Can't say I'm a big fan of bureaucratic hurdles. The goal in our department is to produce credible researchers. To do a good job on this requires a certain investment of time on the part of the adviser. If the student is inadequately prepared the adviser's time is wasted, therefore we set academic hurdles, not bureaucratic ones, for the purpose of bringing the student up to speed before spending too much of the adviser's time on what should have been accomplished in courses and independent study. What concerns me in this case is the proportion of discussion devoted to bureaucratic hurdles vs. research accomplishments. I would be more comfortable with it the other way round. Vaughan [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]