I expect much more commitment from my PhD-supervisor. How do I communicate this to him?

Question

I am a doctoral student in economics and have problems with the progress of my doctoral thesis because my supervisor hardly cares about my work. I currently need some feedback and comments from him, as I cannot publish my results before. This problem is not a current problem, but has existed since the beginning of my PhD. It seems that this is not only the case for me, but also for other doctoral candidates and students who are supervised by him. During the semester I can go to his office if I have a question. However, even at these meetings he almost never read my work before and told me that he had no time or had forgotten about it. Currently, these personal meetings are also not possible due to the coronavirus. Therefore I have already sent him e-mails several times, but he hardly answers my messages.

So I would like to ask how I can politely express that I would like to see more commitment from him? Otherwise he is very friendly and can also help me with technical problems (if he does this once). I therefore do not want to burden the relationship with too negative criticism.

How can I get him to 1) read my current work in the near future and 2) generally pay more attention to my thesis.

Can anyone give me any recommendations on this?

Answer 1

1. Realise your own commitment first. As a PhD candidate, you are training to become an independent researcher. Ideally, you aim to reach the stage when you are able to tell good results from bad, proofread and edit your own writing, prepare the PhD thesis for publication and defence. Many PhD candidates struggle because their advisers are over-protective and micromanage every step, leaving them little chance for self-reflection and self-improvement. Embrace the freedom to do your research your way and to learn from your own mistakes in the process. Own your work and own responsibility for making it better.
2. Use others. Many questions can be answered by people other than your PhD supervisor. Use online resources, such as Stack Exchange, use other peers and colleagues, use support systems in your department. Ask questions, try to understand answers, find and use the relevant literature. Do not sit and passively wait for your adviser to come back to you with suggestions - use this time to find the answer yourself.
3. Do not wait for your supervisor's approval of your work. Assume that silence is a sign of approval and move on. If in doubt, show your work to someone else and ask for their advice. Politely cc your supervisor in the email. It may work wonders.
4. Understand the process of submission and clearly distinguish the points when your supervisor is essential to move forward, from those when their advice is only desirable. Politely ask your supervisor to give you feedback by a particular date, but be prepared to move forward regardless of whether or not you receive the response. Depending on your University structure, you may even be able to submit your thesis without your PhD supervisor's approval. Know the people who are in charge of the PG education in your University - such as Research Office of Head of Department - and cc them in all really important emails (but only in really important ones). They may help to encourage your supervisor to find time to give you feedback or approval when it's critical.

Answer 2

You seem to be saying that this professor doesn't spend a lot of time with his students generally. There could be a lot of reasons (valid ones as well as invalid) for that. With a lot of students and his own research program he just may be too busy and expects students to be self motivated. Maybe it is an institutional problem, with too many students and too few professors. Maybe he is just lazy.

But, if you send me 40 pages or so and set up a meeting then I'm probably not going to be able to find the time to read them before the meeting, even if I have good intentions. And with five other students doing the same, it just doesn't work.

My suggestion, then, is to avoid flooding him with stuff to prepare for prior to any meeting. One way is to send only what is completely essential to read prior to the meeting and on which you will have question. An abstract of recent work.

But there is a way to make such things easy to communicate. Suppose you send me a 40 page pdf to review, but you have used some simple tech tool to highlight (just as with a highlighter pen) those few passages that have recently changed and, perhaps in a different color, those for which you need advice. Now I can quickly scan your document and the recent things and the important things jump out at me. I can review it in five minutes, perhaps even with the meeting in progress. And having the rest of the stuff without highlighting gives me context if needed.

Note that I used to do this with students who were developing large computer programs incrementally. They highlighted the changes for my review. And so I could give advice (by commenting on the typed pages) to the entire class in about an hour.

Another way to think of this is that you probably can't change his behavior, but you can make your interactions efficient enough that you get what you need.

Answer 3

You're going to have to let go of the idea that anything you do is going to change how your advisor acts. Concentrate on the things you can control. It's ok to feel frustrated, it's ok to think poorly of your advisor for this behavior, it's ok to decide to switch advisors or leave the PhD program if you'd prefer that to working with your advisor, but trying to change your advisor is just going to make you miserable and not accomplish anything.

