In the following account I write about my experiences as a graduate student, studying for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree at the University of Cambridge in England. I recall my observations of life at graduate school and my own perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages offered by different graduate programmes. I do not attempt to write an authorative, academic 'paper' on the subject; I do not have the appropriate knowledge or experience to do so. My intention is to introduce the topic of graduate schools and to provoke responses from readers who are either students or administrators within a school.

For my first, or undergraduate, degree I studied Animal Sciences after which it was always my intention to work in the veterinary research environment. It was not a great surprise, therefore, that I should find myself employed at a small, independent research unit in Newarket, near Cambridge, which focuses solely on reproduction in horses. After a few years of working as a research assistant, I enrolled at the University of Cambridge to do a PhD and started my investigations into immunological aspects of pregnancy in the mare. After graduating, with the promp and ceremony for which Cambridge is famed, I completed two short postdoctural research projects before leaving the laboratory environment for the world of scientific publishing.

During the years I worked, I was fortunate enough to attend many conferences and to visit and work in laboratories around the world. Consequently, I met fellow PhD students from different universities and soon discovered that studying for a PhD in the United States of America was something completely different to what I was experiencing back in Cambridge. Many people would argue that the University of Cambridge is far from typical of British universities. However, its approach to research degrees, such as a PhD, is broadly speaking the same as any other in Britain. Students have a supervisor - in the laboratory or department where they are carrying out their research project - whose role is to guide them through their PhD track. Thus, the supervisor will suggest relevant literature to read, will help, directly or indirectly, within the laboratory environment and, hopefully, will advise on the writing and oral presentation of the students' work. Above all, a supervisor should be available for consultation when a student needs help. For the most part, however, it is entirely the students' responsibility to organise and run their experiments, to learn more about topics they are unfamiliar with, to manage their own time and often to decide on appropriate experimental procedures. It is rare to hear of compulsory courses for PhD degrees in British universities and certainly not ones that require an examination. It was this very subject that made me first aware of the differences between American and British PhD 'programmes'.

Situations change, of course, and nowadays British universities offer many more courses and training components to their postgraduate students doing research degrees, although in most instances these remain optional. Thus, the award of a research based degree, such as a PhD or Master of Science (MSc), is decided solely on the results of the candidate's research, presented in the form of a dissertation, and on the candidate's performance in an oral examination.

In the following discussion I will consider only those graduate schools that offer research based courses to veterinary and related science graduates.

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