Unsolicited advice for any potential PhD students choosing between schools/advisors: you should try very hard to talk to current PhD students, preferably in person or at least over the phone or video call (at any rate, not in writing). Try to talk to as many as possible.
Good advisors will probably have a few students who will speak up for them, and great advisors almost certainly will. In contrast, bad advisors will probably have a few students who give middling recommendations, cryptic comments, or outright warnings. Good departments typically have meet-the-current-students-without-faculty-present events to facilitate exactly this discussion. If the potential advisor does not happily put you in contact with current or recent students, that alone is a red flag.
This is not foolproof. Even a great advisor may have one bitter student, and a generally terrible advisor might still have some good student relationships. But having a bad advisor will make grad school so much harder. This is a situation where doing a bit of due diligence can have a huge impact.
I was lucky; I had a great advisor, and I was always happy to talk to potential students, since I wanted my advisor to have more good students. Talk to students!
Talk to them, and look up what they're doing. If a lot of former students ended up where you see yourself in 10 years, that's a great sign. If a lot of former students are in dead-end careers, that's a bad sign.
Of course, that discriminates against tenure-track faculty, but avoiding tenure-track faculty is good advice too. Tenured professors have the luxury of being able to care about you. Tenure-track need to do what it takes to succeed.
Speaking as a tenured professor, I disagree with this -- the trade-offs are more varied than you present them, and the individual differences are probably larger than the categorical differences. It's probably true in general that the younger professors are more likely to both stay up until 3:00 in the morning writing a paper with you and expect you to stay up until 3:00 in the morning writing that paper, but I don't think there is any difference in how much they care or don't about their students.
(The flip side of this advice is often presented as the junior faculty are more likely to help you write a lot of papers, if that's your goal. But again, look at the person. )
(I agree completely with talking to former students, of course. More information is always good. )
I agree the individual differences are larger than the categorical differences.
From my time in grad school, I don't mind working at 3 am (and most other grad students I knew, at least without families, didn't mind that either). The problem was the abusive nastiness. You're presuming student and faculty interests are otherwise aligned. They're not. The most successful paths to academic success I've seen include:
* Spending time raising money, hiring a ton of students, and getting a few good publications by law of large numbers
* Attaching students to many projects, and when one shows promise, sprinting to do most of the work to claim first authorship on a breakthrough result (at the expense of collaborators), and neglecting the rest of the projects / students (at the expense of the rest of the lab).
* ... and so on.
There is also a question of who becomes associated with the breakthrough: the student or the advisor? Yes, the first/last author split in publication helps, but at the end of the day, someone goes out and gives talks, media interviews, etc. I've seen plenty of student s-ed because the faculty member (who often did minimal work) takes credit for their work.
And there are megaprojects, where there's one nice result at the end, and a half-dozen graduate students who work on it doing menial engineering/lab work. Labs like that end up with zero students going for faculty (or other highly-competitive) jobs.
In other words, aside from baking data, most tactics to academic success involve carefully optimizing the odds, and burning a number of students and/or collaborators to have tenure-granting results associated with the faculty member.
As a footnote, back in the day, I was blessed with a terrific advisor, but the MAJORITY of faculty at MIT are abusive douche bags, and the system is set up entirely to protect them. And most students I know who left MIT into faculty slots did that by cheating at least a little bit, whether through credit theft, baking research results, or otherwise. Most MIT grad students don't cheat, mind you, but most highly successful ones do (and yes, I am in a position where I've seen many of these case play out at MIT, and a few at other institutions). Those go into tenure-track positions, and abuse their students the same way they were abused.
Former students also have a better viewpoint. Many people don't realize they were abused until years later, when they can look back on an experience objectively. Among my cohort, the number of people who would say they were abused today are much greater than the number of people who would have said it at the time.
As a tenured professor (math), I generally agree but would say it a little differently: yes, definitely talk to students and avoid advisors when there are warning signs. OTOH, even "great" advisors that everyone loves may not be a good fit for you. Like any other personal relationship, advisor-advisee is a function of both you and the advisor, and you need to find one who fits you well. This goes beyond intellectual interests into personality, advising style, etc.
For example, some advisors are very hands-on in terms of giving guidance on projects, while others (like my own) are very much hands-off and lets the student find their own way. The latter worked for me, but isn't everyone's cup of tea. The former is great for students who like more guidance (esp at the beginning of research) but is not for every student. The same goes to other areas of advisor-advisee relations: paper writing, job hunting, etc.
Edit: to address a main point in the article: don't get me wrong, there certainly is such a thing as abuse. "Compatibility" isn't everything. I was just pointing out that it is an important consideration in choosing advisors; a great advisor for your friends may not be great for you.
