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How unusual is this?

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  • 15-05-2010 9:59pm
    #1
    Fremen
    Registered Users Posts: 2,481 ✭✭✭


    I'm in a bit of a bad situation at the moment. On paper, my supervisor is a ridiculously impressive scientist- started publishing papers while still in secondary school, has stuff named after him, etc, etc...

    Recently, he has taken on lots of PhD students: we're talking like twelve, while most of his colleagues have two or three. He's not showing any signs of slowing down on the recruitment front either.

    I've discussed this with some of his other students. As far as we can see, he is doing almost no productive, original work anymore. He's not giving any advice to any of his students either. It seems like he's leaving it to us to come up with an idea and do the work, and then he's just putting his name on the resulting paper.

    I've come to the conclusion that this is a ridiculous situation so I'm trying to arrange to move universities. I'm trying to leave without burning any bridges, but I'm seriously bitter about what he's doing, and I feel terrible for the new students he's taking on.

    Has anyone else ever heard of something like this happening?


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    #2
    8_Ace
    Registered Users Posts: 17 ✭8_Ace


    You have a responsibility to go to head of department and discuss this. Just because this person has a history doesn't mean they can get away with ruining students prospects.


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    #3
    Fremen
    Registered Users Posts: 2,481 ✭✭✭Fremen


    Maybe that's the right thing to do, but I'm not going to do it. He's an influential guy and it would be a bad idea to make an enemy of him. My current university is fairly respectable and I might want to work here again one day.


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    #4
    catho_monster
    Registered Users Posts: 1,479 ✭✭✭catho_monster


    If your that worried about keeping up appearances and not burning bridges you need to consider that the rest of the academic community might question why you choose to leave such a distinguished supervisor (not knowing the reality of the situation) and will judge you based on that.
    At the end of the day it might not be a bad idea to approach your supervisor and tell him exactly what you expect, if you dont get any joy, go to the head of department. and remember at the end of the day that you're paying them (or your funding is paying them) to do a job and it is their responsibility to follow through on that job. Or you might consider skipping going to him and asking your head of department if you could get a co-supervisor, saying that your concious of your current supervisors workload and would like to take some of the pressure off? thereby highlighting the situation, keeping the distinguished supervisor on your project, and getting you the supervision you need.


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