Can my major advisor leave if I have co-advisor

Question

My major advisor has asked another professor to be my co-advisor behind my back.

What does that mean ? I have told the other professor that if the arrangement will be beneficial for him, I am ok.

My question is whether, if I have a co-advisor, my major advisor can leave me without me having a say in it ?

I am terrified and my advisor has been avoiding meeting me in the past two weeks.

We had no problems and we all talk about is research but He avoids me whenever he gets the chance and I don't know why.

if I agree on having co-major advisor, can the major advisor give me up without consulting me?

I am in the US

Edit the one the he suggested has been working with us for 2 years so why now ?

Answer 1

Slavery has been abolished, so you cannot prevent your advisor from quitting his or her job and thereby stop being your advisor. The vast majority of faculty takes the job of advising a Ph.D. student or an M.S. student very seriously and will try their best to not abandon them. If they were to do so without grave reason (e.g. being suddenly diagnosed with late stage cancer, having to care for a parent in a different country whose status has suddenly worsened) there would be repercussions on their career. Even if an advisor is suddenly offered a dream job somewhere else, they are expected to make arrangements for their students.

Involving someone else as a co-advisor is not a usual means of abandoning a student, but is usually motivated in trying to provide "better care" for the student.

At this point, you have not spoken to your advisor and you do not know what is happening. If your advisor is leaving the university, then appointing a co-advisor means that the advisor is NOT abandoning you, because he could just tell you that you have a new advisor, or tell you that both of you will look for a new advisor. Your advisor can also simply be thinking that the thesis / project / or what ever it is that he is advising you on needs some additional expertise. It could also be that your advisor is interested in getting more involved and bringing in someone else is forming an ad hoc research group. There are just too many possibilities.

To quote John Custer from the comments, you DO need to take a big breath and wait until you know whether something is happening and whether this something is not to your liking. Again, academia frowns on professors abandoning their students without grave cause.

Answer 2

Your advisor can leave even if you don't have a co-advisor, just the same as they could:

• die
• have a serious accident
• retire, or
• get dementia

without your permission! You being terrified is not a reason for your advisor not to live their life. Moreover, your concerns that your advisor is avoiding you might actually be a misinterpretation of your advisor being busy and pre-occupied while they deal with whatever other life-event(s) are involved in them leaving.

On the very positive side, it sounds, in fact, as if your advisor is doing what most good advisors would do, and is taking steps to ensure that after they leave, you will have somebody suitable to take over.

Even in the worst circumstances (and it certainly doesn't sound like this is your situation), most institutions do not want to lose their graduate students ... and most will go to considerable lengths to ensure that you can remain at the institution and be appropriately supervised.