For a wile, I worked in a Geography and Map Library at a state university. Among the things it housed were the thesis of doctoral candidates. Most followed a standard pattern of formatting and most were written on typewriters.
I was surprised at the volume of work students near the turn of the last century had to submit for successful completion of their doctorates. Thesis ran several hundreds of pages and were annotated with charts, graphs, and detailed footnotes. By the 1990's, most thesis couldn't boast even a hundred such type-written pages. Including their supporting notes, charts, and graphs.
Here’s additional perspective to bolster what you saw:
In 1995, I wandered over to the University of Nevada, Reno’s EE/CE department to inquire about getting my MSEE. Hey, I was working for an employer who would pay for tuition, books and fees, and I thought “hey, they’re a land grant university, and wouldn’t have the stuck-up nature of Stanford....”
I should NB here that I had inquired about getting my MSEE at Stanford and they didn’t want anything to do with working master’s students. If you weren’t going to declare for the doctorate program, they wouldn’t give you the time of day.
Back to UNR: They were very friendly and inviting. They showed me around their department, where they had some pretty nice facilities, and so on.
Then the Executive Officer of their EE department showed me the bookcase that held the MSEE “thesis” projects of the past 10 years of Masters’ students. We thumbed through a couple of projects/papers.
I kept my mouth shut, but my only assessment was “*These* took a full semester+ to complete? Any one of these is... a week’s worth of work in Silly Valley.”
Then I had a look at some PhD dissertations. OK, two weeks’ work in Silicon Valley.
Then we talked a bit about their master’s program, and the “A” program (”thesis” with 30 credits) and the “B” program (30+ credits and you’re out the door with a MSEE). They really wanted people to do this “thesis” program.
I, having people in my family who did a “master’s thesis” program and got strung along for YEARS as indentured servants for their department, was hip to this. No way was I doing some thesis. I wanted to crank out X credits and get Y piece of paper.
The EO of the EE department looked very disappointed and flustered. Couldn’t understand what I had against doing a “thesis.”
I quietly said “I’m doing a thesis only for a doctorate. A bunch of these master’s thesis projects look like some question or pet project for their advisor(s), and if I’m going to do consulting work for someone, then I’ll be billing out at over $100/hour.”
Silence. Stunned silence.
First conclusion I came to: Master’s programs are just extending and delaying kids’ entry into the real world. Most of the projects I examined looked like the product of a kid who hadn’t been out into the real world yet.
Second conclusion: Much of higher education is now a financial scam. Most everyone here at FR is well aware of the scam in the tuition/fees/books deal. Ah, but probably most here are also NOT aware of the uncompensated labor scam in schools on grad students.
What really put the pained look on that EO’s face was that I was hip to this second game and I wasn’t going to be giving them my experienced and highly productive time for nothing. I believe there’s a good reason why so many kids come out of grad programs in the US and have such a poor opinion of employers and businesses: The only employer most of them have known has been a university or college, and as employers, these outfits suck. Their employment comp packages suck, the way they handle employees is worse than anything you see outside a sweat shop, and the expectations that the employee will drop everything and serve the university are omnipresent.
Little wonder kids come out agitating for unions and beating up on the private sector.