See title.
I know it varies from place to place and professor to professor, but, in general, what are the expectations involved for the adviser and/or the advisee?
The advisor’s job is to make sure that the advisee is doing Ph.D. level work. Which generally means that it can lead to publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
It would help if we knew what field you’re talking about. In biology, all graduate research is done under the advisor’s guidance. How hands on or hands off that guidance is varies widely from person to person. It would be extremely unusual - almost unheard of - for a grad student to publish a paper that didn’t have the advisor’s name on it.
Yeah, the fields differ greatly. I would think that any type of mentorship, though, requires the mentor to give a shit about the mentee, but this doesn’t seem to be the case with academic advising in general from what I’ve seen.
Sciences and social sciences:
- Get published, possibly
- Ensure the student progresses in a timely manner
- Provide research ideas and/or assess and implement student ideas
Nice but not required:
- Don’t be an asshole
- Fund student or find funding opportunities. Because no funds = needs to work elsewhere = not in lab
- Train skills needed to succeed, like microscopy or something needed to do the work
- Edit papers/collaborate
- Delegate etc.; different levels of grad student/post doc have different skills/requirements
If they’re newer and trying to get tenure, publishing is important. It may cause the advisor to skimp in other areas.
Humanities I imagine many of these apply, but “publish” has a different meaning.
In math, the most important thing the supervisor does is find a feasible problem. Since the only way of knowing whether a problem is feasible is to have a very good idea how to solve it, this usually means the advisor has already solved it or at least knows a virtually certain attack. Often (usually, I would guess) it is based on extending some work of the advisor in a direction he hasn’t and maybe doesn’t want to bother with. A colleague describes a PhD thesis as a paper of the advisor’s published under adverse circumstances.
Beyond, the advisor should be available for regular conferences with the student, monitor his progress, hold hands if needed and be prepared to help him over rough spots. He should also be available to help the write-up. Incidentally, the advisor never (well almost never) puts his name on the resulting paper. The only exception is when it is truly joint research, but that never happened with me and I can’t think of a case.
In physics, it can be anything from “Analyze the data from this experiment I’m running and we’ll call that a thesis” to “Well, this is the field I’m strong in, so if you come up with an idea in that field I’ll be able to give you a lot of feedback”. Or anything in between.
In my program (Interdisciplinary Program in Biomedical Sciences), advisors were very involved with each student. They identify projects appropriate for a dissertation, oversee the student’s training in the lab, guide the progression of experiments, and oversee any publications or presentations. Most research groups had weekly or biweekly lab meetings where the advisor could formally review progress. In addition, advisors were obligated to secure funding that would support the student at a program-defined stipend until graduation. If they lost their funding, their students were transferred to other labs.
The school is public policy. The professor in question is actually an economist, and a minor celebrity (though not to compared to his dad). He has a pretty sweet deal with the school: he teaches two classes a year, only in the spring. He spends the rest of his time at home in another state. He has, I infer, few or no grad students, but does head up - I’m not sure what to call it - a public advocacy group for economic equality. He organizes conferences, publishes books, etc.
I’m not looking for hands-on guidance, particularly, but I would appreciate help making sure my dissertation (hypothetically speaking) gets through whatever gate-keeping mechanism they have in place. And I’d like to be friendly enough with him that I might benefit from some of his connections, afterwards.
I’m going to go see him on Friday, and one of the things I need to find out is if he’s willing to “adopt” me, so to speak. There’s not much reason for me to go that this particular school, except that he’s there.
To expand a bit, he’s a bit of a maverick in economics, as was his dad. From reading his books, I think we’re on the same page, more or less.
The most important thing for the success of a grad student is the advisor. When I was in graduate school, a fellow student and I came up with a 5 rules for success. The number one rule, above all else, is to keep your advisor happy. Not only will your advisor keep your research moving forward, steer you in the right direction, and help with publishing, they are there to help with funding and administrative hurdles. If you need some sort of a waiver (class, qualifying exam extension, etc) and if your advisor likes you and wants you around, you’ll get that waiver.
