next »

[kilpikonna]

This became one of my big fears after 7 years in the program- that no one will tell us that we're not cut out to be reseracher/scholars and that we'll be left to languish on the academic job market after years of single minded dedication. 

This.

That said, it's important to remember that -- while there is no excuse for lax standards or poor communication -- getting or not getting an academic job is not entirely a choice, but languishing *is* a choice.  Tenured_feminist's washouts will probably succeed in another market, and will find good lives doing something else.  So will the people who should have washed out, but made it through... they'll just have a few years less to do it in.  (But then, who hasn't had a do-over year at some point?)  And so can people who are doing okay in grad school, but just aren't happy there.  Nobody has to languish.

[coldsun]

That said, it's important to remember that -- while there is no excuse for lax standards or poor communication -- getting or not getting an academic job is not entirely a choice, but languishing *is* a choice.  Tenured_feminist's washouts will probably succeed in another market, and will find good lives doing something else.  So will the people who should have washed out, but made it through... they'll just have a few years less to do it in.  (But then, who hasn't had a do-over year at some point?)  And so can people who are doing okay in grad school, but just aren't happy there.  Nobody has to languish.

Kilkiponna,  I was just about to go back and revise my post. Sometimes after posting on here, I regret what I have said and want to go back and change it but you can't modify once you submit.  In any case, I still do think grad students should be advised better and given clearer guidelines as to what they are expected to be able to do by the time they graduate.  Research and writing in the humanities is kind of fuzzy and it's not always easy to figure out if you are doing it correctly.  In any case, I agree with you; people who go to get a PhD might not succeed in the TT market but can be happy doing something else.  After 10 years of grad school one definitely has better analytical and writing skills.    On the other hand, some people might be happy to be told they should try something else.  I would have given the whole thing up if my advisors had told me that my research wasn't up to par. I actually asked them several times because I didn't want to inflict myself on students and waste my time writing if it was clear that I wasn't doing a good job.  This is a delicate and complicated matter, though, as TF makes clear.  There are a lot of ways to look at this issue.

[locutus]

quote from Locutus

This may be related to the fact that my department does little in the way of graduate student feedback.

Locutus, or any one else, do you think that a lot more students would get axed if their departments cared/paid more attention to their students' progress? 

Short answer: in my department no. In my department students know if they are above failing. Most who start are capable of finishing the PhD. So I think the department does well in admissions. However, many graduate students have no idea if they are excelling or barely getting by. Faculty, generally speaking, are very vague with feedback and assessments.

[everest]

In response to the OP, from my experience progressing through my program, most students who are getting kicked out know its coming. However, there are 2 variations on that theme that need to be handled differently. 

These are the scenarios I've seen:

1) Student is asked to leave for consistently not making progress. The confusing part is when:
a) advisor tells student all is okay
or
b) student misses multiple deadlines with no consequences. Then when the hammer falls, the student has grounds to say, "Why now? I [eventually] passed X & Y missed deadlines. I can finish Z too."

In this case, you, as the designated kicker outer/ door closer/ we regret to inform you news deliver-er needs to address these concerns and give students an honest answer.  Advisors need to clearly communicate with students. This often does not happen.

2) Student claims to be blindsided by being asked to leave program. However, I think there is no "truly blindsided" student. If you talk to that student in the weeks/months prior to being asked to leave, that student is freaked out. Knows something is up. Might not connect the dots to being kicked out though, and so will absolutely crumble when told to leave.  The student did not know it was coming because no faculty advisor/ other graduate student [this is key] warned the student what might happen and help the student get off that course. EVERYONE just let the student continue.  I'm not saying the student did not "earn" being asked to leave, rather that multiple people failed to help the student, and the student assumed that hu was fine [despite knowing something was up].

In short, the student fails to read the writing on the wall, and no one steps up to read the writing for hu, and potentially help hu make changes.

For the second case, I think it is imperative to note the [probable] bad fit of grad student to grad school.  But remember to be delicate, because this student has probably been freaking out about being asked to leave, and needs to be handled gently. And facing reality [which the student has expertly avoided] will be very hard to do.

Good luck. And thank you for asking this question.  I know that faculty really do care, but it's always nice to see people trying to get better at doing their jobs!

[coldsun]

Short answer: in my department no. In my department students know if they are above failing. Most who start are capable of finishing the PhD. So I think the department does well in admissions. However, many graduate students have no idea if they are excelling or barely getting by. Faculty, generally speaking, are very vague with feedback and assessments.

I agree. Most students will know if they are above failing, but the vagueness w/ feedback you are talking about is a problem that needs to be addressed, (as I have already kvetched about in another thread). 

[gsmerlin]

I'd lurked here now and then, but this topic brought me out of the woodwork to register.

While lurking and wandering through posts earlier this week, I came across this topic. I read through the posts, thought about it, and walked away. Later in the week, I got an email from my department asking to set up an advising session. I made an appointment, then showed up not to any advisement, but instead to have just this sort of speech delivered.