Answer 4

I strongly disagree with all the answers suggesting that it's your job to work around the problem. When you are a PhD student, and doing a PhD with a supervisor who agreed to serve that role for you, then you should be entitled to sufficient attention from the supervisor to do your job properly, and certainly to timely responses by email, especially in a situation like the current pandemic. To me what you say does not reflect well on your advisor at all. Here are some ideas:

• Ask to set up regularly scheduled meetings with the advisor, like once every week, or every two weeks at most. (Of course, now these meetings would be remote.) This is an entirely reasonable thing to have during a PhD. Make sure that the time slot is either regular, or fixed from one meeting to the next. Of course, if the advisor starts postponing these meetings or forgets about them, that's more proof that they are failing at their job.

• Try getting it touch with other PhD students of your advisor to understand better whether they are having similar problems or if it's just with you. This can be helpful to understand the situation, what works (e.g., your fellow PhD students know the advisor is unreliable by email but more reliable by phone, etc.), and if you are all having the same problem it makes your case stronger.

• If your institution has some kind of doctoral school, support system for PhD students, ombudsperson, or evaluation for PhDs independent from the supervisor (which is common in Europe), try raising the issue with them. They can advise you better than we can, and then can get in touch with your advisor in the right way to make them understand, and in the most dire cases they can try to help you find another advisor.

• Alternatively, raise your concerns with your advisor directly. Don't ask for vague things like attention, but for specifics (e.g., answers to your emails within some delay), using factual evidence (e.g., you didn't reply to emails X, Y and Z), and without being confrontational (framing this as "let's find a way to work together which works for us both"). But this is challenging because of the power dynamic, so I won't blame you if you prefer raising the point with some independent party (see previous point) -- this is the reason why these structures exist.

Answer 5

This is not a full response, but just some suggestions. I had a supervisor who was very busy/disorganized and these tips helped:

• More frequent, shorter meetings. Before each, I would email part of the paper a week in advance of the meeting (e.g., introduction). If they had not read it by the meeting, I would provide a paper copy that they could read in front of me (a bit awkward, but it worked - and provided incentive to read the next piece via email).
• Giving "polite" deadlines with long periods of time for supervisor to plan to read your paper. For example, if it is April 1: "Hello all/supervisor; I've attached the recent draft of our paper. I plan to submit this to Journal XYZ on April 30. If you have any comments or suggested revisions, please provide them by that date. I'll send a reminder on April 20." This is a really reasonable amount of time for someone to get back to you. On April 20, you can send another email, "Hi ___, just a reminder that I'll be submitting the draft ms on April 30. If I don't hear back I'll assume you're ok to go ahead with the draft as-is". This may seem pushy, but 30 days is more than enough time to read a paper and get back to you (unless it's over a holiday/supervisor has emergency family thing etc). Be clear and unapologetic.

Answer 6

This is making a big leap, but: Consider if your advisor has attention deficit disorder.

In the comments, you said your advisor is very disorganized and does not keep his commitments. These are common symptoms of attention deficit disorder. The stereotype that only children get it is wrong. Plenty of senior faculty have it. Plenty of people of all types have it.

• Avoid asking the supervisor to multitask
• Request small blocks of the supervisor's time
• Break the supervisor's work into small peices - give them one at a time
• Use visuals
• Structure your requests

Answer 7

Consider switching advisors, or if you have more than one, choose another to be the supervisor. This puts pressure on him. Number of theses chaired is one of the metrics that departments look at (a measure of 'service'). If he's tenured it won't have a job impact on him but most professors don't want to look bad among their peers. If you and other students limp along with a lack of guidance the problem likely won't get addressed. Of course that's dependent on finding another willing and able research sponsor.

You might also consider an anonymous and anonymized letter to the department chair, that summarizes the views of multiple students. Offer to give specific examples, metrics or stories, though that's higher risk. Create a separate gmail account for that so you can respond to questions.