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by rossdavidh 1937 days ago
Having been in both academia (albeit only for a Master's, so Ph.D. treatment I saw only from third-person perspective) and industry, the main difference is what happens when you do land in a bad situation (i.e. with a bad supervisor). If you are in industry with a job skill for which there is demand, if you have a bad supervisor you just start shopping for a new job. So, regardless of whether or not the % of bad supervisors is different, the effects on you are different. If you have a bad supervisor, start interviewing, even if you can't afford to quit the job you have until a new one is found.

The fact that Ph.D. students tend to be much younger than their bosses probably also has something to do with it; experienced employees are more likely to realize "this is not normal", and leave.
1 comments
mattkrause 1937 days ago
Age might be a red herring. A bigger issue is that you can’t leave with a fraction of a PhD: 5/6ths of a PhD is effectively the same as nothing (or maybe a master’s degree). It doesn’t “vest” until your defense.

Sometimes one can change groups, but that is often politically and financially tricky.

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PeterisP 1936 days ago
IDK, the main part of the PhD is the work that goes into your research papers; if you leaver your current program but already have sufficient publications, in many universities there's a process (not commonly used, but a legitimate option still) where you just write them up in a thesis and go straight to a defence.

It would be hard to switch if you have a year's work invested in some research that's not published yet, in that case much of that effort "wouldn't count", so switching once you're a year in or so loses progress, but if you're 5/6ths ready, then that's different. Also, what's 5/6ths ready at your institution probably is completely sufficient at a bit less prestigious institution - not optimal, but it's important to know that there is a reasonable exit, a Plan B that allows you to leave abuse.

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mattkrause 1935 days ago
It's a bit circular: one of the major reasons people want to leave a group is because it is not productive. If your PI won't invest in data collection or sits on manuscripts for years, you won't have the raw materials for a thesis-by-publication.

As for transferring, other than a lab moving, I've never heard of someone switching just to defend. Most programs have "residency" requirements of a few years (ours is two years after a master's and at least 2/3s of the coursework, for example).

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rossdavidh 1937 days ago
Yeah you could hardly have devised a better system for disempowering a researcher's assistants.
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