First, I must admit that I was glad I'd read through this topic. Having even thought about it at least allowed me to respond coherently to what was happening. For some background, I am (or I suppose, technically, was) a graduate student in a medieval history program for which the first two years are spent earning an MA, followed by continuing into the PhD program. I scored well on my GREs and was accepted into the program with a three-year full-tuition fellowship. While I'm self-aware enough to admit I've not been a perfect student, my GPA is a 3.6 and change. Nothing below a B, and only one of those, and only one extension requested (for the paper for an independent research class).

Now that I've had this speech (presumably not from the OP), there are a few things that I think are important:

1) Honesty up front, throughout the program. My advisor and everyone else in the program always described the transition between the MA program and the PhD program as a matter of paperwork, nothing more. So long as you weren't flunking out of classes, there was nothing to be concerned about in terms of continuing into the PhD portion of the program. Receiving a three-year fellowship only reinforced this idea. Furthermore, when my advisor suggested that I apply to other programs this fall, it was in the context of "you have nothing to lose anyhow, since you have another year of funding here." Maybe I should have read between the lines there, but as I was performing well in classes, there was no reason to expect to need to.

2) Personal delivery. In my case, the news was delivered through a general program advisor whom I had never met before. Because the advisor wasn't familiar with me or with my classwork and performance in class, I wasn't really able to ask for more details when the reason given was "it's not a good fit," which has left me feeling generally uneasy about the reasoning behind the decision. Was it a matter of economics, since there was fellowship money on the line? Did I somehow get on the wrong side of a professor? Do I have weaknesses as a student that contributed to the decision? I'll be contacting my professors once I've had a chance to digest it all to ask those questions, but I feel like an announcement of that gravity should be delivered by someone the student knows, so that they have a chance to work those things out and can better decide which direction to go from there.

3) Timing. It should be as early as possible or feasible. Finding out in mid-May that I won't be continuing with classes in August has put me behind the curve in terms of applying for jobs of any sort. My resume certainly isn't up to par, and to be honest, having planned on continuing school and classes for several years to come, I hadn't even considered what I would do in this situation. Which leads to the next point...

4) Have information about alternatives available. This was mentioned earlier in the thread, and just seeing some of the suggestions helped me when the hammer dropped. But my guess is that most students in this situation, like me, haven't thought about what else they might do. Information about the school career services center, professional certifications, alternative programs in potentially more employable areas, and anything that acknowledges a need to replace purpose and goals can all make a big difference to someone who finds him- or herself unexpectedly moving on.

5) Reassure them that you and the department will still be there for them, even if they're no longer a student. Hopefully this is true in some sense. If I choose to try to apply to other programs again in the fall, I know I'll need letters of recommendation, but I was also counting on the advice of my professors in choosing programs, editing writing samples, and wording statements of purpose...Something they'd offered to help with just a few weeks before this meeting. Now I'm not entirely sure where I stand.

While finding out that your plans are going to have to change isn't the end of the world, it is life-changing. We all enter into grad school with hugely long-term goals and grandiose plans, and finding them cut short can be jarring. I'm really glad to see that there's some concern on the other side of things about the delivery of this sort of news. Once it's time to deliver it, though, I think one of the most significant things you can do, as the bearer of that news, is to offer help in making the transition. With that in hand, I think most graduate students can turn the change in plans into a positive.

(And on the utterly mercenary side, students who feel like you've guided them to a more productive path rather than dumped them on the wayside are probably going to be more likely to donate to the school and alumni funds in the future. ;))

[parchem]

I'd lurked here now and then, but this topic brought me out of the woodwork to register.

4) Have information about alternatives available. This was mentioned earlier in the thread, and just seeing some of the suggestions helped me when the hammer dropped. But my guess is that most students in this situation, like me, haven't thought about what else they might do. Information about the school career services center, professional certifications, alternative programs in potentially more employable areas, and anything that acknowledges a need to replace purpose and goals can all make a big difference to someone who finds him- or herself unexpectedly moving on.

This was a thoughtful post, and I'd like to add to this point. I'd encourage people in the position of having to break such news to students to advise them about other doctoral programs that might be better matches, even in the same field. I watched about half of my grad school colleagues get washed out of their programs after written preliminaries that are highly variable not only across schools but within the same program from year to year, and about half of those decided to continue, transferred somewhere else and succeeded. So, I think it is more than reasonable to say "I know that this didn't work out for you. But, there are other doctoral programs out there that might be a better fit for you, even in <insert program here>. You might consider our colleagues at <smaller program or program with a different emphasis>."

Providing reasonable amount of honesty regarding the weed out process to those that are suffering from it is more than fair, both up front (I can't remember how many times I heard, "We manage to graduate nearly 100% of the students we admit") and when things go bad.