What to do about a terrible PI? What authority do you go to?

Graduate School
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<p>Is there some equivalent to the Better Business Buereau for work practices in academia? </p>

<p>My friend is a graduate student in a very reputable program. His PI is currently an assistant professor. He complains about her quite often, but what he told me the last night made me wonder how serious his situation is.
Two of his labmates passed their qualifying exams the other day, and they went out to celebrate that night with the rest of the lab group. What should have been a happy occasion turned out to be one of the saddest scenes he's seen in his graduate career. Both of the students who passed their quals got drunk and started sobbing/screaming over how bad their PI is. Trying to keep this concise, she often leads her students astray in their research and insists that things be done her way, which isn't necessarily the best way. She also gives her students a lot of pressure to work long hours and get papers out so that she can receive her grant funding. </p>

<p>Aside from instances particular to this PI, my friend kept on bringing up how flawed the system is in general--there is no regulation to actually check whether the PI is doing her job professionally. I thought that at least there should be some anonymous feedback forms given periodically by the graduate students, but not even that exists. </p>

<p>He compared the hierarchy to a dictatorship. If the leader is intelligent, a dictatorship can actually work out fine. If the leader is incompetent, everybody gets screwed over. Not only is the PI incompetent, but she does not realize her own ineptitude, and she does not respect her students. </p>

<p>The PI's first PhD student is about graduate. She has submitted her thesis and has asked the PI multiple times to sign off her work. The PI keeps on excusing herself, saying that she's busy...my friend strongly suspects that the PI wants to keep this student around for as long as possible so that she can continue to do work for her. "A PI is supposed to be a role model and mentor...not a slave driver." Pressure to publish work in order to obtain grant money is no excuse to mistreat graduate students. </p>

<p>I could go into more details, but I probably already encroached upon tl;dr. </p>

<p>Is there anything to be done? Anyone who can possibly help, or is there really no one to check on a PI's integrity? </p>

<p>Apologies if I am ignorant in the field. I am not a graduate student myself.</p>

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<p>This kind of story really isn’t that uncommon for untenured/assistant profs. A PI is essentially a dictator, and during their race for tenure, they’re under a lot of pressure to win grants and publish papers. And you should remember, its the grant funding that pays for the grad students and lab supplies. </p>

<p>Though I would say that this is one of the worst (but certainly nowhere near the worst) stories like this I’ve heard, as long as the PI is not being abusive (sleep deprivation, yelling a lot, pitting grad students against one another, etc.), I honestly haven’t read anything here that demands action. In fact, this story sounds pretty typical for organic chemistry labs with untenured PI’s. The exception is the student trying to graduate, she should keep being aggressive about the prof signing off on their work, and possibly talk to the other profs on her committee or the dept head even if it becomes a serious problem. </p>

<p>Most places have graduate student organizations at the dept or school level that they should be able to talk to, but honestly, they tend not to have any real power to help. In my experience, there really isn’t much to check on a PI’s integrity. The idea of feedback forms seems silly to me, as it would be the faculty who read them… who are the ones who want you to work so hard for them in the first place. </p>

<p>Otherwise, welcome to grad school. Choose your PI wisely.</p>

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<p>To be honest what you said doesn’t sound that bad… do you find that uncommon? A lot of professors aren’t around enough to give their students much grief, but I mean look at it from her point of view. If she doesn’t get tenure, her life and career might go over the cliff.</p>

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<p>What about in more theoretical fields, like cs, theoretical physics, econ, math, or something where you don’t need a lab? Would something like this be as common in one of those fields?</p>

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<p>What if the PI is truly incompetent at research and an unreasonable person? It seems as if she pushes her methods/ideas onto her students and expects them to follow her instruction without question. She is not open to negotiation if a student knows a better way of approaching a problem…so a lot of work hours are wasted. </p>

<p>Yes, this is all a third-party account. Regardless, assuming there is a legitimate concern, there apparently is no regulation for PIs? </p>

<p>We have brought up the graduate student council, but like you said, despite their supposed purpose, it seems like they don’t have real power. As for feedback forms, I would think that they would be reviewed by staff or non-involved faculty.</p>

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<p>Get an MS and then go elsewhere for a PhD.</p>

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Not in math, no. The student-professor dynamics are a bit different for three main reasons:

  • Graduate students are typically funded by the department, not individual professors, so graduate students are never tied to an adviser they dislike.
  • Professors don’t need graduate students to run experiments for them. Quite to the opposite, involving a student in their research program often slows them down in the first few years.
  • Since all work is purely conceptual and very technical, mathematicians usually have a wider network of collaborators than many other disciplines. There’s no “closed research group” equivalent of a lab. </p>