Divorces, too. A family member was applying to med schools, and during one of the visits there was a boast of a >100% divorce rate among students. Every married student who entered that program was divorced by the end, as were some who got married during the program. To have such a stressful program is bad enough, but to boast about it as a sign of prestige and dedication is even worse.
What the actual fuck? Why would anyone who loves their wife or husband choose to enter such a program? (Best-case scenario: a few years of data produced this anomalous result, someone noticed it and decided to draw attention to it, and it has since scared away all married students, so that there will never be any future data points to contradict it.)
Still, from what I know about medical school and residency in general, any place that periodically assigns 24-hour work shifts just because is ... perverse.
Still, from what I know about medical school and residency in general, any place that periodically assigns 24-hour work shifts just because is ... perverse.
That was more or less my reaction as well. I could understand there being a few years of anomalous data as a result of small sample size, but to then boast of it rather than taking it as a sign of very serious issues doubles down on a bad sign.
I agree that the 24-hour shifts are ridiculous. I could see some potential benefit for reducing the number of shift handoffs (e.g. 12-hour shifts expose patients to 2 shift changes per day, but 8-hour shifts expose patients to 3 shift changes per day), since shift handoffs have been shown to be the source of miscommunications. However, as your link points out, there is no decrease in standard of care resulting from removing 24-hour shifts, so that is not a reason to keep 24-hour shifts.
Also, thank you for the link on it, though the tone of that article was definitely odd. It took the lack of effect of shift duration on patient care as a reason to extend shifts back up to 24 hours, rather than concluding that there is no reason to keep shifts at 24 hours. Similarly, it takes as a given that after a 16-hour shift, you only get 8 hours off, rather than treating that as another sign of poor shift scheduling. (From the article, “When you’re on a 16-hour shift that ends Monday at 11 p.m., you still have to come back to the hospital on Tuesday at 7 a.m.,” she noted. “When you’re on a 24-hour shift, you leave on Tuesday at 7 a.m., and you don’t have to report back for duty until Wednesday. That is a better arrangement. You have the rest of the day to do things.”)
Yeah, I interpret it as self-serving propaganda and mendacity. I will assume the worst at every turn—for example, that the supportive quotes are cherry-picked; that they insert pictures of smiling doctors to try to make people think those opinions are normal; that they made certain that the dissenting doctor's opinion was described as "a minority opinion", and was immediately followed with "Dr. Mathis did acknowledge, however, that the ACGME change in requirements was here to stay"; that the "members of the AMA’s Resident and Fellow Section" they apparently polled were cherry-picked; that they asked several poll questions and chose to report the one with the most favorable result (and that "Do you think it's a good idea?" scored worse than "Do you think it's better than 16-hour shifts?"); that they reported it as "a majority" because it sounds higher than "52%"; et cetera.
This is unfair, but I expect it's the best starting point for understanding.
> Similarly, it takes as a given that after a 16-hour shift, you only get 8 hours off
Yeah, it appears to be easier to work for an additional 8 hours and get the whole next day off, than to persuade those who choose the shifts to let you come in a couple of hours later on the day following a 16-hour shift.
I don't think I'd want to drive across a bridge if one of the main criteria for career success for a civil engineer was "ability to pull all-nighters 3 times a week for many months." And yet when we go to the hospital that's exactly who is treating us.
To be fair, I think it's more like a 24-hour shift every several weeks, not multiple times a week. And I don't think residents get weeded out if, say, they make errors during 24-hour shifts at >2x the rate of other doctors; I'd guess that, if any weeding occurs, it would be based on the "overall error rate" instead.
I do have opinions about how to select doctors. For example, surgeons in particular should be selected a lot more for manual dexterity, and less for ability to memorize facts that appear on the MCAT.
> there was a boast of a >100% divorce rate among students. Every married student who entered that program was divorced by the end, as were some who got married during the program.
Meh. Sounds like the number of divorces was still less than the number of students. And possibly less than the number of marriages -- the definition provided doesn't even establish that 100% of marriages among the students failed.
Sounds like a way of ensuring that future applicants have no family obligations to take away from time spent working. A legally permissible way of saying "Married people need not apply."
How would you check that? I remember there was a (rumored) suicide at my school while I was there, and it was hushed up really well so that even a lot of students wouldn't have heard about it.
Far as I know, there isn't a searchable database of 'suicides per school'.
MIT does not cover the, up, to my knowledge. Quite the opposite.
The only one I knew personally died for reasons unrelated to the Instititute— in fact it was one of his bright spots in some ways (though he suffered dreadfully from the imposter syndrome as well so in other ways it made things worse).
However MIT can be a very difficult place and I don’t want to gloss over that. And I think the institute could do a lot to improve things.
