Is it normal for an advisor to expect >80 hour workweeks from PhD students, and threaten them with dismissal?

Question

My advisor always keeps pointing out that I should have publications and I should keep working and stuff like that. Recently he's been saying that not all student will finish Ph.D. and you should be careful not to be kicked out. He has this notion that Ph.D. students should work more than 80 hours per week on regular basis and near deadlines even they should cut off from their sleep time. I get the idea that he wants to encourage me and I also know that as a Ph.D student I need to have publications.

Is this type of behavior common among most advisors? Is it common for Ph.D. students to be expected to not have a life and just work? And finally do all advisors keep threatening their students like this?

I'm currently a second year computer science student. I've been accepted by the department, not a specific faculty member. Also my funding is coming from TAship not his grant. I'm not sure if I should start looking for another advisor, because I'm not sure whether the behavior I have described is normal.

Answer 1

I'm sure some advisors do act this way. I don't think it's very common, but it does happen. It's more common for advisors to expect certain results than a particular hourly commitment, but all these things are a matter of extent.

However, in trying to figure out whether to switch advisors, I think you're asking yourself the wrong question. The right question is:

What type of advising relationship works for you?

If you feel energized, motivated, and happy under your current conditions, that's one thing. If you feel overburdened and miserable, then you should probably look for a different advisor. Even the most competitive Ph.D. programs have faculty who are not so demanding. You have to figure out what type of style works best for you and try to find an advisor who is a good match.

Answer 2

In answer to the question of "Is this expectation usual," I offer the current state of the following completely unscientific survey from the Adventures in Ethics and Science blog.

The question asked is, "My graduate advisor expects or requires me to work...", and as of right now, 68/650 respondents (about 10.5%) report that they believe their advisor expects them to work more than 70 hours a week:

(Note that regardless of what expectations are, the research suggests that the overwhelming majority of graduate students do not work 80 hours a week. For example, a 2003 study of Australian PhD students found that 15.6% worked 50 or more hours per week. A survey of research students at Oxford found that 28.8% worked 45 or more hours per week on research.)

Answer 3

I will go as far as saying that 80 hours/week is definitely too much.

80 hours/week means 11.4 hours/day, working weekends or 16 hours/day working Monday-Friday.

Most contracts (and I assume you have one) state 35-40 hours/week (7-8/day not working weekends). However, this is generally just a "placeholder" when speaking of academic positions, where it is difficult to impose strict working hours. However, this does not mean that your supervisor can ask you to work an unreasonable amount of hours.

Directive 2003/88/EC of the European Parliament states that:

Member States shall take the measures necessary to ensure that, in keeping with the need to protect the safety and health of workers:

(a) the period of weekly working time is limited by means of laws, regulations or administrative provisions or by collective agreements or agreements between the two sides of industry;

(b) the average working time for each seven-day period, including overtime, does not exceed 48 hours.

This is surely implemented in the UK, France, and Italy (and I am sure most other EU states implemented the EU Directive).

I would say that, as a PhD student, there could be exceptional instances where you would need to work 80 hours/week (e.g. close to a deadline) but, for your own sake, that should NOT become a habit, but should instead be a very exceptional situation.

I have known people who had the "feeling guilty because I am not in the lab on a Sunday afternoon" syndrome. This is not healthy, and I hope for you that you do not reach that point. Working 80 hours/week means you'll soon become stressed, tired and overall less productive (as you will be more likely to make errors and will have to redo things several times). I know several people (unfortunately more than I would like to) who have had serious health problems because of this type of unreasonable request from their bosses.

You can work 40 hours/week and publish good papers. There are plenty of good people in academia who publish in very good journals, but have a life, a family, and hobbies during their free time. Do not believe those who tell you that working 24/7 you will publish more, because they are just trying to exploit you.

