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Assuming the people involved are intelligent and also aware of how the system works, why consider the student as “damaged goods” over something which is not the

• neilv 8y ago
  I took "damaged goods" to mean traumatized by the experience. Regarding awareness of how the system works... While everyone has some shared sense of the systems of graduate studies and career development, an individual probably doesn't have much information about instances of wrenches being thrown into the works, especially not outside their own department or university. (Though they might hear rumors about a particular department elsewhere having cultural problems, and they've formed superficial impressions of a number of other professors, from their behavior at conferences or in faculty meetings, but that's about it.) Also, I'll speculate it's possible that there's an element of survivorship bias: you don't get to be a professor without a lot of hard work, but also bit of luck in enough things going your way. Wronged grad students, on the other hand, tend to quickly disappear from professors' environments.
  • stallmanite 8y ago
    Thank you for the in-depth reply.