I suppose I can't say for sure but I remember plenty of them in the school newspaper, at least a few a year usually. Sometimes the reason was easy to deduce, sometimes it was ambiguous as is often the case in possible suicides.
My former lab has had 2 since 2012. I know of other labs at the school with more than that. I left, but not as the person I thought was going to leave when I started.
The advice on talking to students is absolutely correct. And to be very clear, if you do not find any good labs in the schools you were admitted to: Do Not Go To Grad School At All. Reapply to other schools and wait. A year waiting is worth the 4 on the backend being a drone in a bad lab.
I think this is how Steve Jobs worked out who was good.
He would go to people and say "I heard so-and-so sucks" and if he didn't suck people would adamantly stand up for so-and-so, but if he DID suck, there would be a lackluster response.
Good way to find out who is liked. Terrible way to find out who is good. Stalinist managment style. Pretty vile.
I heard Steve Jobs is totally amazing and wonderful and cool and wise but sucks so hard at noticing talent he has fall back on techniques like randomly claiming people suck and seeing the response. Bet you'd get a lacklustre response from that.
Two friends of mine who went to grad school said there is one and only one metric to select a graduate advisor.
How many of his students complete their PhD and how long that takes. That's it. There is no other metric. None. You might think 'but...' No! Don't do that.
This is great advice. Talk to as many people as possible, including those who didn't make it through to PhD. If you talk to those who made it, you are getting a very biased sample. Ask to talk to some students who left with a masters or otherwise.
> I need from you a few paragraphs describing your personal interests,
> advising style or philosophy, background and professional interests.
> ... I'm preparing a document to give the freshman for them to use to
> select an advisor. I need to receive your info by early next week.
I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, majored in mathematics and Computer
Science at Yale University, and I got my PhD in Computer Science at CMU. I've
lived in Paris, Hong Kong, Peking, and New Jersey.
I tend to look for weak, uncertain students and feed off of their
insecurities; by preying on their poor self-images, I manage to temporarily
assuage my own feelings of inadequacy and failure. I've also found
undergraduate advising to be a terrific vehicle for venting a lot
of my own pent-up rage and frustration.
I'm not sure if this counts as a philosophy, but it's the closest thing I've
got to an "advising style."
> Thanks again for volunteering to advise!
My pleasure.
do people actually expect meaningful advising in undergrad? my adviser hardly even had a chance to "vent" at me (he didn't really seem like the type anyway). I met with him once each semester as a formality to get the key I needed to register for classes. aside from the one time he suggested I not take the three hardest courses in the major concurrently, he didn't really say much. I was usually in and out in fifteen minutes.
The page that used to link to it said, "At MIT, my students chose me after reading a [little thumbnail bio](link to just the first paragraph) published by the undergraduate office. But you can see the [original, pre-censored version](the link you posted) that I mailed in." Much of Shivers's (excellent) humor has been purged from his home page; that may unfortunately be necessary in today's more puritanical times.
I was an undergraduate work-study student working in my university lab. I got to talking with a Ph.D student helping set up his equipment,
"how long you been working on this?"
"Almost 10 years."
"Seems really long."
"Yes, normally it's 5 years but I can't enough time to finish it. I'm always working on Prof. Engineer's research projects."
"I mean can't you just leave?"
"No, not at all. You are completely beholden to your advisor. Can't get money, lab time, assistants without them. I'd have to walk away from all my research."
I was gobsmacked. Professor Engineer was teaching a course I was taking, though he wouldn't recognize me in my shop bunny suit. His attitude towards students was nothing like his attitude towards his graduate researchers. This was not the first story I heard and I assumed that's how grad school worked.
Academia is probably unavoidably abusive because it’s all personal relationships[1] but PhDs are definitely abusogenic compared to professional doctorates like JDs or MDs. You absolutely need your supervisor[2].
[1] Academic science is one of the most feudal environments I have ever personally experienced, and human genetics perhaps even more so. A few large groups of collaborators with connected pedigrees share post-docs and promote each other’s work, and fund young researchers coming up through their network. Any researcher who crosses one of the lords of human genetics could be excluded from a whole patronage set, and sources of funding, as these networks populate the grant-review boards.
[2] It also illustrated a truth in academia from what little I’ve seen and experienced within it: it is a highly feudal culture defined by patronage networks and an ordered understanding of the relationship of superiors to subordinates. As they say: “You come at the king, you best not miss.”
This is one of the downsides of a centrally planned economy where all the funds are allocated by an authority who doesn't profit from investment returns.
I'm told this is a common path, at least in CS. apply to a phd program to get funding, do some research, take some courses, then drop out because you "just can't handle it" once you have enough credits for your free masters degree.
Maybe you're just putting it this simplistically for the rhetoric, but if you're doing research it's not really free. You're actually getting paid (albeit not much) and having your tuition waived to do work as a researcher.
I don't have any firsthand experience, this is just what a few of my friends at CMU have told me. they also complain about their paltry stipend, which I find kind of amusing considering that the waived tuition + stipend is close to what I gross for my fulltime SWE gig.
Grad student visas are a whole animal. Transitioning from an F1 to a H1b, or green card, is fraught with it's own complications. That's why most graduate schools are stacked international students. Americans and permanent residents wouldn't put up with it. And that is by design.
This is really odd to me. In most contexts I’ve experienced, the professor’s research and the student’s are more or less one and the same. Yes, you might have an extra project, but how could someone get stuck for an extra five years?
That's not how it works in a lab that relies on expensive equipmentvand multi-year research programs. Those PhD thesis projects are minor variants on your PIs research program.
Professor's will normally have 1-10 projects simultaneously from what I gather. They rely on the grad students to do the actual gruntwork. If you are doing research in X and the professor pivots you to his project Y what are your options.?
Clean room tyvek coveralls that cover head to toe. You'll see them in automotive paint shops and electronic rooms. This was a hypersonic lab so even a strand of hair, blown at +2000mph, could do serious damage to equipment.
And since I was working between classes it made it easier to change.
I think the problem here is credentialism. People have been incentivized too strongly to need a degree from the most prestigious institution and so put up with things they wouldn't have before. Great work is being done all over the world now, there is no reason people should still see one of a few schools as a requirement for a serious resume.
This is very very common. As long as professors publish, they can get away with a lot of things, bonus points of the students are indentured to their H1B. I've seen Ph.D students in their 30s, mother of children, cry in front of me because of the abusive and neglectful actions of their advisors. They essentially run their lab as a personal fiefdom, and HR is powerless in this situation. Sexual harrassment cases are moth-balled, meanwhile the school prints tons of material talking about gender-equality, etc.
I've been on a number of conference calls where people (both male and female) break down in tears from pressure or bad coworkers. Tears aren't all that rare or a big deal.
WTF yes they are. Only an utterly dysfunctional corporate culture would tolerate putting people under that amount of stress.
Ignoring "be a decent human being" for a moment, and only looking at the money (because this is one way to communicate with dysfunctional corps): companies have a duty of care to protect their staff from harm, and this includes mental distress. By not addressing the abuse the company is leaving itself open to costly legal action.
To be clear, I 200% agree with you (if there is such a thing), but it is still a normal state of affairs in multiple fields. I never personally lived it, but a few people close to me worked in healthcare and that kind of "brings you to tear" workplace abuse is downright common. Demeaning comments and forced overtime are a weekly if not daily occurrence.
Should they accept it? I guess not, but once it's normalized they partake as well and it doesn't change.
This is especially harder for international students because they are likely entering a new educational system and dont know what is the right thing to do in this scenario.
Friends told me that a former advisor started a side business counseling couples, and made some of his students pretend to be married participants during larger group sessions.
One kicked a PhD student out of her lab after he spoke to a local news reporter about his line of research without her approval. Not even a scientific article, just a personal interview. He started over in a new line of research.
Yes, that's right. An MIT grad student should perform a study across all universities to get a representative sample before writing a blog post about his experiences. This is the only acceptable thing. He is not permitted to share what happened to him.
That’s a fair amount more snarky than I intended my comment to be taken.
When I was a grad student I talked to grad students from a lot of other schools. I went to conferences, made friends, sent emails to folks doing research in my field. In the course of events we compared notes on advisors. As a consequence I knew that the professors in my department weren’t outliers.
For what it's worth, I've actually been warned against their physics department for grad school. The other rumour I heard is that Harvard is even worse (for physics grad students). Tons of toxic behaviour like sabotaging labmates in the name of competition and advisors holding onto students for like a year after they should have graduated to pump out that last paper from them.
Actually, I've heard that chemistry departments are a standout in terms of abuse and that seems true just from the students I've talked to at my institution. There's like this weird old school attitude of "this is the way we've always done it" so I'm going to pass you through the flames too. Add that to the motivation of "if I can just get through this then I can get a cushy pharma job".
Come to think of it, the news stories I remember (just off the top of my head) of advisors pushing their students to the point of suicide were chem. advisors.
(1) Most don't want to be quants. It's a soul-sucking no work-life-balance career path. You're getting paid better, but it's a hyper-abusive work environment.
(2) Quant hiring is super-competitive. most physics students wouldn't get jobs. A lot of quants are physicists, but the converse isn't true.
(3) And students? Not so much. Quants like to hire Ph.Ds or possibly ABDs.
Ones who are ALSO good programmers can go the CS route, but most aren't. You need to do basic programming to do physics, but not industry-grade software engineering.
