Balancing quality and good-enough

Voices from students and advisors involved in the PhD education

Abstract

This report is a survey investigating the supervision of PhD students with regards to time, effort, scientific output and quality. The report is part of the readership course at Lund University (LU). The main purpose of the course is to improve supervision of PhD students.

To receive the academic grade of PhD you need to fulfill certain learning criteria. However, minimum requirement and actual achievement can differ quite a lot. As the outcomes are crucial for both the future career of the student and the advisors, it was our interest to address these difficulties.

The survey was conducted by developing two different questionnaires: one targeted for advisors (22 responses) and one for PhD students (31 responses). The questions were, when possible, developed for cross analysis, e.g. a question for advisors had a counterpart question to PhD students (will further be mentioned as students). The average time spent on the PhD education within the student group was slightly above 50% accomplished, whereas the advisor group was fairly experienced with more than 5 advised students.

One of the surprising outcomes of the background question was the low number of hours spent on supervision. About one third of the participants reported less than 4 h supervision per month, which is below what the faculty of technology (LTH) considers to be the lowest limit for supervision. With regards to expectations on the PhD education, both study groups had similar answers, although the advisor group had a more critical view of the quality of the thesis work at Lund University in general. Replies in the survey in addition suggested that the advisor show a higher perceived expectation of the students, than students on themself. But at the same time 80 % of the advisors think that the students well or very well live up to their expectations.

In the analysis of the answers from the participants some limiting factors of the supervision can
be elaborated; 1) Time spent on supervision and 2) communication between advisor and student. The last factor, communication, can be further broken down into a) planning b) agreement/consensus. Surprisingly, the actual performance of tasks was not a parameter highlighted as a limiting factor by the advisors.