I was talking to a friend of mine, and he just feel in a deep depression due to finishing his PhD.
He will be defending in the coming weeks, and there is a high likelihood he will pass.
In his words, he doesn't really feel he has learned anything PhD worthy, he only has one Journal paper and no conference papers (in his area conf papers are not worth much anyway). According to him, one of the postdocs kept his research at bay by denying him access to the machines he need to do experiments (something CMOS related, not really sure what). And in his own words, the same guy basically did the same experiments he was planning and wrote a couple of papers.
Of course he tried to tell his professor, but apparently he couldn't care less.
By now, he just feels that he lost 3 years of his life doing a PhD. And he mentioned that he might sue the Professor/University for this.
I take his word for all of this, and I have no real means to corroborate it to be truth. But it kept me thinking about one thing.
Is a student entitled to sue/demand a reimbursement/etc if he/she feels like the past years have been an utter waste of time?
Is there any mechanism in your universities to do this?
I've heard of similar cases of professors abusing of students in the same way in some US Universities (big/fancy ones by the way)