Red flags for graduate programs and advisors

[Keithkwok]

I just discovered an old thread at http://www.socjobrumors.com/topic/red-flags-for-graduate-programs-and-advisors/page/2?replies=23

Someone said that it would be a red flag if your prospective "advisor only 'co-authors' with students (or former students)." I am confused why it should be seen as a red flag?

Thank you! BTW, I have a list of factors that some senior students suggest me to take into consideration when deciding which program to join:

1. Never go to a school to do PhD simply because of one professor. There should be more than three faculty members that you want to work with.

2. Avoid programs that ask PhD students to TA too many courses.

Edited February 9, 2017 by syf08678

[socapp2017]

It's not a red flag. If you look at the post, you'll see it has 3 "goods" and 10 "no goods," so more far more people disagree than agree. If anything, it's more likely a green flag that this is an advisor you'd want. The reason why that person may have made that ridiculous statement is that a faculty member who only co-authors with graduate students may be seen by faculty as not being serious scholars. But even that notion is a big stretch.

The point is, you shouldn't be treating every post on that forum as gospel. There is plenty of misleading nonsense - sometimes deliberately misleading nonsense - posted.

[Keithkwok]

10 hours ago, socapp2017 said:

It's not a red flag. If you look at the post, you'll see it has 3 "goods" and 10 "no goods," so more far more people disagree than agree. If anything, it's more likely a green flag that this is an advisor you'd want. The reason why that person may have made that ridiculous statement is that a faculty member who only co-authors with graduate students may be seen by faculty as not being serious scholars. But even that notion is a big stretch.

The point is, you shouldn't be treating every post on that forum as gospel. There is plenty of misleading nonsense - sometimes deliberately misleading nonsense - posted.

Thank you!

[Keithkwok]

11 hours ago, bradley610 said:

I'm just doubtful that this happens very often at all. Almost no one would "only co-author with students".

You are right.

My current situation is that I am balancing between two PhD offers: one from a top 25 program, the other from a 40-50 program (US news ranking). Almost everyone told me to go to the former, as the program fits me much better, but I really like one professor in the lower-ranked school, who also helped me a lot in this application season. I like him because I believe he is the smartest scholar I have ever met so far. But I am also aware that the smartest scholar is not necessarily the best PhD mentor.

I guess I will go to the top 25 program, because we cannot go to a program simply because of one advisor. But that is a hard decision to make.

[Keithkwok]

51 minutes ago, bradley610 said:

Yeah, that's an interesting dilemma, but I think it's probably right to go with the top 25 program, unless there's a reputation for the department treating people poorly or that a large percentage of students don't end up finishing their degrees. I'm guessing the top-25 school is Brown and the other one is Illinois. Congratulations on that. Getting into both is a real achievement, and you should be proud of it, but having the chance to earn a PhD at an Ivy really is something special. It strikes me as a once in a lifetime kinda deal, the kind of thing you don't pass up unless there's a genuine problem with it that you can identify.

Your guess is completely correct. Also thank you for your advice. You are right, decisions of this kind are hardly correct or incorrect, as our life outcome is never completely determined by the very first decision, but also what we do and how we live our life after the decision is made.

Edited February 10, 2017 by syf08678

[oldacct]

If you're able to, also try to attend both visitation weekends. I'm in a somewhat similar position and well I know which school I'll most likely attend since it's much better ranked and has a better faculty fit,  it is also good to gather as much information as possible. 

Also, meeting this Illinois professor is never a bad thing. Even though it is unlikely that this person will be your mentor, you can always follow up with them at conferences and its good that they will have a face to your name. 

 

[Keithkwok]

16 hours ago, sociologicals said:

If you're able to, also try to attend both visitation weekends. I'm in a somewhat similar position and well I know which school I'll most likely attend since it's much better ranked and has a better faculty fit,  it is also good to gather as much information as possible. 

Also, meeting this Illinois professor is never a bad thing. Even though it is unlikely that this person will be your mentor, you can always follow up with them at conferences and its good that they will have a face to your name. 

 

Thank you! I remember you are admitted to UCI, which is my dream school. I love the climate of California! Irvine, in particular, is a very nice community to live. But I guess I have been rejected in spite of no formal notification yet.

The visitation weekends of the two schools happen to be on the same day! Also, I am an international student. So I will probably not attend due to the expensive airfare. But I will definitely Skype with the Illinois professor, as you suggested.

[TakeruK]

Just to add one more perspective, from my field, which may be different.

