{"id":3699,"date":"2020-10-28T10:07:57","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T10:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/accountability-in-supervisor-student-relationships-setting-boundaries\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T06:26:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T06:26:22","slug":"accountability-in-supervisor-student-relationships-setting-boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/accountability-in-supervisor-student-relationships-setting-boundaries","title":{"rendered":"Accountability in supervisor-student relationships: Setting boundaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was my first meeting with my new supervisor. We had reached about the third point with simple politeness, when he said “Be visible. Be very visible or I’ll simply forget about you. I have too many to supervise.”\u00a0This statement\u00a0got me thinking hard about the\u00a0difficult balancing act of being very visible without being a nuisance. It also reminded me of\u00a0the predicament of a postgraduate friend of mine in China. She was one of forty-six postgraduates working on a rare earth minerals project. Her problem was how to be invisible when her work was so singularly based in the\u00a0university, in fact in a specific laboratory. Her professor was an anxious man who would even chase her down corridors asking for verbal progress reports!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clearly, she and I inhabited very different worlds.\u202fOr,\u00a0were they actually so different?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Were there more researchers struggling to deal with or set boundaries with their supervisors?\u202fI wanted to look at global postgraduate student numbers, hopefully clearly segregated by degree type, and figures offered over time. However, the available data is essentially by country and usually looking only at internal figures, with no consideration given to students migrating overseas for their\u00a0postgraduate education. I delved into looking singularly at China.\u202fTaking\u202fCEIC<\/a>\u00a0(Census and Economic Information\u00a0Center)\u202fbase figures, there was a 75.06% rise in doctoral enrolments in China from December 2007 to December 2018. In 2018,\u00a0there were 389, 518 enrolled for\u00a0a\u00a0doctorate\u00a0degree. For the same period,\u00a0the number of\u00a0enrolled\u00a0master\u2019s students rose\u00a0to 2,341,739\u00a0\u2013 an increase of\u00a0140.79%\u00a0. \u202fNote that Chinese\u00a0master\u2019s courses are lengthy and very much research-based. Also,\u00a0to note is the substantial numbers of Chinese\u00a0students\u00a0who undertake their higher education overseas.\u202fChinese Ministry of Education<\/a>\u202ffigures show that the number of Chinese\u00a0students\u00a0undertaking higher education overseas rose by 132.28% between 2010 and 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I began to get a sense of just how pressured the global environment must be for\u00a0postgraduate students seeking\u00a0academic\u00a0placements,\u00a0those\u00a0wishing to retain those placements,\u00a0and\u00a0those\u00a0seeking to service these exceedingly high numbers globally. In 2018, 7.5 million students graduated from undergraduate programs in China, while 1.9 million graduated from US undergraduate programs. These are staggering numbers to potentially accommodate into postgraduate education and research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I wondered whether teaching faculty numbers had kept pace with student numbers. The negative case is well-proven for\u202fAustralia<\/a>\u202fand\u202fIndia<\/a>. It is also worth questioning whether\u00a0faculty\u00a0supervision\u00a0process\u00a0has been clearly thought through and communicated to both staff and students, particularly to postgraduate supervisors. Alternatively, was everybody just muddling through, rather shell-shocked?\u00a0To me, it looked like the latter was the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This made me think of more specific questions. How many universities have clearly articulated models of postgraduate student supervision? Further, how many clearly communicate those models to postgraduate student supervisors? Finally, how many supervisors clearly articulate the supervision model and processes to postgraduate students, or is it a case of mutual presumption? In my experience, everything concerning supervision has been a matter of presumption, not a clear articulation, and even less a matter of mutual agreement. Why not\u00a0create a formal\u00a0agreement and a counter-signed contract\u00a0that outlines the\u00a0scope of the supervisor-student relationship and duties?\u00a0<\/p>\n

In recent years, a great deal of literature has\u202ffocused on the supervisory relationship<\/a>\u00a0in academia, with an increased emphasis on formal training, monitoring,\u00a0and accountability of doctoral supervisors.\u00a0Some studies\u202fsuggest<\/a>\u202fthat pedagogy must be related to\u00a0a\u00a0clearly articulated purpose.\u00a0With professional doctorates and doctorates through publication now available in addition to the traditional PhD, this purpose and pedagogy must be clear. Extending this line of thought, I am of the opinion that considering this and the disproportionate student-supervisor ratio, formalizing the boundaries of the supervisor-student relationship would help add more structure to the system and provide optimal value to both parties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I propose a supervision model that includes a formal agreement and counter-signed contract. The contract might cover the following:\u00a0<\/p>\n