It's not a hard set of skills for physics grad students to pick up, but it's a bit more than a boot camp. Most of the deep stuff is there. There's a lot of shallow stuff at this point, though.
Most don't want to do the work (not implying laziness -- it's about interest / fit / etc.).
There are definitely unpleasant quant shops. But there are pleasant ones, too. Interviewing with shops is like asking people to dance. If you stop after the first rejection, you're doing it wrong.
I went to a SUNY school. My advisor kept me waiting 20 minutes after outside of his office for an appointment made a week earlier, only to walk out with coat on, announcing that he was going to happy hour. He suggested that i set up another the following week through the department secretary.
I walked over to do that, discovering that he was actually going to happy hour at the airport, and from there India, and wouldn't be back for a month. Ended up getting locked out of classes as I couldn't register.
I’ll second that - I went to a decent uni (in EU) and while I escaped a lot of the negativity a few very close colleagues of mine in an almost identical lab went through years of hell at the same institution. It totally could have been me in their position if my focus had been just slightly different. It was kinda just was luck I ended up where I did.
I think about it a lot and how I’m sure a lot of brilliant people are not able to fulfill their potential due to these issues.
"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" - Lord Acton
The underlying issue is the huge power differential between advisers and students. Whenever there is such a power differential, abuse is almost inevitable.
I fear that unless that power differential gets addressed, any solutions are going to just be superficial band-aids on a festering wound.
"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power." - David Brin
Eh, I think if you replaced all the people with others, but left the power structure in place, you'd get a similar result. That's why it doesn't just happen at MIT, but at pretty much every university I've heard the inside scoop on.
I disagree. The power differential is not the underlying issue.
Power is certainly a part of it but the underlying issue comes down to oversight + accountability. Both in specific written rules and in general societal norms that influence how those rules are used.
Lack of accountability is part of the power structure. At MIT, if you do something sufficiently nasty as a faculty member to embarrass the Institute, everyone is now pressured into signing NDAs / non-disclosures. If you don't, you're liable to get scapegoated yourself.
This article seems to talk about one particular professor, if I'm not wrong. Does anyone know if the majority of the advisors at MIT behave like this? Has anyone else on this forum had any experience like this? I'm sure if the advisor is an influential person who brings in a lot of research money, the administrators would try to ignore these complaints. I recently read about a case in Melbourne Uni. The professor was accused of sexual harassment and the uni only gave him a voluntary retirement and protected him from prosecution.
I know of a case at Melbourne uni where a post-doc was extremely verbally abusive to the phd-students they were supposed to be helping.
The several candidates came forward to HR, but HR apparently wasn't able to do anything about it because "it wasn't physical" and it "wasn't against a member of the staff". Completely disgraceful from the Uni
.
The only reason any justice was done was that those close to the matter did not renew their contract, so they were essentially let go. HR IS USELESS!
WOW.. That's terrible. I was thinking about applying at Melbourne Uni for a graduate course in sciences department. I've to admit that I was attracted to it mostly because of the uni's global reputation. It's very expensive. Now I'm reconsidering. Just because someone is an expert in a field doesn't give them the right to be abusive. There are plenty people who're outstanding in there field of expertise and are also very nice and humble people. I don't understand what people get from such behaviour.
I wouldn't say that this is a pervasive problem, this is single issue over a decade. And it was dealt with by the relevant Managers but not the University HR. It's more of an indictment of HR in general rather than the culture of the uni.
I would still consider the Uni if I were you! What were you thinking of doing there?
Yes, you're right. I overreacted. I was thinking about applying for a masters of science in Statistics. I'm doing an online course from MIT to earn some credits. I could use these at RMIT and Deakins for advanced standing. I was interested in applying at Melbourne Uni just because of their ranking. However, after doing some of those courses from MIT, I'm finding it really hard to do it with a full time job. Let's see how I go. :)
As a current MIT PhD student, this ideas are incredibly important to hear. Establishing an appropriate widespread sense of what normal is crucial for changing culture.
More people need to talk about changing labs as well. A surprising fraction of PhD students do this and is fairly normal as well. I switched labs in the middle of my PhD and had the unusual and lucky opportunity to be able to take my work with me.
This comes via Graduate Students for a Healthy MIT, Black Graduate Student Association, and Graduate Student Council Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee as a bit of context - the author themselves is anonymous.
Note that I've seen advisors who came through an older system (ie, if this prof was older) not mesh well with new groups of candidates.
You OBVIOUSLY need to talk to a few students - ideally those with a somewhat similar background to yours - to get a sense of fit.
Some notes.