And always remember: just because you are passionate for your job that does not mean you should not have any right. You have the right to work reasonable hours, have the right to have holidays and you should be allowed to take them without having to beg or being considered lazy, and you should be reasonably paid. Just as in any other job.

A little edit on what to do :

1. Speak with your supervisor and explain the situation. Try to be reasonable and see if you can both work out a solution
2. If no solution can be found, look for another supervisor. Try not to make a bad brake up with your old supervisor, just explain that you are not confortable with the situation and that you feel it's better for both of you if you change supervisor.
3. If things get particularly bad, remember that the university has an HR office, that is there also to deal with these things.

Answer 4

I think that your question is mainly opinion-based; because every faculty member has his own policy on advising PhD students and nothing seems to be correct/normal here. But, I answer your question from a student's perspective who is uncomfortable with his studying hours in his PhD program.

If you feel uncomfortable with something in your studying program, you should solve it. The best solution is talking to your advisor.

However, if working more than 80 hours/week is too much for you, you should think about solving it as soon as possible, because, you should work on your PhD project more than three years and when you are uncomfortable with that amount of work, after one or two years, you will face physical or even mental problems such as constant tiredness, depression, etc.

Think about your preferences, abilities and expectations and decide whether you want to work with that advisor or you can find another faculty member who has more flexible working expectations from his students.

In my opinion, expecting higher working hours from a PhD student is not a bad advising policy. But, the point here is that the student should think about his abilities and whether he can work under extreme expectations or not. Some students prefer working more and some students prefer less demanding and more flexible studying hours.

As far as you don't have any funding problem, before talking to your advisor; search carefully for another faculty member who's policies on advising PhD students meets your preferences. Talk to their students and when you have made your mind on changing to another advisor (after talking to them), talk to your current advisor and stop working with him.

Answer 5

First of all, this depends on the country. In some places, PhD students are considered workers, and have the social rights that come with it. I still work a few more hours than what my contract says, because it goes in my own benefit, but it would be illegal for my advisor to force me to work overtime (so, answering your question, no, here it is not normal).

In other places, they don't, so they may be in principle allowed to demand as much as they want. But here we have a problem: double the hours doen't mean double output. In general, it is not true that working more hours you will get more results!

The best argument to show this is that big tech companies, like Google and Yahoo, that are probably the closest thing to Academia in the industrial world, go to lengths to limit the overtime their engineers put in. Their beans are in the quality of the output, so they have done extensive and careful research, and it has one of the highest quality assurances: lots-of-money-reviewed.

Sometimes, there are deadlines, and we have to put in extra hours; but then, you will get much better results if your team is not burned out.

Edit: Here is a study relating hours worked and productivity in a factory during the World War I. It appears that the productivity for this manual work scales linearly until it hits the roof at 50 h/week. It is remarkable that people working 72 h/week accomplished exactly the same as people working just two thirds of that.

Without more data to support it, I conjecture that for intellectual creative work, the plateau is reached much earlier.

Answer 6

Yes absolutely (advisors do expect 80+ hours a week). It's a terrible situation to be in, but what they want to see is productivity, which is not the same as throwing more hours at it. When I was in grad school I got that lecture constantly. Most people find that more than 50 hours is unhealthy and unsustainable. For a bit you can go 80 hours a week but not too long. But remember he wants productivity, not hours. He cares about publications, not about how long it takes you to generate the data and write it up. Try to look to the other successful, older grad students and figure out how much to work based on that. In grad school it's easy to get into a rythme and lose focus about what you are doing long term. Develop weekly, monthly, and quarterly plan (start from the quarterly plan). Grad school is all about time management and project management. Too often I got stuck for long periods of time in some shit that ended up not mattering at all; we all (all of my colleagues/classmates) wasted years this way. But just remember they care about the publication, not about you, not about your degree.

Answer 7

I've certainly known advisers do this. Whenever I've tried working with anyone that has this type of policy, they have fallen into one of 2 categories.