I think if someone really only ever coauthors with students or former students, I would consider it a red flag. The reason is that this person is unlikely to be a good collaborator if they aren't able to work well with others in their own field and can only do science with their own group or former group members. That is, current group members are basically forced to collaborate with their advisor and those who graduated may be the ones who had a good relationship with their advisor. The lack of outside collaboration also means that if you join this group, you might be joining a pretty insular academic community. You will have fewer chances to interact with academics with different ideas/approaches and maybe more importantly, when it's time to get a job beyond grad school, you might not have as many connections and your network may not be as large.

However, as others pointed out, it's almost never true that someone only ever publishes with their own group. That said, it's still worthwhile to see how often your potential advisor interacts professionally with scholars from other institutions that were not part of his/her group. Eventually, (some of) your advisor's network will be your network, so you want to see what you can tap into by joining this group.

[eloquentrivka]

May be a useless opinion coming from a British masters in a different social science field, but the head of our program was someone who would only co-author with students or former students. He also supervised my dissertation, as well as some of my friends'. He was notorious for not handing in paperwork for our projects to be authorized, forgetting to submit our references, and basically doing nothing when he was clearly paid to do a lot of things. 

My friend recently got an email from him asking her to edit a significant portion of her thesis because he had submitted it to a journal without telling her and had received some additional requests from the editors. I suspect he does this fairly often - choose students to supervise who 1) will not fail even if left alone, and 2) work on his areas of interest. I deviated from his 'plans' for me because I rejected his suggested dissertation topics and went for my own in a qualitative method, but plenty of my friends were pulled into doing free work for him under the guise of doing their fieldwork. If he likes what you end up with, he'll stick his name on it and submit it for review, sometimes even without consulting you. This long and continuing list of publications under his name, btw, is one of the main reasons his position is in such a safehold in the college and department. 

[Keithkwok]

On 2/12/2017 at 1:31 AM, TakeruK said:

Just to add one more perspective, from my field, which may be different.

I think if someone really only ever coauthors with students or former students, I would consider it a red flag. The reason is that this person is unlikely to be a good collaborator if they aren't able to work well with others in their own field and can only do science with their own group or former group members. That is, current group members are basically forced to collaborate with their advisor and those who graduated may be the ones who had a good relationship with their advisor. The lack of outside collaboration also means that if you join this group, you might be joining a pretty insular academic community. You will have fewer chances to interact with academics with different ideas/approaches and maybe more importantly, when it's time to get a job beyond grad school, you might not have as many connections and your network may not be as large.

However, as others pointed out, it's almost never true that someone only ever publishes with their own group. That said, it's still worthwhile to see how often your potential advisor interacts professionally with scholars from other institutions that were not part of his/her group. Eventually, (some of) your advisor's network will be your network, so you want to see what you can tap into by joining this group.

Thank you! Your viewpoint indeed makes sense. It is very likely that the potential supervisor who only co-authors with a limited group of people (in the most recent five or seven years) might constrain your access to a wider range of resources. However, based on my observation of co-authorship in sociology, it seems that only very few scholars are able to co-author with collaborators from a variety of institutions. Such scholars are usually very famous.

[Keithkwok]

13 hours ago, eloquentrivka said:

May be a useless opinion coming from a British masters in a different social science field, but the head of our program was someone who would only co-author with students or former students. He also supervised my dissertation, as well as some of my friends'. He was notorious for not handing in paperwork for our projects to be authorized, forgetting to submit our references, and basically doing nothing when he was clearly paid to do a lot of things. 

My friend recently got an email from him asking her to edit a significant portion of her thesis because he had submitted it to a journal without telling her and had received some additional requests from the editors. I suspect he does this fairly often - choose students to supervise who 1) will not fail even if left alone, and 2) work on his areas of interest. I deviated from his 'plans' for me because I rejected his suggested dissertation topics and went for my own in a qualitative method, but plenty of my friends were pulled into doing free work for him under the guise of doing their fieldwork. If he likes what you end up with, he'll stick his name on it and submit it for review, sometimes even without consulting you. This long and continuing list of publications under his name, btw, is one of the main reasons his position is in such a safehold in the college and department. 

Sorry to hear the sad stories of your friends. British masters are notorious for their lack of academic support, as they seem to be aimed at making money to fund their PhD students. Just out of curiosity: when he submitted his student's paper to a journal, did he list himself as the first author or single author, or the student's name as the first author? It seems that if the student was the first author, the student at least benefited from his conduct somehow.