In the end, if you and your advisor have a strong professional relationship, anything is possible. If you and your advisor do not get along or do not mesh well, nothing is possible–no matter how good you are.
As a matter of personal opinion, if your advisor is only going to be present to advise you for part of the year, I would think very long and hard about this arrangement. You’re going to need this person often to help you with classes, funding, research, publishing, and everything else grad students require. It sounds like there will be little support structure around you. I would strongly recommend co-advising or some similar arrangement.
Good point. In choosing an undergrad, you might rank the following from most to least important:
- The school’s reputation
- The program’s reputation
- Your (many) teachers’ reputations
In (many) grad schools:
- Your advisor’s reputation, as assessed by external peers (who might hire you someday)
- Your program’s reputation. There are many non-famous schools with famous programs. Although often only to people in the same field.
- The school’s reputation
I went through a semester without my advisor and it was a pain in the ass. Mind you that’s one single semester. If OP does this, I assume there will be a secondary advisor for advice, and signatures.
Availability depends, though. Some super busy professors who are always travelling are notorious for always responding to an email in 10 minutes and making time for Skype calls. Other professors are a PITA to get in contact with even when they’re around.
Obviously an absent adviser is more likely to be harder to get in contact with when you need to, but it’s not a hard and fast rule.
Don’t take the analogy too seriously, but a grad school advisor is like an agent. He’s there to make sure you have projects to work on that are challenging enough to be rewarding to your career but still solvable, and he’s supposed to help you market yourself by helping you attend and present at conferences, get your papers in the right journals, etc. At the very least, an advisor should help you to find publishable projects and then to get them published.
I should mention here that my PhD was in theoretical math, which is very different from something in the humanities, and even different from experimental science involving lab work. Pure math is also a field people generally go into iff they intend to continue doing academic work in pure math (as opposed to, say, computer science, where there’s a significant number of students who enter and finish PhD programs with the intent of spending their career in industry). If you don’t get everything in place to continue in a postdoc and eventually a faculty position, you’ve just wasted four or five years.
OK, I’m going to advise a bit of caution here. (We are fast getting out of GC territory here.) Most PhDs are done in the context of the advisor’s own research programme, which is commonly the source of funding for the needed infrastructure, and forms a structure in which you find other students and researchers with common interests to work with. These are often long lived and provide a valuable environment in which to work.
What you are thinking of embarking on will take you outside the usual, and this has clear risks, and also benefits. The risk is simply that there is a greater risk that you won’t make it. A PhD is a serious journey, and is pretty unlike anything else in life. There will be hazards on the way that those that have not been there before will not imagine. An advisor with experience can get you past them, and an advisor with a less academic bent, with few or no PhD students, or experience with PhD students, may simply not recognise or know how to manage these. The lack of students may also indicate that they don’t or won’t care.
The book - rather helpfully titled How to Get a PhD - is a very worthwhile guide. Perhaps one of the important and clear bits of advice to the student is the need to drive the supervisor. In your case this book may be more than usually worthwhile as it gives guidance on the cooperative roles.
Eventually the job of the advisor is to ensure that you make it at the end, and that you are ready when you try. Advisors are usually well acquainted with the realities of life, and a meeting that revolves about grieving over your cat’s death or the latest failure in your love life should not be a surprise. It isn’t their job to be a counsellor, but it is their job to ensure that you make it past all the distractions life can, and will, throw up, and that you get over the inevitable humps in progress. An ability to teach you to write doesn’t go astray. The single biggest danger is mid thesis. Students that fall by the wayside with a partially written thesis is a major problem. Making it is almost entirely about the successful completion of the thesis. Doing all the research work and not finishing writing the thesis does not make for a 90% PhD. It makes for a less than half. And it is harder than most people realise. You advisor’s job is to get you past this.
Your main goal in your Friday meeting is probably going to be to convince him that you are more than usually capable of looking after yourself, and capable of driving the work from your end. But don’t be under any illusions that it is easy. Of course there is the “in what way does taking you on benefit me?” question. You need a clear answer to that too. This being economics it takes on a whole new level. 
Here is a joke which sums things up very well.
