often offers little incentive to move students through PhD programs quickly and may even provide incentives to slow them down. To counter this problem A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; Latin: philosophiae doctor or doctor in philosophia) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the degree is most often abbreviated PhD (or, at times, as Ph.D. in North America) and is pronounced as three separate There is usually a preliminary assessment to remain in the program and the thesis is submitted at the end of a three- to four-year program. These periods are usually extended pro rata for part-time students. With special dispensation, the final date for the thesis can sometimes be extended for additional years, for a total of up to six or seven. For full-time PhDs, a four-year time limit has now been fixed and students must apply for an extension to submit a thesis past this point. Since the early 1990s, British funding councils have adopted a policy of penalising departments where large proportions of students fail to submit their theses in four years after achieving PhD-student status (or pro rata equivalent) by reducing the number of funded places in subsequent years. Inadvertently, this leads to significant pressure on the candidate to minimise the scope of projects with a view on thesis submission, regardless of quality, and discourage time spent on activities that would otherwise further the impact of the research on the community (e.g., publications in high-impact journals, seminars, workshops). Furthermore, supervising staff are encouraged in their career progression to ensure that the PhD students under their supervision finalise the projects in three rather than the four years that the program is permitted to cover. These issues contribute to an overall discrepancy between supervisors and PhD candidates in the priority they assign to the quality and impact of the research contained in a PhD project. There has recently been an increase in the number of Integrated PhD programs available, such as at the University of Southampton. These courses include a Master of Research (MRes) in the first year, which consists of a taught component as well as laboratory rotation projects. The PhD must then be completed within the next three years. As this includes the MRes all deadlines and timeframes are brought forward to encourage completion of both MRes and PhD within four years from commencement. These programs are designed to provide students with a greater range of skills than a standard PhD, and for the university, they are a means of gaining an extra years'…