1) Advisers that expect a significant fraction of their students to land Tenure track faculty jobs in good institutions within about 2 years of graduating. Check the resume's of the groups prior alumni. If it is this sort of group, I'd likely suck it out and continue. If you have more prior students working as post-docs/adjuncts 4 years later than you do as tenure track faculty then the next category applies.

2) Advisers that are unable to get anything done during the day, usually because they simply don't know what they are doing. Unfortunately this is more common than the previous category in my experience. Change groups now, you will learn little, it will be unpleasant if you continue, and you won't even be in a good situation at the end.

Answer 8

First of all, this varies by field and then it varies again by adviser. I am speaking from the perspective of biological sciences but I think what I have to say could apply in your circumstance.

In my program, we are expected to teach (~7-8 hrs/wk), take classes (~8 hrs/wk), then spend the remaining time in the lab. This does not factor grading (easily 20 hrs/wk for lab classes unless you just do a bad job at it), studying for classes (~10 hrs/wk), and then attending meetings and seminars (~3 hrs/wk). Where does this leave time for research in the lab? My adviser expects me to spend 40 hours/wk in the lab which is difficult to do when you have so many other things to do as well and often not enough time to get it all done. The majority of my weeks end up being 60 hours of work during the Fall and Spring semesters because classes tend to mess up my planning for experiments. During the summer, I tend to average about 45-50 hours. But then the rest of my time is really spent in classes, teaching, grading, and studying. Bottom line - your weeks may be crazy because of other graduate school requirements making your work hours stretch as a result.

I have talked to others extensively on the program. Many of them do not need to teach and their advisers tend to ask them to spend about 50-60 hours a week working. The other very common situation is that the adviser does not care so long as they are productive. There are many different management styles and I have had personal experience with both.

A small percentage of advisers tend to ask for ridiculous hours and threaten their students but it's certainly not the norm. I know some people that enjoy or do not mind that lifestyle - research is their hobby and they love spending that much time on their work. Some advisers are the same way and have a hard time understanding others that do not share the same passion. If this lifestyle is not for you, I advise switching sooner than later. I switched advisers half-way through my PhD and I wish I had done it sooner.

Summary: It's not the norm but it's not exactly rare either. If you can't handle this kind of lifestyle you should change while you still can.

Answer 9

Short answer... I would expect PhD students to work 60-80 hours a week, but would not require it, and would not advise working more than 10-12 hours five or six days a week. Based on my experience, students that work less than 40 hours a week are likely not to make acceptable progress and submit, or will require an extension and/or not to achieve the publications required to assure award or career. Conversely, students that consistently work much more than 80 hours a week are likely to suffer (mental or physical) breakdowns. A 9-5 mentality is not a good fit for a researcher, but an around-the-clock focus is potentially fatal.

It is normal for an advisor to expect that you'll be working of the order of 80 hour weeks at times, particularly if you are being paid to do research or teaching as well as undertaking a full time PhD. It is their responsibility to warn you if you are falling behind and liable to have your candidature cancelled.

The long answer takes into account what research and a research career is all about, as well as expectations of university staff.

A recent study by an Australian union found that, "on average, academic staff work 50.7 hours per week over the whole year and of the 45% of professional and general staff that reported working uncompensated overtime, the average was 5.7 hours per week...

Over three quarters of survey respondents (77.1%) indicated they worked these hours because they felt they needed to do so to ensure they performed their jobs satisfactorily and/or for fear of losing their job..."

See http://www.nteu.org.au/stateoftheuni

Answer 10

A 80 hour / week workweek is completely normal in scientific research. There are regional differences; for example, in Europe people tend to have clear boundaries in the work/life balance, and formally overworking may not be allowed. However, even in Europe, with the applicable regulations, you will find people working many more hours than 35 or 40 per week.

Expecting PhD students to work 80 hours per week is probably normal. Threatening with dismissal or using other pressure methods is not.