Part I

Sorry you had problems. Many people have had problems, even very serious ones. I've seen it happen too often that a Ph.D. program causes stress, for years, and that is well known to cause depression, clinical depression, and even suicide. I've seen really good, talented, dedicated, fantastic students have their lives and themselves be ruined.

For all my points you question, my claims are rock solid.

You wrote:

"Did you try this?".

Yes, as I indicated, I did "try this", and it did work. I hold a Ph.D. in Engineering from one of the best research universities in the world. The work I did was really some applied math with theorems and proofs. I did the work as 'operations research', but it could as well be called 'computer science' or even 'electrical engineering'. The work might also fit some 'interdisciplinary' applied math programs. The Chairman of the committee that approved the work was from outside my department and a Member, US National Academy of Engineering and Editor in Chief of one of the world's best relevant journals. One of the world's best profs in operations research chided me for not publishing: I didn't want to publish it and, instead, wanted to sell it. I certainly didn't just want to give it away. I do not now nor have I ever had any academic career aspirations at all. So, I have had no desire to build a record of academic publications.

"It reads a bit like 'phd hacking'."

I don't call it 'hacking'. But, it is a play on several points. I mention two:

(1) Universities want the big deal to be research. Okay, take advantage of that or at least go along with it. Then one way to know if have some 'research' is just to publish it. In the end, once out of school, the first criterion for 'research' is that it's published.

Commonly publication is also the last criterion since, say, short of lots of citations or an actual prestigious prize, it's tough to do more evaluation. It's tough enough for the field just to review the paper; asking for department chairs, school deans, and promotion committees to do much more with the paper is a bit much.

In school, some profs try to ask for more than just 'publishable' in ways that are often cruel, irrelevant, exploitative, destructive, domineering, demeaning, insulting, sadistic, etc. So, a way, in part or in total, around such nonsense is just to publish.

(2) Another point is in engineering, if work solves an important practical problem, then that fact can be used to meet the requirement for "significant". Otherwise "significant" can be in the eye of the beholder and tough to be objective about.

With this 'hack', can work around the usual, 'expected' slog through courses, qualifying exams as a 'filter', advanced courses as more 'filters', demonstrations of 'academic devotion', sacrifice, and shedding of blood, sweat, and tears, slave labor for profs on their research projects, begging a prof for a 'dissertation topic', hoping, praying that the prof likes the work, pleasing all profs on a committee of five, etc. Good way to ruin a life. "Have to be smart to get a Ph.D.", and one way to use such smarts is to avoid slogging through that long, muddy swamp. I outlined a way.

You quoted my:

"(1) At at least some of the best US research universities, there is no coursework requirement for a Ph.D."

and wrote

"I find that to be untrue."

You can't find my statement to be "untrue"! Maybe it wasn't true at the school you went to, but that is not relevant to my claim: I didn't say that no coursework holds at every school.

To make my claim true, I need find only two schools where my coursework remark holds. Well, at one time, I knew of three top research universities in the US NE, two in the Ivy League, where official statements of the universities and/or selected departments flatly stated that there was no coursework requirement for a Ph.D. Neither was there a Master's requirement.

The part about "the best US research universities" is important: At Siawash State U., the faculty is so insecure that they will drag students through no end of hell. They can ask for over 100 credit hours of courses. It can appear they want the student two show up at the qualifying exams carrying all of the QA section of the library between their ears. The faculty research sucks, and they believe that a Ph.D. is about 'acquiring knowledge'. BS: At the top schools, a Ph.D. is about the research. Trying to carry the library around between two ears is for fools.

At the top schools, the 'coursework' a student should know is to cover basic material in the field, say, enough to teach ugrad courses. The rest of 'coursework' is to get ready for doing research. If the student has already done the research and published it, then they have proven that they are ready to do research.

Indeed, one Ivy League research university, in a department likely the best in its field in the world, has flatly stated that graduate students are expected to learn the basic material on their own, that no courses are offered for such material, and that the graduate courses are introductions to research in fields by experts in those fields. They also stated that grad students are expected to have some research underway in their first year. And they also want grad students out in three years.

A secret: At such universities, commonly graduate courses are not really 'graded'. Again, the purpose is the 'research', not the courses, credits, grades, or learning.

Did I mention that the main point was just the research?

Then how the heck to evaluate the research? There is a way, in academics essentially only one very good way: Publish it. Better? Okay, publish in a 'high quality' journal. For more? Win a prize. Maybe get asked by the NSF to be a grant reviewer. Maybe become a journal reviewer, editor, or editor in chief. Usually conference proceedings are less highly regarded. But basically, especially for grad students, just publish, and asking for additional criteria is a fool's errand for all concerned. Schools that don't realize such things should be avoided.

To be more clear, for the 'standards' of what is good research, do not look to the fantasy dreams of some dissertation committees and, instead, look at what's in the better journals.

There is more: Going back decades there are far too many horror stories about sadistic abuse of grad students. So some good universities just set up some good criteria that strongly cut out the sadistic abuse: E.g., the requirement for a dissertation can be, as I said, "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication". Implicit but very clear is, if the student and his advisors cannot agree, then the student can just PUBLISH the stuff. Then the faculty committee members essentially have to back down and sign off on his dissertation.

There's more: The student may have whatever 'relations' with his dissertation advisors and department. So, make the process so that the dissertation is to be approved by a committee with majority from outside the student's department and Chairman from outside the student's department. So, the student gets a fresh, maybe more objective, collection of 'reviewers'.

And, if you were a dean, what other standards and processes would you set up that could be executed effectively?

You wrote:

"Most students accepted to the best PhD programs (computer science) will already have top-tier publications before entering. It is definitely a good thing to have a publication, but rather than being finished, you will have just begun."

Maybe some such holds, but this process can't work well. It's doomed to failure. As I outlined, there just is not any chance of reasonable criteria for research quality for students other than publication in a decently good journal.

So, for a program such as you outlined, the whole thing is a fool's errand for both a student and the faculty: Bluntly, a student with "top-tier publications" has proven that they have gotten nearly everything important from a Ph.D. degree program that they could hope to get. The faculty has no more to give them. Indeed, "top-tied publications" are in practice mostly the only thing the faculty members can hope for for themselves in their own careers. Thus the student's formal education is over, done with, completed. If the school doesn't know that, then the student should go to a different school.