It's probably hard for someone who hasn't served as a graduate student's advisor to understand how rare and horrible this event is: I failed a Ph.D. candidate on his oral examination yesterday. While the obvious blame for such a failure may seem to lie with the student, it does not. It is the advisor's responsibility to see that his/her students are adequately prepared for their examinations, and to advise them to wait when they are not ready. The oral examination should be a rubber stamp. When it is not, it says more about the faculty advisor than the student who fails.
While my judgment of failure was sufficient to insure that the student would be required to revise and resubmit his thesis for reapproval (he gets one more chance), in this particular case each and every person on his committee failed him, including his advisor. I am now carefully following the Graduate School's policy for extricating myself from this train wreck. I have no intention of sitting through a second defense like this.
Friday, July 15, 2005
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16 comments:
I can't believe the advisor let the student get that far if he wasn't ready to defend the student's work himself. That's terrible. I mean, I can see a situation where one committee member dissents (although in my experience everyone gets checked with in advance and it is sort of a speak-before-the-defense-is-scheduled-or-not-at all (unless just giving revisions) deal).
I can't believe it either. In the days before the defense, right up to the defense, I called and emailed repeatedly indicating my concern that the exam be delayed. He (the advisor) pressed ahead anyway, and, in retrospect, this may have been deliberate. Sometimes we get students that are, well, difficult, and letting them experience failure can be a great way to deliver a lesson. But that is supposed to happen at the qualifying exam stage, not the dissertation defense.
There were a lot of other issues involving more than one deadline from more than one institution, faculty members out of the country, etc. etc.. I'm hoping it's over for me, but getting off the committee at this point will not be trivial.
Oh my god, what an absolute nightmare. I am so sorry, for you. I am so angry at/disgusted by this student's "advisor." Geez louise. I hope you can get out of round two. Good luck.
Not what I needed to read a week before my own dissertation defense ;)...But as an academic, I'm glad you did what had to be done for intellectual integrity. In my doctoral dept., the only people who have "failed" are those who foolishly peopled their committee with faculty members who chose to fight their own battles through (and on the still-warm corpses of) their students, so the "failure" generally means "Your other advisor is a moron"; "No, she is."
I can't imagine being in your shoes for something like this, and I do hope that the hapless candidate is getting some straight talk from someone in the dept. (unless his choice of advisor was sordidly motivated). Fortunately, I'm staying in a smaller pond (no graduate students for me!), so hope never to face this.
Ugh. You just confirmed what I've said on my blog before (when I kind of screwed up my first student's qualifying paper). I agree that it's kind of the fault of the advisor, and I'm pretty terrified about dealing with that.
Dorcasina, this was not politically motivated. Everyone signed a failure. You've met with your committee members, and if they look generally pleased to see you when you bump into them in the hallway then you're on your way. If any of them suggest, no matter how obliquely, that you should postpone, take that suggestion very seriously.
Ianqui, there's a difference between an honest mistake and a refusal to take the responsibility for mentoring your own student. That seems to be the issue here. There may have been some mitigating factors, but this person's advisor has, as far as I can tell, not had any input or exercised any control over this project. What a disaster.
If I can't get off this committee, I will have to assume the role of advisor because no one else seems to be doing it. I've spent so much time on this guy that I haven't had time to read my own (good) student's thesis. This is the monster that ate my summer.
I have to disagree with you to an extent in your laying this disaster at the feet of the thesis advisor. Yes, the advisor has to take a big part of the blame, but it is not just the thesis advisor's fault. It's the thesis committee's fault when this happens. If the candidate wasn't ready, then the committee should never have given the go-ahead to let a thesis defense be scheduled. That's what thesis committees are for: to guide and evaluate the student's progress and then to decide when the student is ready to defend. It sounds as though you tried to stop the trainwreck, but the rest of the committee dropped the ball. I don't know what the procedure is at your school, but where I did my Ph.D., every member of the committee had to sign off on my request to schedule a thesis defense. Any single one of them could have stopped it if he or she thought I wasn't ready.
It's unfair to lay it all on the thesis advisor.
