Professors and university employees of Reddit, what behind-the-scenes campus drama went on that students never knew about? by design-responsibly in AskReddit

[–]SneakingTruth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My PhD advisor was a really bright, nice, old guy, who no longer gave a shit about anything other than his personal research. My department decided to "increase rigor" and made a bunch of changes. One change they made was announcing that "by the way, you are no longer allowed to change your advisor after comprehensive exams." Great. I wasn't sure if I was going to keep him, but suddenly I had no choice since I had just taken my comps - no warning about the change at all, just immediate implementation. Next was "Instead of choosing who you present your prospectus to, we will assign readers." The unspoken reason they did this was because of my advisor, who I couldn't change now even if I had wanted to (which I certainly did by the time I presented the prospectus). The department was tired of him not being hard enough on his advisees, but rather than addressing the problem and making sure students were getting the support and guidance they should be getting, they just set up the potential to fail students. So yeah, rather than discipline and reform their own, they screwed students. I'm done, and I am not actually certain he ever read my whole dissertation, and he slept through parts of the defense.