In old system, if a grad student had kids (usually you waited till much more plentiful back then tenure track position to start family), the (male) grad student's partner stayed home full time with the children. Now families often have two working / studying parents - so your grad student is MUCH more likely to have more parental responsibilities - which despite what anyone says IS a big distraction (yes, I know lean in says you can have it all, but raising kids is wonderful but also takes time).
Manner of speaking etc. The article mentions the advisor making fun of how folks speak (??). That's a weird thing to make fun of frankly, but groups someone advised used to be very homogenous. I notice this just with age gap - so much more shorthand / casual communication style.
"My advisor’s words would pierce right through me and the period at the end of each sentence felt like a punch in the gut."
Pretty intense stuff! A period = a punch?
BTW - I think 80% of the phd system is a bit of a racket :) But that's only because I got to hear (daily) complaints about advisors and research and being a phd candidate (and then postdoc hell continues this!!).
I don't want to condone violence or anything, but I've always wondered how advisors like this don't get murdered. I've definitely met PhD students who would prefer prison to the alternatives of quitting or staying under their advisor.
I suppose people who are inclined in that direction would get out some other way before things get that bad.
Fair warning: you _never_ get the full picture if you only hear one side of it. It is possible that the advisor is a manipulative asshole (though it's unlikely that they are to such an extent), or it is possible that the author grew up always getting participation trophies and now isn't getting any (far more likely, IMO). So before you render your judgment, wait for at least some semblance of corroboration.
Because you don't get to stick around if you abuse people to the extent described in the article. At least I haven't seen it, in a quarter century of my adult life. I quite frequently see folks who treat any demands that they do what they've signed up to do as "abuse" though.
Think about it: say you are a judge and you wanted to _really_ understand why someone is divorcing their spouse. Would you listen to just one spouse or both?
> you don't get to stick around if you abuse people to the extent described in the article
It's very uncommon for student complaints to affect a professor's employment, especially a tenured one. As long as the professor brings in grant money, doesn't piss off the entire department, and graduates at least a few students, they are probably fine. It would take something beyond generic cruelty to students for a person that checks all three boxes to not "stick around" --- think something illegal or against university rules, and with clear evidence.
If this account were to be taken at face value (which it shouldn't be until evidence is presented), then the professor was abusing everyone for years, not just a handful of students. That, indeed, would not be allowed to continue.
I'm getting sick and tired of people taking on the role of judge, jury, and executioner, with zero corroboration or hard evidence.
Here's the dirty secret: competent wifebeaters look like really splendid people to all the world. The incompetent ones without social skills are weeded out early, that leaves the good ones.
An economist and his friend were walking down the street, when they spied a 100$ bill lying on the pavement. The economist strode past without a second look. His friend tugged on his sleeve, "Why didn't you pick it up! That was 100$ !"
The economist snorts, and says, "If that was a real 100$ bill, someone else would have picked it up already."
That's a good question, so I'll answer it with a question. Do you think Joe Biden should withdraw from the race due to the "credible" rape accusation? If the answer is "no", because there's no hard evidence, then we concur.
We're not talking party politics here. The point is that the downfall of Harvey Weinstein disproves the idea that you don't get to stick around if you abuse people.
Well he didn't get to stick around, did he? As powerful as he was, he was immediately disowned by everyone once his victims came forward, and there was corroboration and evidence. Whereas here it is suggested that we make judgments based on a _sole anonymous account_.
And no, you don't get to pick where you apply #metoo and where you don't. You either "believe all women" or "require evidence". There's no pick-and-choose.
His case shows it's possible to make it to the top, and to stay there for decades, as an abuser.
You're emphasising whether it's possible to get to the top as an abuser, stay there as an abuser, and die before getting caught. This has little bearing on my point, although we know from the Jimmy Savile case that it is indeed possible.
> There's no pick-and-choose.
As I just stated, I'm not interested in discussing this. My point here is specific.
You don't think the thousands of PhDs who've had abusive relationships with their advisors corroborate things? I've known tenure track faculty who have said "I don't want to work with women - they don't work as hard" and later got tenure.
There exist good advisors. There exist happy students. There also exist abusive advisors and systems to protect students are nearly nonexistent. This has nothing to do with "participation trophies".
I would think so, if it weren't for the fact that similar stories come from so many different Ph.D. programs, at so many different universities, over so many decades.
> Too often I have been told to be proud of the great work I am a part of, as if this should outweigh the negative and harmful things myself and others have experienced.
Actually, that's how it works in the real world from my experience.
Most geniuses have terrible shadows that are as dark and long as they are brilliant and tall.
Most of us feel really lucky to get things done and be a part of something, and when we have to bear an unkind comment here or there... well, we're emotionally developed adults who balance the positive with the negative. It takes a lot of entitlement to expect to never hear anything negative or offensive or unkind.*
College should prepare you for the real world, not shelter you from it.
