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Rubrik: Mittwochs-Kolumnen |
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Click here to get to the german version of this text. Nicky Kern The group of a friend of mine recently introduced a novelty: regular meetings with the professor. That wouldn't suprise, if "regular" hadn't meant once per semester... So, the question is: how much support do doctoral students need? The scientific way of working is hardly taught to undergrads. I.e. initially postgrads will need quite some coaching. But even when the goal, independent scientific work, has been reached, an experienced coach will do no harm. What should the ideal support be like? Important prerequisite is certainly, that it is available when it is needed. Apart from scientific advisory and orientation, it should also supply a skeleton of a project plan. To realize, that one is working towards the wrong direction, needs profound knowledge of the area of research. After all, most postgrads will not have done a project of the size of a doctoral thesis. A friend just recently told me, how PhD proposals are being handled in his institute. Apparently, they are written after the end of the thesis, since then one knows, what the thesis actually contains. Instead of using the proposal as a tool for planing the PhD, it becomes an annoying formality, which is justly considered an unnecessary hassle. ETH has declared the goal of finishing most PhD thesis within three years. Well, three years is not such a long time, considering that there are, apart from the actual scientific work, an orientation in the area of research and teaching obligation to deal with.
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Even though one can hardly "plan" research, a more or less well-defined goal helps to stay on track, or even to find the access to an unique and unexplored valley. Otherwise research becomes a trip through the mist: actively, but blind for the environment, going nowhere. This way the 3-year-limit is even harder to reach. Coaching postgrads is apparently not so easy as it seems. But what happens, when it isn't sufficient? Or when professor and postgrad just don't get along with each other. After all, both are (fortunately) "only" human, so that is quite possible... Currently nobody knows, how often such problems occur. There are rumours of an astonishingly high number of dissatisfied doctoral students. They are but rumours, and hence to be taken with a grain of salt. But, like many things, they may have a true root. At the moment, postgrads with this kind of problems have to deal with them mostly alone. The search for alternatives, ranging from a new advisor to interruption or a new start of the PhD project, has to be done alone. Maybe it would be worth thinking of a special advisor for exactly this situation? The coaching of doctoral students is not an easy task. It requires commitment and experience from the coaches and at least equally effort by those being coached. How much coaching do postgrads need? And how much do they get nowadays? And what happens, when he or she don't get along very well in their situation? Up to now, all these are open questions. Considering, that the number of doctoral students is to be considerably increased soon, they won't become less important... |
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