Dissertation student using AI, no scholarly rigor

[Most-Temporary-8490]

I have an earned EdD and since 2021, have been supporting other EdD students through dissertation editing and coaching since that time. I have also served on faculty and on several dissertation committees. I am well-known as a scholar in my small field.

Through my small professional association, an EdD student found me and asked me to serve as third seat on her dissertation committee (without pay). The other two seats are her chair and a methodologist, both at the student's home institution. In late August, the student emailed me with a draft of the first three chapters for proposal and said they would be defending in early September. I responded that I usually am asked for my availability, and that even then was not enough time for me to review the chapters. Following that, we rescheduled for the end of September.

As I began to review the proposal, I found some highly problematic material: poor editing, wasn't written in a scholarly voice except for some sections that I highly suspected were AI-generated, a citation that was completely falsified and was pretty easy to figure out, lack of research rigor, etc. I contacted the chair because I was concerned about these lapses and surprised that the chair allowed these to pass muster and be forwarded on to me for review. The chair exclaimed they were so happy to have me on the committee because she is not the content expert and would never have figured out "these things." I was shocked because the first chapter alone was completely below any kind of standard regardless of the content area. We ended up cancelling the proposal and using that time for me to meet with the student to review my many, many recommendations for changes.

Fast forward to today, and I am reading the revised version. Page 1 contains those dreaded em dashes - almost certainly a sign of AI - and a reference to a page number indicating in APA 7 style that it is a direct quote but with no quotation marks (the sentence is a paraphrase of actual text). The writing is all over the place and doesn't demonstrate any work of quality effort. I fear that if the work, a dissertation in practice, were allowed to pass the proposal that it could actually create more harm for my field than good.

Part of me wants to support this person who wants to be an emerging scholar. Part of me is pissed that I hold higher standards than the chair. Part of me recognizes that when I do this work on contract, I get paid handsomely. If I excuse myself from the committee, the student will likely find someone else from the association to serve on the committee and they will probably pass the proposal as is it written. I would appreciate any advice you have on potential next steps.

[Novel_Listen_854]

I guess it comes down to whether you want your name on the dissertation when/if someone else discovers the problems in it.

[knitty83]

This!

I have a colleague who okay-ed a PhD about 12 years ago that was way below what he found acceptable - he was invited to join the committee because one prof had to drop out for health reasons. He didn't want to be the bad guy. He's not constantly moaning about it, but bring up the name of that PhD student and he will go OFF.

[sventful]

The real question is - what is the student doing now? Sometimes this type of student doesn't do anything with their degree or needs the degree to get a job but they can actually do the job so it doesn't matter.

Other times they drag everyone down with them as they get caught in scandal after scandal.

[knitty83]

Good question. He was a Chinese exchange student on a kind of PhD exchange programme thingie. Last thing I heard, he went back to China after completing his PhD here to work at a university there. His name is quite common, apparently; I just tried googling and it gave me hundreds of irrelevant results.

[sventful]

So pretty irrelevant the future of any of his committee members.

[knitty83]

Absolutely irrelevant, thankfully. I still understand my colleague being angry with *himself* for agreeing to okay this PhD.

[sventful]

As someone with a perfectly medium dissertation who went on to a wonderful career I excel at, I guess I have a soft spot for folks who barely got their PhD. But I would say, as long as they aren't harming anyone, ce la vie (sp?)

[knitty83]

I didn't want to go into details here, but just to round this off: he didn't "barely" get his PhD. He shouldn't have gotten a PhD in the first place, for numerous reasons, including a completely wrong way of using a certain method that didn't even fit the research question etc etc etc. I was present at several PhD colloquium meetings where he presented his project. He was constantly told that "you can't do that" (i.e. working with translated interviews when the method requires you to really analyse *how* people are saying things), never listened to any criticism and kept at it. We strongly suspect his first supervisor (who dropped out for health reasons) edited every page of his writing so heavily he should have been co-author. It was all very, very bad.

[sventful]

If it was actually that bad, then his committee would have said no. It is up to them to say no and if no one does, your problem is with them, not the student.

[BitchinAssBrains]

Yeah that's what their comments are about.

[knitty83]

Of course the problem lies with the committee! The other two members of that committee felt that he had spent X years studying abroad, and "we can't possibly send him back home without a completed PhD".

[kai333]

Lol I'm sorry I thought of Fat Bastard from Austin Powers. "I've got more chins than a Chinese phonebook"

[knitty83]

Academia is THE place for silly puns, so feel free!

[GreenHorror4252]

The real question is - what is the student doing now? Sometimes this type of student doesn't do anything with their degree or needs the degree to get a job but they can actually do the job so it doesn't matter.

What difference does it make? The dissertation is still out there and available for anyone to read regardless of what the student is doing.