This very thing happened when I was a graduate student in a physiology department. A candidate defended and ended up failing. It was a huge embarrassment for the department. From accounts I got of the student's performance, it wasn't even close whether he was up to snuff.
Orac, to some extent you're right. I would guess that I was the only person in the room that had read the thesis in any great depth. However, the kid's advisor also signed a failure. His signature alone would have been sufficient to guarantee a failure: passes must be unanimous.
Assuming that the advisor honestly believed this was a failed exam, and it wasn't just pressure from me that caused this to happen, he should have paid some attention to me when I begged over and over to have this thing postponed.
You are right that the committee also shares some blame, but not in the way you think. It is true that we all had to sign off on the thesis for him to schedule his exam. I mentioned above that there were a number of deadlines that seemed to be the primary motivation for scheduling the defense. I was handed the thesis and the exam form at the same time. I should not have signed. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and I shouldn't have. But again, his advisor had to sign the same form.
I will never, ever again sign off on anything without having read the thesis. I feel terrible about it, but I did try to set things right before it hurt anybody. His advisor, despite my concerns, which I put in writing, and my clear statement that I could not pass this thesis, insisted on the defense.
I will always blame myself.
don't think I made a clear enough distinction above; i agree entirely that your situation was NOT political (my only question was whether the student had chosen that advisor knowing that his work would perhaps not get vetted carefully--i've seen this happen, too). i was differentiating your situation (or attempting to, however poorly) from what has happened at my doctoral institution, where students have in fact been blindsided and failed for having the audacity to set Prof A and Prof B against each other. and yes, the advisor is the person most responsible for making sure the student is prepared, telling him or her if he/she is not, and alerting the student, if there is no other process in place, that other committee members may have some tough questions/doubts. i intended my comment to be supportive of your actions; i absolutely think you did the only conscionable thing in this case.
I'm sorry, Dorcasina. I did interpret your comment as supportive, and I had intended my response to be supportive of you as well. I don't think the student's choice of advisor was politically motivated either, but the criteria by which students choose advisors is sometimes mysterious to me. The idea that faculty would unleash personal (or professional) vendettas in the arena of a student's oral defense is just so horrible to me I have trouble even imagining it. I know some pretty unpleasant people, but I can't see even them doing such a thing.
I had lunch with the advisor in question yesterday. By his telling, he had advised the student to wait but the student wasn't having any of it. He warned the student that failure was possible and the student pressed on anyway. Had I been the student's advisor I would not have allowed him to proceed regardless of his desires, but there you go.
I'm starting to get over this, even though it looks like I won't be able to get off this committee. It makes sense that now that a failure is on record, the Graduate School is very reluctant to let the committee be restructured.
it has been my experience that failing at any point past coursework is really meant to be a sign to the student that 'they do not belong or are not capable in this arena.' it is usually as much the student's fault as the advisors.
Did the student have a job offer to start in the next month or two?
Did the student have a job offer to start in the next month or two?
Tenure-track, starts next month.
I'm jumping in a bit late here, but here goes...
Everyone of course is at fault - advisor, committee and student. And it is a horrible situation for everyone involved. But at least the committee had the guts to not pass the student. I've seen similar situations where the student was passed because everyone was just too embarassed at that point to say no. It's an incredibly difficult thing to do.
I tell my students, and the students whose committees I serve on, that the defense is just a formality; we won't let them get to that stage if they're not ready. I really hope I never have to eat those words...
I read this blog and thought about something. Who is the more experienced, the professor or the student? Who needs to be patient and nurturing? In my interaction with Grad students and professors, I have always found the professor's pride being the main problem for this kind of a situation. Some advisors just wring the life out of even the most amazing students. I was lucky to get an amazing professor who treated me like a friend and equal. I have seen so many insecure professors throw their weight around at the last minute. Do you really think a student will stand before a committee and risk failure? In my view, the professor has to have the knack to convince the student not to go before the committee. A professor Student relationship is like that of a parent child relationship. Pride can kill that real quick. I have seen so many proud and mean professors that it is not even funny anymore.
I think the professor's pride is what caused this ugly situation.
Just wondering what gain the professors have by being horrible to the students.
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