Classes, the Unnecessary Evil

I've always thought that the purpose of graduate school was to become very specialized in one topic.

For a bachelor's degree you learn a lot in four (plus or minus) years and it covers a wide variety of topics. For a master's degree you hone in on one topic from your bachelor's and specialize; becoming the master of that area. And finally for a doctorate you become really really specialized in one area from your master's degree.

I think the following comic from PhD Comics says it well with the following graph:

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com

It's so true. And if you don't already subscribe to PhD Comics you should. Seriously.

Throughout that period of school you take a lot of classes. Because the bachelor's degree is so general you have a wide variety of options to chose from. The same, more or less depending on where you do your master's at, goes for the master's degree. But by the time you get to your doctorate all your research is cutting-edge - or at least to new to have classes devoted to the topic. So you take the classes that you think will help you pass the qualifying exams or the few that you find interesting.

Classes then become this evil, time-consuming thing that helps to foster procrastination. Why work on that journal article when you have homework to do? So few classes are applicable (at least for me) that it's almost a waste of time. Professors don't like teaching them because they take away from time they could be writing grants, students don't like taking them because it takes time away from research.

Classes at the graduate level are one of the really big differences between the educational system in the United States versus Europe. Here in the US it's classes and research until you fill the credit requirements and then just research. In Europe, or at least the UK, it's research-based where students work mostly towards the end goal (thesis/dissertation) without having to fiddle around with classes.

I'd like to just get these classes done so I can focus on my research! Especially right now when I'm trying to learn MATLAB (and failing, sigh) but still have a large "to-do" list accumulating. Perhaps this is just me complaining but how do you feel about class-work at the graduate level?