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[kilpikonna]

How did you all like today's First Person contribution?  I thought her disappointment in her students who have not pursued R1 careers (and the way she seemed to morally equate them to plagiarists!) was particularly interesting.

Here's my gut response:

0. Since when is a change in career goals evidence of deception?  Isn't it simpler to imagine that your students wanted one thing when they arrived, and something in their experience convinced them otherwise?

1. If something happens to you more than once, there's probably a reason.  If would-be researchers are showing up to your department in droves and suffering a change of heart midway through, perhaps the environment you're providing is not an encouraging one.  If young academics who are smart enough to do grad-level work and want to teach in higher ed seem to feel that lying to you is the only way of meeting their career goals, perhaps you are sending an unhelpful message to your students.

[scheherazade]

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,42525.0.html

[nardo]

The author of that column does point out the frustration of dealing with graduate students.  That being said, the author has the ability to make career choices, just as do the students. 

However, the author fails to appreciate the fact that norms of a profession often lead students to misrepresentations; that we have to socialize them to what is appropriate; and, most important in my opinion, that students do not come to graduate school with a fully formed sense of what they want to be, or how they will do what they do.  In other words, they are largely ignorant of the options they say they want rather than largely aware of the options they want.

I wanted to teach at a small liberal arts college; it didn't exactly work out that way, as I mainly work with doctoral students.

[lettuceleaf]

The person who wrote this article had certain expectations about the reasons that graduate students would chose to come to graduate school, what they would choose to study and what their eventual career would look like. Not surprisingly, the real world (and life) does not always go the way we expect, which is why not all of the graduate students followed the trajectory plotted out by hu.

Hu should not be disappointed about investing time and effort to help graduate students (one assumes that hu did get some benefit from these interactions, such as co-authorship on conference presentations, journal articles and so on). In any case, what good is knowledge if you don't share it with anyone?

Hu seemed to harbor grudges and resentment against students that didn't meet hu's standard in scholarship. Yet, we must realize that graduate students are a diverse group, with varied abilities. Another thing is that people rise to their own level, whatever degree they may acquire. Some students can be pushed or pulled over all the hurdles until they finally get the degree, but it is almost certain that they will find out in the process that they really don't want, or could not survive, an academic career.

The hard reality is that not everyone is cut out to be a superstar academic (or whatever marks "success" in the author's mind). Hu might be happier if they could accept this fact.

[fosca]

I was one of those people who wanted to be a researcher all my life, entered graduate school only with the hope of getting a position at a research institute and discovering new things about the world, and then discovered that I don't have the aptitude to be a researcher.  I don't have the patience, the drive, or the desire now that I've done it.  So I have a job teaching at a community college, which I enjoy.

Does this mean I lied to the grad school?  No, it means I learned more about myself and changed my mind.  Why can't helping others learn be viewed as importantly as discovering things about the world?  Both are important, both are necessary, and neither involve wasting someone's time.

[post_doc4now]

I too thought it was interesting that the author equated changing one's career plans to deception.  I have seen so many fellow grad students realize that they just weren't cut out for the R1 TT position, no matter how excited and determined they were when they got to grad school.

Besides, in this job market it's very unlikely that new grads will get an R1 TT position so it's unrealistic to expect that to be the career path for every student who comes through your lab.

[readingiscool]

This article really upset me.  If that is the way a seemingly committed, feminist scholar feels about grad education then we're in trouble, because many profs may not care so much.  Then it's true, as she states, grad education needs to be overhauled.  I would argue academia needs an overhaul as well--it is so hierarchical, exploitative of the overload of Ph.D.s (I'm talking about humanities fields here), and full of back-biting and dysfunctional personalities. 

I just finished my doctorate after many long-suffering years in grad school.  Like others here, it's not up to me exactly whether I want an R1 job or not, the market is brutal.  Also, what if people do have family obligations?  For women today, it is a challenge to balance job and family. 

I'm not as bad as some of the students she cites--stealing one's research or not being original at all.  But I think she's blaming the victims; the system needs an overhaul. 

And yes, grad school creates great anxiety and neuroses for students--but who's in charge of this?

[mountainguy]

The better half of me wishes that this column was a satire of over-zealous professors. The cynical/realistic side of me realizes it isn't.

LaGretta Gradgrind sounds a lot like a professor in my department (who I'll call Dr. Doom). I thought it was a good idea when I asked Dr. Doom to be my MA advisor. In terms of publication records, she was (and still is) a rising star in the field. She said that she wanted the best for her advisees. Most of her previous advisees got good jobs after graduating. Grad students in other programs who I met at conferences "ooohed" and "ahhhed" when I said that Doom was my advisor.

But I quickly discovered that there was a dark side to Doom's ways. She berated grad students in seminars, to the point that one of my colleagues regularly left the class in tears. She expected second semester MA students to produce seminar papers that would be "publishable" in major journals. She wrote excoriating comments when we didn't live up to those standards (she once wrote that I had "personally betrayed" her). She expected her doctoral students to get "good jobs" after graduating, even while simultaneously complaining about how many letters of recommendation she had to write. She became enraged at her star advisee after he successfully defended his dissertation, because he decided to accept a job at a school that didn't have a PhD program. All in all, it seemed like she was more invested in her own ego than she was in her students.

I dumped Dr. Doom after she told me that I should "probably quit grad school" if I didn't know what kind of program I wanted to teach in afterwards. I tried my best to sever ties maturely, but it was a nasty breakup filled with rumors and finger-pointing on all sides. My new advisor, Dr. Reasonable, is a middle-aged associate professor who took a big risk by accepting me as a new advisee. He is relatively unknown outside of his obscure subfield, but he has successfully directed dissertations in the past. And he's told me on multiple occasions, "my only concern is that you do good work while you're here. What you do afterward is up to you." And amen to reasonableness.

[mignon]

I advise grad students and I am not like this at all, nor do I know many people who are like this.  Don't assume she is representative.  I don't think she is, although extreme "superstars" can sometimes develop perspectives like this because they believe they are entitled to reproducing students in their own image.

[readingiscool]

Mountainguy's and mignon's responses are both very enlightening.  Mountainguy, I had a horrible experience similar to yours.  I worked with a "rising star" who was very unpleasant, who berated students and putt them down unnecessarily.  I worked with a scholar who was less well known but who had a lot more time for me.  So maybe the "superstars" are too conscious of their success and do want to mold students in only a limited image?  Do less well-known scholars have more time and energy to mentor grad students?

I'd really be interested in what other professors and grad student mentors think about their relationships with grad students. 

[mountainguy]

The responses to this thread have been really interesting. I especially want to extend my thanks to mignon and other faculty who work with graduate students on a regular basis in a collegial and professional manner. I realize that not all faculty are like "LaGrette Gradgrind," and I appreciate the time and effort that people like you devote to working with grad students.