Isn't what you are saying a bit extreme? I mean, PhDs in Europe are very short and thus students don't have the opportunity to do that much. So in a way they are quite mediocre. Yet some recover afterwards. But I agree it's hard to revert the trend if you're in a down-spiral.
It's not as straightforward a distinction as you imply, and certainly not grounds for attributing a lower value.
In Europe (Germany in particular), you have to do a 2-year Masters degree which tends to be ~1.3 years of coursework and ~0.7 years of research culminating in a thesis.
Judged by the quality of your thesis, you then try to get accepted into a group for a PhD which takes 3 years on average.
In the US you go straight to a 5-year PhD program and within that, the coursework-research duration split is similar to what you find in Europe.
At CMU people were occasionally referred to as 'being on the 4-year plan', which meant you were like a superior alien intelligence (and, more importantly, focused on some good problem rather than, say, beer and girls or whatever you're into). But I think 7 years was typical, especially in "systems" or anything where you'd have to build something. Places that provision for 3 years total for a PhD are doing something fundamentally different, as people doing good quality PhDs at CMU were already casting around for topics quite early in those 6-7 years. I'm sure that in the long run it evens out for good people coming from good places in either system, as of course, the euro-PhD person can do 3 more years of post-doc under similar conditions.
Most phds I was involved with (Europe) were 4 years with the understanding there'd be a 2 year post doc if there was money (which usuallybcan be found if they want to keep you; even if it means 75% teaching), if you're not a complete cock up and if you want it.
Imho people make a bigger deal of EU/US phd differences than there actually is. The structure is different, but the end result not so much.