Adviser selection is about the most important thing you can do as a grad student. If your adviser is an idiot, you’re in trouble. If your adviser is interested in areas that are disjoint from the things you are interested in, you’re in trouble. If your adviser is about to lose tenure, you’re in trouble. If your adviser has no clout, you’re in trouble - usually a function of no money.
Francis Vaughan is correct about a topic having to match an adviser’s research programming. NSF and no doubt other grants have deliverables, and an adviser needs a student to do them. However they can be interpreted very broadly, and research to set up the next grant is also desired. But if you insist on working on something your adviser hasn’t any funding for, you are going to wind up not getting much of his or her attention. (This is for CS and Engineering - I know nothing about liberal arts funding.) Some students want to get assigned topics, some bring topics. I did. How that works depends on the adviser. It worked great for me.
There is also a hierarchy of graduate students, based at least somewhat on ability. If a student just barely got in and just barely passed quals and just sits around waiting to be told what to do, that student is going to have a miserable time.
I agree with Voyager that advisor selection is the single most important thing a grad student will do. Keep in mind that a huge portion of this is personality. Some advisors are micromanagers and some are completely hands-off. If a student is the type who wants structure and someone to talk to, choosing a hands-off advisor is a recipe for frustration.
The advisor makes everything possible if he/she is happy and nothing possible if he/she is unhappy. I had a friend who was fired despite having a 4.0 in classes because the advisor thought he was a lunatic who didn’t fit in with the group well enough. I had another friend who needed a waiver after his GPA was too low; his advisor thought he showed enough potential in research to fight for a waiver to keep him around. In the same way, I’ve seen very bad students who were inexplicably liked by their advisor get hand-held into a PhD and very very smart people get fired because their advisor wasn’t totally pleased with their work style.
Again, you should be very leery of working for someone who won’t be around for most of the time and might view having students as more of a hobby or distraction. You will need someone to be your advocate, to say nothing of keep paying you and make sure that what you consider progress on your thesis will be considered progress by your committee.
Your goal for Friday shouldn’t be to impress this person with how much you know or have read or how similar your views on economics are. You need to demonstrate that you’ll be worth the time investment. You should also use it as an opportunity to make sure that this person will be an advocate for you and your career.
Then there’s this aspect - your advisor chooses you. Or not. For a thesis director, there is reflected glory or condemnation in the way a thesis project is conceived and/or executed. If your problem seems trivial, or uninspiring, or your work appears to be lacking in some measure, you may not present an attractive enough package to be adopted. If, on the other hand, you have a question that someone finds intriguing or, better yet, significant, you may find that you get a great deal of guidance, help, support, and direction from your advisor, and s/he may be very eager to have you be under the wing.
My own advisor heard me discuss some ideas I had and suggested a direction I might want to go (which I did) and I think a good deal of the help I got was due, in part, to the fact that she felt that she was part of the genesis of the original idea and that she really cared to find out what I would (eventually) find out.
Hijack: in what type of program do they have grades? Professional? Do humanities? The only reason I didn’t get a 4.0 was a single A- (prof is a punitive bitch, but not for that reason alone). The only class where one might’ve had trouble is in statistics, and even then it would be hard to fail, or maybe grad school isn’t for you. Some professors say (“you’re all getting A’s”) on the first day. I think the justification is that you’re doing work for the intrinsic value at this point.
It was chemistry. We only had to take 6 courses before entering candidacy. In order to be able to get paid, we had to maintain a 3.0. So, obviously a B- or less is effectively failing the class, and your GPA is basically fixed forever once you take those 6 classes because dissertation credits are pass/fail. It generally worked that the 3 core classes were graded as if grades mattered and the 3 elective courses tended to be the “show up, try, and everyone will get an A” course. In that case, a 4.0 after the first year is actually meaningful.
I am not in the sciences so I can’t speak too specifically to the OP but if you plan on pursuing an academic career, fellowship, or a research position, the adviser will need to write many letters of recommendation for you. So it is important to have someone who is respected in the field, who makes a persuasive case for you, and is willing to send off multiple letters. I think this is very significant.