Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum and would appreciate your help in deciding about the PhD offer that I have. The supervisor was associated with the industry for the past 12 years and only recently(about 3 months back) became a professor at a university in germany. So he is fairly new. He has presumably good contacts with his former employers as well as other industry personel.

His past work in the industry has very little relation to the PhD topic that I was offered. Although he has done some work on the same or related topic but that was during his own PhD which was about 12 years back. So in essence his knowledge on the topic is little. The PhD is fully funded and the university is well known in germany among the top nine. I am interested in the topic but I am also worried about other facts such as him having no prior supervising experience, or his little knowledge in the field. His learning curve will be the same as the PhD student. He seems to be very enthusastic about the topic and I guess the interaction level with him during the course of PhD will be more.
I must mention that although the topic of research is something he has not done before but he has worked on projects which can be usefull since these projects fall more or less under a sub category of the topic.

So what do you think about this PhD offer. What more should I be considering before I make my decision. If you would like to know anything else about him I will be glad to answer.

Thanks & Regards

First off, I think it is hard to judge someone in terms of supervision skills on the basis of whether they worked in industry or academia. The point is whether the person can deal with people, and maybe your supervisor in question had managerial tasks in industry, hence knows how to lead/guide/advise people... What you describe about the topic and his knowledge- it is a tricky one, and I think in the end it depends on just what kind of guy your supervisor is: Sometimes it is an advantage to have someone who is not an expert in the field, yes, it can be infuriating when you do not get the help you think you should get, but also, it allows you to become the expert first, do things the way you want, put your stamp on things. Things might take longer in the beginning. Sometimes supervisors who have been long established in their fields can be a bit conservative and are more controlling as to what you can and cannot do, and you might have to be willing to fight your corner (new idea..) much harder... I think the main point is that you feel you will get along with the person and have good vibes about the topic/subject matter yourself. That's my two penny's worth;-)

Thanks for your reply. As you mentioned, the supervisor was indeed working previously as the director of a department and managing the day to day tasks of his team. From the interview I had with him , I felt he knew what he was wanted,about how the end product should look like at the end of the PhD. As you said it will take somewhat longer than usual to complete the PhD since we are both relatively new to the topic. But I guess this is alright. And besides there are other PhD/postdoc students with whom I can have discussion on the topic. He is an easy going guy and from what I know so far he gives complete freedom to the PhD student to make their own decisions with little supervision from time to time. So far so good.

The only sticking point is than his knowledge on the topic. The topic is interesting to me and so if I put more effort than I guess this is is also not much of a block. I think overall the offer is not bad at all. Thanks for your help anyway.

It's a good idea (if not mandatory in most places) to have a secondary supervisor. Could you find one who maybe had some expertise in your topic and maybe had some supervision experience? That way you would build a good team to support you and it would be a good way of getting to know other people in the field. The secondary supervisor can even be from a different institution.

Well that I plan to do once I have joined the PhD. Build a network with people working on similar projects or having such experience.

hi! I have friends who had supervisors who didn't know anything about the topic (!!!!); these supervisors were their supervisors because they (the supervisors) had skillfully secured research grants (don't ask me how..and I don't want to say). This is the truth. What happened with one friend was that she did everything herself, she struggled, but she was in too deep (couldn't leave halfway), her supervisor was 99% nice but 30% contribution to project; she persevered--AND breezed through her viva (!!!).

Another friend who had this same supervisor left after 18 months. I guess its a personal choice.

If you have a supervisor who doesnt know anything but is good with you, and the university is good too, maybe you can also find a 2nd supervisor..like a back-up supervisor :-) New professors (in my opinion) make good communication (because they're still "new"), they dont disappear easily and are usually reachable...

Best of luck with your decision!

Thanks for all your advice and suggestions. I do understand the risks with taking up the offer but after a lot of thought I have accepted the mentioned PhD offer. I will be beginning my PhD shortly in about 2 months time. I plan to contact people with knowledge in this field during this time and have a network of contacts ready to refer to in case of dire need.

Hopefully the experience during the PhD will be a good one with little or no bad experience. :-)

I want to share you my experience if it helps, 2 year ago I accepted PhD offer, I am the first PhD student to my supervisor, she is a young professor. She is too much interested on the research but she does not have enough experience/ academic background on the topic. We struggled to shape the PhD proposal, sometimes she seek advise from senior professor and then she talk to me, do this,… do this. We changed the topic twice, and now I am now working on the third topic. In my PhD committee are some senior professors, they know a lot about what I am doing, one of him told me this can’t be a PhD topic at all, I agreed what he said. When I tell my professor about his comment, she will be angry. I spent 2 years swinging like pendulum, now I reduced my contact with the other PhD committee members, because they don’t agree with the topic at all. They want me to pick different topic. Recently I posted in this forum “quitting after two year”, this is one of the reason why I am quitting my PhD after two years. My case may be different from you but, just to share you my experience.

I understand your concern and I am sorry to hear that you quit your PhD . Hopefully my circumstances will not be the same as yours. The PhD topic itself is something relatively new and research in this field is being carried on by only a handful of universities in US UK Germany and some other countries. There is lot of scope to do work in this field and few topics have already been suggested to me to work upon which can lead to a PhD. My background work has more or less prepared me for such topics. Moreover the professor has said that his former company has shown interest in the project as well. And these industry guys know the topic quite well which would lead me to build a good network with them through my professor for any suggestions criticism as such. I am fairly capable of working without supervision. So for the PhD I expect it to be no different. Little supervision from time to time to say I am on the right path is all I need.

In the end it comes down to how motivated I am and this is something only time will tell.