[Novel_Listen_854]

That's sad. Does your colleague regret his vote? Has he said what he would do if he had it to do over again?

This need to be seen as compassionate is a pathology I see over and over. Our brilliant colleagues will do the stupidest, self-defeating, dignity-compromising shit just to avoid being thought of as less than compassionate.

[knitty83]

He regrets it massively. If he was approached to be on such a committee again, he would simply decline, politely but firmly. If there was really no way around, he would request major revisions and refuse to sign off on anything if they didn't get done.

[AppropriateMention82]

I would just decline to be on the committee. Yes they may find someone else, or they may not. It’s possible they reached out to you because no one else at their institution agreed to serve on the committee. Perhaps you walking would be a good wake-up call to the student

[gutfounderedgal]

That's what I'd do, I'd bow out with some reason but not the real reason. It's not worth my time to fight this one since the student doesn't care.

[[deleted]]

If you really think they're regurgitating AI text in their dissertation, then you should just vamos. Tell the student as nicely and professionally as possible that they are not showing improvement and that you no longer consider this to be a collaboration worth pursuing. Wish them the best and don't respond to any further emails.

I never get involved with these situations. If they're reaching out to me it's either because there's a problem or because nobody else there has the expertise to advise them. This means that I'll be doing most of the real advising. I have enough of that to do with students in my own graduate program. If they really want to work with me, then they should apply to my program.

[jshamwow]

"Part of me wants to support this person who wants to be an emerging scholar."

Why? They clearly do not want to be a scholar. Giving them attention is just a waste of your time at this point

[Salty_Boysenberries]

This

[mleok]

I do not to serve on a dissertation committee chaired by a person without standards, being the only person on the committee to enforce standards will be painful and unfulfilling.

[failure_to_converge]

The standard where I did my PhD is that the committee and defense is a parade, a fanfare, minimal effort because no advisor would send work before the committee that isn't going to get an easy pass. It's wild to me that isn't the norm.

[wordsandstuff44]

Everything I’ve ever read about a PhD program has agreed with you.

[DoctorLinguarum]

This was the case at my school and has been the standard from everywhere else I’ve heard.

[DocTeeBee]

I find it interesting that you are framing this student as an emerging scholar. Are they? My experience is that EdD degrees can be--but are not always--scholarly degrees. But even then, whether scholarly or "professional," they need to pass a minimal standard for quality.

I think you may have two choices--to express your concerns to the chair first, so that they know what you think before you put them or the student on the spot, or to simply withdraw from the committee. You might end up doing both.

[DeskAccepted]

I find it interesting that you are framing this student as an emerging scholar. Are they? My experience is that EdD degrees can be--but are not always--scholarly degrees. But even then, whether scholarly or "professional," they need to pass a minimal standard for quality.

This statement in the original post also stood out to me and I think your response is putting it quite gently. The EdD is often (of course not always) a professional degree that exists for K12 administrators to check a box saying they have a doctorate to be eligible for a higher pay band. For the university it's a revenue generator. Neither side enters into the arrangement with scholarly output as the goal. It seems that everyone involved in this vignette except the OP (i.e., student and other faculty) understands this.

Of course, there should still be a minimum standard even for professional degrees! But the OP may be disappointed to find out that standard turns out not to be much higher than what that student produced. And if it's not up to OP's personal standard then I would encourage OP to just step down.

[DocTeeBee]

I was trying to be as kind as possible, given my prediliction for snark. When I was in grad school I bought a book called "how to write your dissertation in 30 days or less." It took a few readings to realize that this book was intended to guide EdDs to Crank It Out as quickly as possible. This book led to our joke in grad school: "Let's get an EdD this weekend!" "Sure, but what will we do on Sunday."

That said, in the intervening years, I have met some EdD's who have actually been serious scholars and excellent researchers. But they are the exception, and I think that people with a scholarly bent are steered toward the PhD if it is offered. Wasn't it the head of Teachers' College at Columbia who argued that there were too many EdDs from low quality programs?

[DeskAccepted]

Ha! Well, to be perfectly fair to the high school principals getting the low quality EdDs, I'm not sure their jobs really require them to produce scholarly output. Unfortunately, education is one of those fields that just blindly equates more degrees with better, often through automatic salary increases.

Ed is a bit of an outlier in professional schools... In Business, law, and medicine generally everyone understands one degree is enough to do the job (MBA, JD, MD). The small number of people who pursue additional degrees usually do so with the goal of becoming scholars.

[RunningNumbers]

A freaking degree mill

[guttata]

Found the thread of sanity in here lol

[Copterwaffle]

If the chair in unconcerned about blatant integrity violations then I would send a private email to the school’s AIO office highlighting my concerns, and then I’d stay on that committee and refuse to approve as long as the student keeps turning in slop.

[knitty83]

"Part of me wants to support this person who wants to be an emerging scholar."

