Hmmm, I agree, these are huge inconveniences, hardly atrocities!

When I began I was allocated a supervisor with 4 other PhD students. To date 2 of those students have dropped out; 2 are in their 5th years (both full-time funded students), and I swapped supervisor. The woman never gave proper feedback, just grammar and spelling (and her's was worse). Every meeting was an existential crisis about the meaning and place of my PhD; which is important but a product of the research as well as what guides it. She constantly deferred to another member of staff who disagreed with my work - not because he had read and offered critique he just didn't like my analytical framework. The final straw was when she invited me to a conference in the US and then at the last minute moved to a different hotel and didn't speak to me all week; despite knowing it was my first ever conference (and the biggest one in my field).

I was gutted when this happened, I felt it was all my fault and I didn't know what to do. I tried to speak with her about this, she refused until eventually I said I thought she was unsuitable as my supervisor and she said the problem was that I could not take criticism (my current Sup does not seem to think this). It was a friend (a Prof) at another Uni who said to me one thing:

"It is the Supervisor's job to get you a PhD, even if you have a personality that makes Mussolini seem bashful, they have to work with you. But it is your job to do the work not theirs, in whatever conditions you are in. And remember we are all flawed..."

Yes, crap happens, most PhD experiences meet big problems (not methodologically, I mean work issues), but that is not and cannot be an excuse not to do well. It is your responsibility to do the work, the supervisor just shapes it into a PhD. If they aren't doing that - move on. If you don't like your conditions, do something about it, stop whinging, and for God's sake it is not an 'atrocity'.

true , and as they say there is formal supervision and informal. Unfortunately the informal differs ALOT, and it is fair for everyone to be treated the same, but unfortunately it depends on characters.

As far as morality is concerned, its easy to disguise....but not helping others is also lack of character even if you are not directly harming them. For example, pretending not to know anything or not sharing any info (not even stuff that can be shared without danger) is part of the ridiculous thinking behind supposed success, and yes we see it everywhere.

The PhD process relies to a large degree on the integrity of both supervisors and examiners. This seems to be where problems arise for most people and there isn't a level playing field with regard to supervision within my own institution let alone the rest of the UK. But I'm not sure that revealing 'horror stories' is the way to change this. Plus it all depends upon your p.o.v. My supervisors blamed me for their lack of interest in my PhD and they probably had a point to a certain degree because I prefer to work independently. But at least I know how not to supervise a PhD!

I entirely disagree. It is completely unsuitable for 'everyone to be treated the same'. The supervision process needs to be student-led as much as academic-led. There are a number of highly cogent responses in this thread.
Maybe the key difference is between glass-is-half-empty V glass-is-half-full people.

it's about choice....everyone is different but everyone should be allowed to decide that. My supervisor claims she met hers once every 4 months......now i do hope she wasnt paying for that. unfortunately now this seems normal to her and im lucky if i get once a month....

I met my supervisor 2-3 times/year until the last 6 months when we met about every 6 weeks. I did get angry about the lack of involvement.

Hi Pamplemouse yes the building is open at those times. However if one is doing a research PhD which involves doing a time course study and examining gene expression every few hours then these hours make it virtually impossible to do this type of mechanistic research. For example if one wants to examine changes in gene expressin under varying treatments for various time points such as every 3, 6 etc over say a 72-96 hour period then it means that at the weekend very limited work can be done and it slows down the pace of the research enormously as one has to plan around the opening times of the building which is crazy. Its not that i need to be in the building all the time far from it but i need to be able to come in at the certain time points required as does another of my fellow phd colleague. I want to get into a top class lab in america so i need good publications within the three years so im willing to dedciate the 80 plus hours a week to achieve my goal its just so frustating that the university does not share the same desire to achieve research excellence. Are you doing a PhD in molecular biology as well pamplemouse?

Methinks this thread has kind of lost the plot...

Myostatin - I'm a refugee from molecular biology and lived with a friend while he was diong his PhD in that field. Actually it is a little odd not to have 24 hour access to the lab and people did go in at crazy hours just to keep things going, feed cells etc. There must be some security issues that have made them restrict access. Usually dept staff and postgrads have their own key to come and go as they need to. Have you asked your supervisor about this?

Thanks everyone for your responses. Why do I want to write this? No, this is not because I want to publicly vent, as I think that would be pointless. I’m writing this because I believe that academia can be hypocritical, and that these abuses, contradictions should be told. The public has been led to believe that the higher education is for the benefit of the public good; however, when those of the community are being taken advantage, then the institution itself has defaulted on its contact and obligation with the larger community to which it should be held accountable. As some have mentioned here, the building and resources are not even available to meet the expectations involved in completing a program. If you challenge that problem, then what would happen? It seems that challenging systemic obstacles is met with responses that indicate that you are not intellectually or emotionally strong enough to persist, but that could not be farther from the truth. It is the intellectual and emotional strength that causes one to speak up. And yes, unfortunately, that means you will be kicked out of the program from within the system itself - using some type of review period that uses subjective data to kick you out.

I realize that writing this would be the end of my career in some ways, but not so much. The career it would end would be a career I would not want because of its hypocritical nature – If I work within a system and am paid by that system, then I am responsible to making sure that I am not part of the abuse; however, it is rare that other faculty will speak up and advocate for students to another student, although I do believe they do at times. The point is that who is helping those faculty who are trying to speak up – perhaps, public exposure would provide more support to those who are working within academia, trying to make it better.

Although I hear that people believe that when others get the degree, they can then change the system, I do not think that realistically occurs. Otherwise, the abuse would stop and it doesn’t. My concern is not with too much work or too much challenge, it’s with the discrimination within the system. The fact is that everyone does not have the same experiences because we are treated differently. Should we be treated differently? Only if it is relative to our ability or interest. My problem is the different treatment due to the way someone looks, their skin color, their gender, or their accent. What is disheartening is when those who do not have to endure different treatment because of these attributes fail to see that this discrimination occurs. Rather you hear from others, “oh- that’s never happened to me—“, implying that it is your fault or something wrong with you that is making that happen, and if you would be like them, then this would not occur.

I am writing this because I believe that speaking up is about being true to what higher education is about – willing to learn and to voice the truth, even in the face of adversity.

Is this below unique to a phd programme, or to higher education alone? Discrimination and other such foul things plague every sector of human life and yes, critical voices within and outside the system continue to point these out. What is especially interesting about the PhD case? How is it different (am not saying it isn't) from let us say malpractices within industry, larger global corporations, medicine and health, international charities? I could go on.

And when you say end of career, are you in a programme and want an exit and would like to do a write up? Have you evaluated the other side as well, i.e. those who do have positive experiences, even if not uniformly positive?

One thing that has struck me about academia versus industry is the lack of accountablity - the buck stops at the bottom rather than the top. But in many other ways, the abuses are similar.