highly formal presentation of ideas. In addition, what economists believe changes quite a lot from decade to decade. In 1929 Keynes was more or less a free trader. A decade later his perspective was quite different. And you see the same shifts in modern times too.There isn't broad agreement amongst people who study climate, but that is another topic for another time.