Phd Advising is difficult to exercite! Thinking about The Guardian article?

Agreed PhD advising is not an easy task.  In order to successfully advise / supervise a student to complete his / her PhD, the supervisor(s) & student need to form a partnership that required all parties to invest: commitment, contribution, passion, perseverance, sacrifices etc & no "social-loafing" (phenomenon of 1 party exerting less effort in view of the other party is doing more).  The formula of the investment may not be 50-50 but can be certain ratio pre-discussed & pre-agreed by all parties.  A PhD supposed to be a lonely journey for the student but it can be less lonely with the deep partnership is sealed.  On the ratio how many PhD students per supervisor required case by case handling in order to ensure the supervisor is not overloaded & deteriorate the partnerships that s/he has formed with the respective PhD students.

PhD advising is indeed a hard task to execute. 

I love the bit in the article about the PhD student being forgot about for two years! How do we stop this from happening? 

Phd Advising is difficult to exercite! Thinking about The Guardian article?

Agreed PhD advising is not an easy task.  In order to successfully advise / supervise a student to complete his / her PhD, the supervisor(s) & student need to form a partnership that required all parties to invest: commitment, contribution, passion, perseverance, sacrifices etc & no "social-loafing" (phenomenon of 1 party exerting less effort in view of the other party is doing more).  The formula of the investment may not be 50-50 but can be certain ratio pre-discussed & pre-agreed by all parties.  A PhD supposed to be a lonely journey for the student but it can be less lonely with the deep partnership is sealed.  On the ratio how many PhD students per supervisor required case by case handling in order to ensure the supervisor is not overloaded & deteriorate the partnerships that s/he has formed with the respective PhD students.

Excellent! I am very grateful for the great line Han Ping Fun!

Wow, a student forgotten about for two years! There needs to be both push from the student and pull from the supervisor/advisor. As well as some sort of safety net from the university. During our orientation they spoke to us about what to expect from supervisors and how often we should meet. As well as meetings are recorded on the university's online platform and there are annual progress reviews. So, if a student isn't being supervised, it will likely be caught by the end of year one. Because a student has to submit a progress report, the external examiner will look at the draft chapter and make recommendations, I believe someone in the department will also look at the meeting logs and see if there have been meetings. However, what doesn't seem to be clear, is that even if a student is OBVIOUSLY not being supervised, no one will do anything unless the student makes a request. And that can be hard thing for a student to do, especially if s/he is not sure what good supervision looks like. So, does make me wonder what is the point of our universities having all these safety nets/faile safes in place if they are just going to let it be an open secret that a student is not recieving proper supervision?

I understand all the viewpoints that you added, Sabine.

I think that controls of meetings are shared by both, advisor/supervisor and student.

But, on the strength and power relationship existing, even by the workload of the supervisors, it will be necessary to think about using new conditions for conducting the orientation meetings.

That's very important to sure a good work to both.

Thanks.