<p>Computer science, on the other hand, seems to function more like traditional lab sciences. There’s a lot of pressure on professors to publish frequently, apply for grant money and students often do “lower-level” work (coding, numerical tests, etc) for the professor whose grants fund their stipend.</p>

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<p>The only “authority” I might think of is the department head, but I really don’t know what would happen. Have these people tried to talk to their PI alone?</p>

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<p>You and your friend are totally ignorant of academia - or the working world in general. The PI is your boss. Not a mentor, friend, buddy, or anything else. Perhaps they can also fill those roles, but that’s entirely optional. Just like in the entire working universe, your boss has dictatorial powers over you, and that’s that. Let me comment on a few things:</p>

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<p>It’s very unlikely that a student is in the position to understand whether something is the “best” way, and even then, the best way may not be the goal of this particular lab. The student is funded to do things the way the PI wants, not some arbitrary alternative that they’ve decided on.</p>

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<p>Well yeah - obviously. Why wouldn’t she do that? Every PI in the universe is going to encourage you to work hard.</p>

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<p>You don’t seem to grasp the purpose of being a professor. Professors don’t exist for the sake of the the graduate student. They exist to produce top notch research. There is a damn good system in place to ensure that this happens - which is why PIs are desperate to produce research all the time. The graduate student works towards this goal and gets experience and a degree in exchange. But the PI isn’t there to serve graduate students.</p>

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<p>Welcome to working life.</p>

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<p>So far you haven’t mentioned a single thing that approaches mistreatment. </p>

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<p>If she is incompetent at research, she’ll fail to get tenure, which is equivalent to being fired from academia permanently. Unreasonable is irrelevant, unless by unreasonable you mean commiting crimes, etc…</p>

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<p>Yeah, that’s why the student is getting paid and getting a degree.</p>

<p>Sorry to be harsh, but your friend needs to drop the sense of entitlement. It’s time to learn how graduate school works. The alternative, of course, is to move on and leave academia. Frankly, I doubt you’ll find much different there either.</p>

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<p>I agree that nothing here seemed to be too terrible or out of the ordinary. Specifically, “She also gives her students a lot of pressure to work long hours and get papers out so that she can receive her grant funding.” is more of an indication of a <em>good</em> PI. I’ve seen some who don’t have this attitude - and the labs only function well when the rest of the team is well motivated on their own (probably not a majority of the time).</p>

<p>As far as a couple grad students getting drunk and sobbing about their PI: as tetrahedr0n points out, this is just two people getting drunk and complaining about their boss. Nearly every person, ever, has done something like this. Of course, there’s a difference between letting out some steam (especially after quals!) and making a fool in front of yourself in front of members of the department who are: A. Your superiors B. Sober or C. Otherwise not in a position to understand where you’re coming from (ie undergrads or possibly OP’s friend).</p>

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<p>First of all, the students were drunk.</p>

<p>Second of all, this doesn’t even sound that uncommon. Pressure to work long hours and publish is what academia is, and even some of the nicest PIs put that pressure on their students. There is little “regulation” at any university, since one of the benefits of being a professor is that you get to run your lab the way you want to run it with a lot of autonomy and little oversight. There is no such thing as “anonymous feedback” - we are adults, and if students are having a problem with their PI they should talk to their PI. There’s no teacher to “tell” like in K-12. If the PI is truly intractable or a problem, then a grad student can talk to the Director of Graduate Studies.</p>

<p>It is up to each individual student to get the necessary signatures to graduate. Again, if the PI is trying to milk some cheap labor, the student should go to the DGS and ask for advice. That’s what a Director of Graduate Studies is for. However, it’s also possible that the PI is truly busy OR that the thesis is bad and the PI is the kind of person who avoid confrontation or something like that. Either way, welcome to adult life - the grad student needs to get on the ball to make sure things are taken care of so they can graduate.</p>

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<p>If it is truly a problem, this is what the thesis committee is for. The entire rationale behind thesis committees (which consist of several faculty who are not the student’s PI) is to keep the PI in check.</p>

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<p>Alcohol is a depressor, so it doesn’t surprise me they would get down and react the way that they did after becoming drunk. They weren’t sober, and therefore weren’t thinking clearly or describing events accurately. So whatever they said at that time really cannot be taken too seriously. </p>

<p>This is why students need to do research on their specific advisor more than just the program they like. They not only need to read the advisor’s past work, but can get in touch with current or former grad students of the advisor and get a feel for what it is like working for such a person. If the feedback is the same for many advisors - long hours, hard work, not being taken seriously or forced to do things “their” way - then it will become clear that that is how things are done in that discipline. Other disciplines might be more flexible, the PIs might be more engaging and involved in each student’s personal development (especially if the PI is already tenured, which is another thing to consider). This is why everyone always tells students not to consider “prestige” in the grad school hunt, but rather to find a good “fit.”</p>