Hi

I am actually asking on behalf of my Mum. She has been doing her PhD for over 6 years part time (had a year off due to personal circumstances). She plans to submit in September, however, she has just received an email from her supervisors that sounds like they may suggest she should not continue . They have been useless and unhelpful e.g suggesting she writes her thesis one way and then tells her that it is wrong and not to write it that way.

they used wording such as ' time to reassess and decide how to proceed'.

She is dyslexic so is taking longer then usual. I'm really worried for her.

Can anyone advise?

Thanks

Maddie

Hi Maddie,

I don't think they can throw your mum out as such - I think a lot of it is just threats as it looks bad for the dept to lose students - i.e students who don't complete their PhDs for whatever reason and those who go over the allocated time of 4 yrs full time so that would make it 8 years part time. I'm including the writing up year that you are allowed to have at the end of your 3 years. The reason why depts get so worked up about such matters is due to numbers as they want to show they have X no of students who finish within 4 yrs for it to count towards the Research Assessment Excercise which they do every 5/6 yrs to assess how good the dept is in terms of research which in turn influences how much funding they get!! It's quite sad that you are reduced to a number! The best thing for your mum to do is to clarify with the uni's research office/academic registry or equivalent what the situation/rules are regarding submission. Most unis do not see this as a problem as people often need extensions for various reasons and they would rather have a completed PhD rather than a non-complteted one especially if they are aware of personal cirumstances. There is a lot of politics going on and supervisors like to think they have more power than they do and the unfortunate students often get in the way! Good luck.

Thanks Candle, that is really helpful info. My Mum says to say a huge thanks, and she feels more confidentcafter your advice. I have a friend that works in RAE and she said that the RAE has been done already and the results published, so it may be that they didn’t get a good score or something, and that it could be the supervisors are keen for her to finish cause they may have had a talking to about the submission rates of the students they supervise and they usually can’t take on more if they have anyone still to submit.

So fingers crossed.

I had one of the supervisors when I did my MA and they were not very good.

Maddie,

at this point, the supervisors will be under big pressure from the faculty to provide either convincing evidence that your mother has made sufficient progress to graduate within the maximum registration period. Universities are now set targets for submission and completion that will be publicised, and so everyone is worried about students who look like they might not complete in time. They have also been told by the official adjudicator for complaints in HE that they should not allow students, who are not progressing well enough, to proceed because that's unfair to the student. So with students like your mum, they are genuinely in a difficult area. Her supervisors may actually be trying to buy her sufficient extra time to finish by suggesting a nominal suspension of studies or they might as you think, be telling her it's not good enough and she should quit. She needs to find out which it is first. I know about this as it's recently happened to someone I know - in his case, the supervisors had to write a formal e-mail because the dean insisted, but were actually trying to find imaginative ways to avoid doing what the dean wanted and throwing him out.