Postgraduate Review Response

The RSC's response to the Postgraduate Review led by Professor Adrian Smith, January 2010. We are happy for this submission to be put into the public domain.  

Our response is solely concerned with postgraduate science provision, specifically for the chemical sciences. 

Postgraduate study in the chemical sciences in the UK consists of a combination of Masters Courses (both taught and research based) and PhD programmes. It is not compulsory to attain a postgraduate Masters Course in chemistry, for example an MSci, MPhil or equivalent, before undertaking a doctorate, and in most cases students will choose to complete one or the other. 

In the UK, PhD programmes are largely research based, with students required to produce an original piece of research within a time-frame of 3-4 years, while Masters Courses can either be research-based or taught, or a mixture of both, and usually last 1 or 2 years.