On who is allowed to graduate

There is a convention I’ve seen at several institutions whereby a PhD (usually) student who already has a job or post-doc lined up is permitted to defend a dissertation that is less complete than would otherwise be accepted were they not up against a deadline. One suspects this sort of thing is applied in a rather biased fashion, but let’s suppose it was not. I cannot see any justification for it. It produces poor science, it is bad for departmental morale and espirit de corps, and it doesn’t prepare the student for future success in an environment where their advisor can no longer put a finger on the scale.

Now it is true that advisors or committee members, for whatever reason, occasionally try to squeeze a student for more one more experiment that is more of a nice-to-have than essential to make the argument being made in the thesis, but it is not clear why accepting a sub-par dissertation should be a remedy for it, and why such a remedy should only be available if you have a new job starting in two weeks.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *