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Quality of PhD graduates
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Hi. Lately I have been thinking about the quality of PhD graduates. I have seen a lot of threads discussing about supervisory issues. But I personally think that besides the supervisors, some issues are indeed from the PhD candidates. Let me share with you what I observed from a PhD graduate in my school. She started her PhD with a one-year proposal. She failed her Confirmation milestone, and she complained to the Head of School saying she was treated unfairly in the review process, changed her panel team and eventually passed her 2nd confirmation. Her new panel team proposed her subsequent plans (Of course her supervisor was useless, too). She didn't do lab work, instead she sourced out some sets of samples to service companies. Also, she asked her supervisor to take in foreign intern and she assigned all workload to this student. She forced the student to work for 9 hours 7 days a week. She didn't allow the foreign student to fly home until she finished the workload, which has been added from time to time. She even told the intern "You have to finish everything, because I won't be able to continue after you leave". They had multiple arguments but the supervisor was supportive to her. She has neither skills in the lab nor data analytical skills. We saw her results & Discussion during her presentation and it's faulty here and there. During her viva, she couldn't answer any questions from her panel (One of her panel withdrew eventually). She only answered "I don't know", "I don't remember" for every question. But she passed! She was always furious and even threatened to sue the school when things didn't go her way. The school had to introduce several new policies due to her behaviours. Anyhow, she is now a Dr. to the world, and only us, who are in the same school know her true stories. Is this kind of PhD graduates common in every university? Thank you for reading.