I’ve never heard of a student being admitted to a strictly PhD program without a Master’s degree.
Maybe he did a project & additional classes as opposed to a dissertation?
I know in the bench based sciences (as opposed to soft science, sorry if that offends, but it is common university lingo) a student may enter a PhD program after a bachelor’s degree is obtained. However, if the student fails to complete their dissertation or quits, there is no awarding of any post-graduate degree.
Happens all the time.
Indeed, most strictly doctoral programs award the master's after the completion of a master's thesis during the first 2-3 years. My program was 7-8 years on average. I got my master's at the end of 2 years and entered with only a bachelor's. Indeed, the one person who already had a master's had gotten hers while in a doctoral program and we all believed that it was somewhat held against her (too many other profs had already influenced her? no idea why we thought that - but she said she knew it was a liability and felt lucky to get into a second doctoral program.
Nearly everyone I know with a master's was once enrolled in a doctoral program. In super competitive fields with little funding, students are often encouraged to take the master's as a consolation prize and go do something else.
The university I went to is large and respected. You will have heard of it. It routinely awarded master's to doctoral students who stopped out. We even had one antisocial person expelled (the first time in the history of graduate work at that university) and he still got his master's and is using it to get jobs as a political consultant for the GOP.
Interesting distinction between "bench" and "soft." I usually hear "hard" vs "soft." I took classes on both sides. Definitely was better on the soft side, alking to the mentally ill patients whom we were studying genetically and with fMRI/getting their kinship charts and family history. My job in part was to recruit paranoid and atypical schizophrenics (and I was supposed to draw their blood during or after the interview - yeah, that didn't happen; we went to cheek swabs and saliva tubes).
Atypical (negative) schizophrenics or so-called "walking schizophrenics" did not talk at all. We never got a single one to sign a consent for research form. You had to walk alongside them to even be near them. They became agitated when seated, although if they were put in a nice desk chair opposite a man in a nice desk chair, they would smile sometimes. Otherwise, flat aspect. And then, they'd get up and start walking. We gave them bus tickets to get back to DTLA's skid row, where they lived homeless. I offered to drive them (once, a man accepted the ride!) Most of them preferred to walk. I'd keep on the look-out for them because I was in DTLA recruiting homeless schizophrenics for our study - and they usually showed up again after a couple of days. Many would accept food or coffee from a stranger (without a word) and just walk off. They had no care about their belongings, they would leave their duffle or backpack or shopping cart where ever and just walk off. They were all exceedingly tan and weathered and were aged about 30-50, most of them. They are thought to be suffering from derealizaton and depersonalization, rather than paranoid delusions. But truthfully, I am skeptical that we know much about their minds - so, same problem as with Bryan Kohberger. Almost impossible for a "normal" to imagine.
At any rate, when I see a person I think to be a walking schizophrenic these days, I have a whole different perspective than I did before I was hired for that research. I went on to study hospitalized (both medicated and non-) which was so much easier.
