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Certainly, I’m glad to hear of the positive experience of you and your colleagues. But, isn’t there something to be said for the call-out of the topic in the ar
by tony_cannistra 8y ago
Certainly, I’m glad to hear of the positive experience of you and your colleagues. But, isn’t there something to be said for the call-out of the topic in the article? If the issue of work-life balance and quality mentorship wasn’t an issue, it seems to me that this article would stop short of asking Dr Hörst about it.
- heyitsguay 8y agoOh yeah, absolutely! No question that it's still an issue: the vast majority of my peers had great experiences with their PI's, but I'd say 10-20% were less happy at times. Even within my department, we all knew of at least a few professors who should be avoided as advisers because of how they treated their students. So if that's anything close to a representative sample, a problem for 10-20% of people is a big problem that needs to be addressed, but that still leaves 80-90% of people pretty happy.
- tony_cannistra 8y agoWell, it’s comforting to hear about those low percentages (10-20%, as you mention) in your experience. However, empirical results [0] have demonstrated percentages of mental illness among PhD students more in the range of 43-46%. Lest we assign some sort of “well, it’s better here” thinking, those results are from Berkeley. I remain pedantic about this only because, despite some anectodal experiences, there’s a serious problem in academic training which is having strongly detrimental effects on student development, quality of life, and retention. [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4089 https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4089