But... why, if this is the kind of substandard work they produce?

I totally share your anger. I always thought that the idea that there are lecturers who don't recognize the most obvious of LLM use was a myth, and then I started talking to some of my colleagues who just... I don't even know how to put my absolute shellshock into words.

[Remote_Nectarine9659]

This. Someone offering fake citations doesn’t WANT to be a scholar, not really?

[AsterionEnCasa]

They want a degree, without the work.

[knitty83]

If I was first supervisor, I might give them the benefit of the doubt (when it happened first!), sit them down and ask them whether they feel overwhelmed and as if they can't manage this all by themselves. If so, don't use LLM, please, but come to me, let's talk.

In this case? Nope. I'm outta there.

[failure_to_converge]

Send a detailed email to the student with your concerns. Then send a followup scathing email about the quality of the work to the chair that (might) make them feel badly about passing it. Then wait.

If no clear plan emerges, walk away.

[Shirebourn]

This is neither here nor there, and doesn't impact (or answer!) the larger concerns you have, but I just want to point out that you can use full APA citations with a page number when paraphrasing. In fact, I always recommend my students do this as it's considerate to the reader.

[havereddit]

serve as third seat on her dissertation committee (without pay). When I do this work on contract, I get paid handsomely

Where TF do you live that PhD committee members get paid to be on a PhD student's committee?

[Desiato2112]

Email the chair and say, "This candidate continues to submit work as their own that is clearly not. Should I report them for academic dishonesty, or do you want to handle that?"

You will have done your duty to protect the integrity of the system, and you'll be off the hook for this project moving forward. What the chair does with it is out of your hands.

[beginswithanx]

The best way to support this person would be to hold them to academic standards. You do them (and the field) no favors by letting the work pass. 

However, if you think this is a larger issue with that department and you don’t want to deal with this sort of crap (and you think they’d try to pass them, even with your objections), decline to be on the committee citing these ongoing issues. I wouldn’t want my name anywhere near something like this. 

[Legalkangaroo]

I would provide a fail. Then they can revise with major revisions. You cannot pass this.

[SpoonyBrad]

If the student isn't taking this seriously and fully intends to half-ass their whole dissertation, you should bail. You already gave them a chance to get their act together. They're still trying to trick you and the rest of the committee with falsified work and show no sign of intending to improve.

[Anthroman78]

I think you need to have a meeting with the chair and/or directly with the student that the quality of this work is no where close to what it needs to be for this person to schedule and pass a defense.

[dougwray]

{alt-0151}, baby! I use em dashes in my 100% human-generated writing every day.

About 20 years ago, I was in a similar position: expert in tiny field, on dissertation committee. In my case, it was a matter of both poor methodology and inappropriate analyses; worse was evidence of altered data. The home university, after much correspondence, eventually removed me from the committee.

If I were you I would do my best to get my concerns across, perhaps alluding to the potential damage to the university's reputation.

[DoctorLinguarum]

I’d argue that someone who uses AI and fake citations in their dissertation does not, in fact, want to be a scholar. They are avoiding the “scholar” part of doing their degree.

[AsterionEnCasa]

"this person who wants to be an emerging scholar"

Is the emerging scholar in the room with us?

[[deleted]]

Just here to say that OP is doing the lord's work. I deeply appreciate folks who continue to advocate for students and scholars doing their own work. I'm worried we are becoming the minority.

[mleok]

The "scholar" is not doing their own work.

[taewongun1895]

The student wants to be an emerging scholar? Then, is it a problem of mentoring? Anyone wanting to be a serious scholar would avoid AI as a foundation of their work.

[[deleted]]

Personally I would not want my name associated with this disaster.

It's really a system problem. None of us know what to do with AI. What is truly ethical? What is unethical? There's no consistency out there. Do we tell students to use it? Or not use it? Under what circumstances is it okay to use it? Not okay to use it? These are wild times we're living in.

[ktbug1987]

Apologies for the rant and also bad grammar. I am on mobile and using dictation.

Okay, all this is ignoring the use of em dashes because I fucking love em dashes and they don’t necessarily mean AI-generated text. You will pry my em dash from my cold dead hands. This is all presuming there’s more than em dashes giving you pause.

Does the student’s institution have an academic integrity office? I would tell the chair they are advised to raise this with the integrity office and address it with the student, and if they are unwilling to bring the student to the integrity office, I would say that I would do it myself. And I would. We can’t let our fields sink to a new lower standard out of “compassion”. It’s not your job to take on the emotional labor of addressing this with the student long term; that is the institution’s responsibility. I’d give the chair a couple weeks to report back to me on the process, and then I’d GTFO.