* Obligatory before someone makes a strawman: Of course if the advisor does something illegal, that's another matter, but the article never stated anything illegal being done. Just unkind from what I read.
I am deeply sorry that the sentiment you express has been your experience. That is not the way it is or must be everywhere, and I hope you are treated better in the future.
Even so, I want to say explicitly that the idea that we should allow geniuses to abuse us and harass us because they are geniuses is dangerous and misguided nonsense. Being smart is not an excuse to behave poorly. With rare exception, producing something great for the world, or believing you are working on something great, is not justification for hurting others or not taking into consideration their needs or feelings, especially when they are working for you to try to help you.
I also think that your reduction of 100-hour-minimum work weeks, no free time, emotional manipulation to prevent reporting, and frequent unnecessary cruelty disguised as "advice" or "help" to "unkind comments" is absurd. If people chose this lifestyle, knowing what they were getting into, that's one thing (and even then, it would still be dubious to demand it in the first place) - but clearly the author and their peers were mislead and manipulated into it.
Finally, what is illegal and what is immoral are not the same thing, and we can and should hold people, as a society, to a higher standard than "guess they didn't break the law" when we put them in positions of power over other people.
Edited to add: I had the pleasure of working as an undergrad with several professors and PHD students in a research capacity. Some of these people, I would absolutely consider "geniuses" in terms of both intellect and achievements. I still speak with many of them, and consider some of them good friends. I never, not once, observed or heard of people being treated in the ways described in this article (nor was I myself), despite the relatively prestigious people I worked with and their relatively prestigious work. It is not that way everywhere.
If there was serious abuse I'd 100% agree with you.
One problem we have is the word abuse, based on the modern definition and usage, encompasses a range of activities from things that are only slightly unkind and rather run of the mill to extreme examples of verbal cruelty.
The particular points highlighted in the article don't strike me as being on the cruel side.
My understanding of the world is that the higher you rise, the thicker your skin needs to be.
Of course we shouldn't tolerate gratuitous cruelty.
But anyone who has ever worked with very high level people will know they can be capricious. And for most of us, getting to those high levels is an honor.
Personally in my career I've provided services to successful hard to deal with entrepreneurs. Was it a PITA? Yes. Did I learn a lot? Yes. The most demanding, harsh people are those that test your meddle and forge you in fire. Not the ones that are most pleasant.
The reason elite universities are elite is because they push people to the brink, they are designed to demand as much from a human being as can be demanded. See, my issue with the article has to do with the author wanting to be an elite researcher holding the highest and most elite title (a PHD) in the most elite university in the world (MIT) and not thinking it's going to be a ton of hours a week. IMO, that's how you determine who is elite and committed; by applying stress and seeing who can handle it at the highest level.
I mean, logically the guy who can work 80 hours a week will do more researcher, which will compound, and far outpace the productivity of someone who works 40 hours a week. This seems like a really logical and reasonable basis for how we've set up society and I've yet to meet anyone who is elite in their field who worked only 40 hours a week to get there.
Now, I'll concede: Maybe there was an accusation in that article you consider so gratuitos and bad that it's worth condemning this institution which for better or worse has figured out how to squeeze out human innovation and potential like nothing before in history. I'll also concede I might be jaded and just accepting of things that are changing and should change.
And last, I believe most things should move away from reputation based systems to more meritocratic systems, so if you want to talk about removing the biggest whip that the article mentions (not being able to leave for fear of a bad reference) - I 100% support such efforts.
> Maybe there was an accusation in that article you consider so gratuitos and bad that it's worth condemning this institution which for better or worse has figured out how to squeeze out human innovation and potential like nothing before in history.
1. There is a common fallacy. Just because a system is getting good results (even the best results) doesn't mean that every part of it is well-chosen to contribute to those good results. It's entirely possible that it has bad parts that worsen the results, in spite of which the results manage to be good.
2. Article says: "My advisor was hemorrhaging students, yet no red flags were raised. ... Those who planned to complete their PhD left the group or left MIT."
This sounds like clearly a waste of resources, to have lots of people begin PhD programs and either abandon them or transfer. The phrasing of the paragraph seems to be saying that none of this particular professor's PhD students stayed with him long enough to get their degree—which, if true, means it's not just weeding out the bottom X%, but that it's driving everyone away. And if it's just one professor, that's one thing, but the article says that the administration dismissed all complaints by saying all faculty had their own "methods of advising". Which rings true to an account from a friend of mine:
As a PhD student, he was the "golden boy" of the department, doing very well. After some years, he wanted to get his degree, and said that some of his earlier work should suffice to qualify. His advisor said, no, I insist you keep working on this project, and if you don't, I will not recommend you and will generally prevent you from getting a degree. (I'm hazy on the exact details of what was threatened.) I think it was also impossible to have the other professors in the department recommend him—I think my friend said it was because they weren't willing to oppose the advisor. My friend went to the administration. They said, we believe in academic freedom for our faculty. He said, all right, I believe in suing you. They said, what do you want? He said, I'm not asking for anything outlandish—just bring in a well-regarded professor, a neutral party both sides can agree to, and have him judge. This was arranged, and the professor said, yes, this is worthy of a PhD. My friend got his degree, and left the university system permanently after that.
> My advisor was hemorrhaging students, yet no red flags were raised. ... Those who planned to complete their PhD left the group or left MIT.
This literally tells me nothing.
What's the average completion rate in that field? What's it for other great professors?
"hemorrhaging", like "abuse" is very vague language. I don't like condemning people based on this. It seems like a slippery slope.
Again, if you can point out a particular accusation in that article you feel deserves complete condemnation and the type of upheaval we are seeing, please point it out. I'd like to learn.
Otherwise, I'll continue to see this as a failed Navy Seal complaining about how tough it is to become a Navy Seal without understanding that the difficulty is built into the concept of why it's elite. If it was easy, there'd be no status associated to it.
No one "expects" to go through life without hearing insults, but that does not mean they should be tolerated. I fully expect to continue to hear racist, homophobic statements from US politicians. I do not want to, and I want to work to change that.
Sure, the real world sucks. I don't see that as a reason to prevent colleges from improving.
> Sure, the real world sucks. I don't see that as a reason to prevent colleges from improving.
Absolutely. The problem I see is the deterioration of educational quality that seems to correlate with this improvement.
Also, at some point, you need to accept that to be elite, you need to do things that others can't and won't do. A high drop out rate to becoming elite is precisely what defines the elite title being sought.
They already went to college. PhD students are employees doing self guided research that brings in lots of recognition and money to these institutions. They are making little money yet doing work harder than 99.9% of people. They should not be demeaned. There are many work environments that are not like this and we should not pretend like it is the norm. If it is genuinely the norm, the we should work to fix it, not just say 'thats how the world works.' we get to define how the world works. Let's make it less shitty.
100%. For me, Western Capitalism has been doing this my whole life.
When I was growing up, in the little town in Central America that I come from, no one EVER traveled on an aero plane. Now it's normal. It was normal for kids to not have shoes. Now it's unheard of.
I hope we can continue to make the world less shitty.
Also, I hope there's more niceness. I also hope the fight for niceness doesn't make the world truly shitty. There's plenty of historical examples of the fight for what's right leading to what's very wrong.
> You cant expect others to toil away to benefit your "genius"
Brilliant reply. Except... I never said my genius.
The fact that you make up arguments and distort what I said is evidence of the emotive nature of your response. I'll invite you to improve the quality of your discourse. I have respect for people who I disagree with as long as they can show the basic decency of engaging with what I said and not behave dishonestly by making up fake and silly arguments. I really dislike sophism.
You need enough hubris to overcome friction, to dismiss or at least reframe the question, "Surely if this were possible, someone else would have thought of it first, right?"
But you still get one quadrant that's mostly assholes and another that's more reasonable people.
For a given event, the observed population is a factor of the number of distinct occurrences and the duration of each occurrence (eg, why Apple sales numbers are smaller than usage numbers). A kind genius will know when they are beaten, and wrap up the effort. The asshole will persist (increasing duration) and deflect (increasing anecdotes, and the likelihood those anecdotes will be recalled).
Essentially you have not only survivor bias in effect, but also the Availability Heuristic telling you that if it's easier to recall 5 instances of assholes instead of nice people, then there must be a lot more assholes.
Yes, but the question is what are you going to do about it?
I'll tell you what happens in other countries: Cut all the tall poppies down.
I love my new home, America, because she doesn't do this and it happens in my original home country. I love the results of the American system, it's something I'm grateful to live in everyday. Unfortunately I've personally witness that mentality creep in here.
The perniciousness of the go along to get along system is hard to describe to someone who hasn't lived it.
Good advisors will probably have a few students who will speak up for them, and great advisors almost certainly will. In contrast, bad advisors will probably have a few students who give middling recommendations, cryptic comments, or outright warnings. Good departments typically have meet-the-current-students-without-faculty-present events to facilitate exactly this discussion. If the potential advisor does not happily put you in contact with current or recent students, that alone is a red flag.
This is not foolproof. Even a great advisor may have one bitter student, and a generally terrible advisor might still have some good student relationships. But having a bad advisor will make grad school so much harder. This is a situation where doing a bit of due diligence can have a huge impact.
I was lucky; I had a great advisor, and I was always happy to talk to potential students, since I wanted my advisor to have more good students. Talk to students!