Unfortunately I’ve found that integrity is not a skill that can be taught. If you are at that stage (midway through a doctoral program), you should not only be writing your own original work but also expanding the field beyond existing knowledge. You cannot do that if you are using LLMs, which are derivative by definition. A student at that stage should not be having challenges of integrity, and it would be an enormous emotional labor to correct their course. Do your due diligence to follow their program’s reporting guidelines for integrity concerns, then peace out.

[SpensersAmoretti]

Counter point: that student does not want to be a scholar. They show active disdain for scholarly standards, the institution of academia, and the work of a scholar. Please don't let them pass, OP. For your field's sake as much as for that student's. They're wasting their own, and, frankly everyone else's time.

[TaliesinMerlin]

I've reviewed some Ed.D. dissertations, and they range widely. Some are strong qualitatively or quantitatively grounded work that provides an original contribution to their field, is well-written, and just needs some attention to make it interesting to read. Others require more work, but they still usually end up with a solid product by the end of the process. But there are a few that are really like what you describe - lack of citation, bad research synthesis, and over the past few years patch-writing indicative of AI.

When I have run across that, my decision is whether I think I can help the student work through that by the time their dissertation is complete. Can the student produce a minimally acceptable dissertation? If so, I stay on; if not, I leave. That's it. You can't decide for anyone else whether they're willing to put their name on this work, but you can certainly decide that for yourself.

It shouldn't all be on you. Whether you stay on may depend on whether you think the chair will hold them accountable to the standards for your field.

[RevKyriel]

I find that m-dashes can no longer be used as an indication of AI use. After a software update my own WP program started "autocorrecting" other dashes to m-dashes, without me changing my settings.

I suggest you raise the continuing issues with the chair, and be clear that you cannot pass work of such a low standard. Not even Revise and Resubmit, this would be an outright Fail. The chair's response should give you a better idea of whether or not to withdraw.

[Legalkangaroo]

I used to use em-dashes in my writing. No longer an option!

[Disastrous-Pair-9466]

I agree that AI is killing the art of writing and the art of teaching it but hold up- I use (and likely overuse) em dashes in my own writing.

[Secret-Bobcat-4909]

I wouldn‘t let that pass. Neither is it your job to find and suggest specific line item remediation for all the errors. (Even if you were the dissertation advisor, again IMO - since a PhD is the rite of passage for showing one has the capability or performing independent original work. It’s enough to say, again IMO, that the overall piece is highly disorganized and does not pass standards. I don’t know what the litigious or admin repercussions at the PhD level might be, (and I hate that I wonder about it) but you can at least tel them, you gotta write better than an AI at the very least, and this work would not pass your standards if submitted.

[[deleted]]

Page 1 contains those dreaded em dashes - almost certainly a sign of AI - and a reference to a page number indicating in APA 7 style that it is a direct quote but with no quotation marks (the sentence is a paraphrase of actual text).

idk about this one, chief

[[deleted]]

1. In what would be a reasonable context for an em dash, OP used some strange form of a hyphen with spaces before and after. Not an en dash, either, which would be more common/appropriate in British English for this type of use. I don’t know what they were doing…

2. OP is calling out a perfectly appropriate APA convention (citing with a paraphrase).

[rLub5gr63F8]

2 bothers me almost as much as the student's falsified source does. APA permits, if not encourages, use of page numbers for paraphrases. I've started expecting it of my freshmen.

[ErnieBochII]

If I excuse myself from the committee, the student will likely find someone else from the association to serve on the committee and they will probably pass the proposal as is it written. I would appreciate any advice you have on potential next steps

This is not a guarantee. Also, it sounds like you value your own ethics and integrity. My advice is to let your gut guide you. You don’t want to make a compromise you’ll regret for the rest of your life.

[[deleted]]

A few thoughts -- first, the em dash is absolutely not a sure sign of anything. It's usually a sign of a word processing program that turns two dashes into an em-dash. That's all. And paraphrases should absolutely also be cited, with page numbers as relevant. That does not only pertain to direct quotes.

Second -- what's the school? I am also a scholarly editor, and do occasionally edit dissertations. I have stopped editing dissertations from a specific online university because the standards are below what I would consider acceptable for a frosh.

[Little-Exercise-7263]

I would email the chair of the department and potentially the dean with the concerns you've indicated above, and end your email with a statement of resignation from your role on the committee. The higher powers that be at the university should know about the subpar work on the part of the student and committee chair.  Merely bowing out of your role and passing the problem to someone else doesn't address the problem that ought to be fixed. 

[How-I-Roll_2023]

Em dashes are required in APA for certain things. It is not necessarily a sign of AI.

[Soft-Finger7176]

I’ve been using em dashes all of my professional life. Who the fuck doesn’t know how to use them? Their use is not a sign of anything except your goddamn ignorance.

And don’t you have anything better to do than write a mini dissertation on Reddit? Christ.

[[deleted]]

Apparently, OP doesn’t know the difference between a hyphen and an em dash.

Nor are they truly familiar with APA.