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Having an advisor who is a non-specialist?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Not sure if you've covered this already. What are your thoughts on a PhD student having a supervisor who is competent and knowledgeable but not really established in the student's area of interest? For example, student x is working in contemporary metaphysics, and x's supervisor works mostly in ancient but has also done some work in contemporary metaphysics. Also, suppose that the student is not at a tippy top school. Bad idea? Makes no difference?

Another reader then responded:

Don't do it. It is vital that your advisor be an expert in your area. Why? Because she is supposed to, first, help you get to the front of the research frontier in a way only an active research can. Second, when it comes to a letter of support, someone working in Ancient, saying that a dissertation or student work in contemporary metaphysics is really important and cutting edge, counts for very little. Think of it comparatively. There are bound to be, for every job you apply for, at least 3 others who have a similar background and set of accomplishments as you who ALSO have a letter from a supervisor who actually works in the area. What is a search committee supposed to do.

I do not know how far down you are from the tippy top, but there are prejudices against lower ranked schools. I worked at an okay 4 year state college, and my colleagues showed a real disdain for applicants from such places. And a few of these were really quite unaccomplished colleagues. Personally, I just looked at the accomplishments, and the work.

While I understand where this latter reader is coming from, I nevertheless think their advice may be too simplistic. Allow me to explain.

As the comments section of my recent post on recovering from grad school mistakes sadly illustrates, awful advisors can absolutely destroy a grad school career. I've seen it happen. I know one advisor who specializes in Area X who has not graduated a single PhD student in close to 10 years. They are so harsh and unsympathetic–and such a perfectionist–that their students routinely spend the better part of a decade in the program before dropping out. How does the person get away with it? Well, they are a Super Famous Person in Area X, and the only person in the program who works in that area. So, when a student wants to do a dissertation in Area X, they follow the above reader's advise: they think they need the person as their dissertation advisor.

But hold on a minute. Why? There are other faculty in the program who have at least some competence in X, and the Super Famous Person routinely serves on dissertation committees for students who pass their defenses and graduate. So, why not have a more supportive advisor and simply have Super Famous Person as a member of their committee? Maybe the Super Famous Person would be offended. Then again, maybe not. Given how important having a good and supportive advisor seems to be in terms of students graduating and flourishing, this seems to me like it could at least be worth exploring. Assuming the person is willing to be on your committee, you could still get a letter from them, and you could still get feedback from them during the project itself, drawing on their expertise. So, why not?

Finally, the above reader notes that there are prejudices against students from lower-ranked programs. However, the ADPA report showed that some lower-ranked and unranked program had better overall placement rates than top programs. Based on my experience, candidates from lower-ranked programs tend to be very competitive at 'teaching schools'–which in turn are precisely the kinds of places were people are unlikely to care very much about 'how famous your advisor is'. At teaching schools, people are far more interested in whether you (A) can publish enough to get tenure, and (B) whether you are a great teacher who can draw majors. So again, in this kind of scenario, it is not all obvious to me that it is vital to have a Super Famous Person who specializes in X as your advisor to actually get a job in Area X. The important thing, in this scenario, is to actually graduate and have a good enough CV and good enough letters to get a teaching job.

In short, while I think the reader who responded to this query may be right for some circumstances (candidates looking for research jobs or jobs are research-y state schools), it is not at all clear to me that all things considered, the scenario the OP asked about is necessarily a bad idea. A lot depends, I think, on the details of their situation.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

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8 responses to “Having an advisor who is a non-specialist?”

  1. Michel

    I think it’s generally a bad idea. I don’t think your supervisor needs to be “famous” (insofar as philosophers can be!), but I do think they should actually be in your subfield, and not just adjacent in some way.
    Your supervisor is supposed to do a few things for you. One of those is help you write the dissertation, and another is write you a letter. And certainly, someone not fully in your subfield can do those things. But they’re also supposed to act as your introduction to the subfield–they’re supposed to help you develop your research network by sharing theirs, to guide you with your publications and choice of outlets, to guide you through the conference maze, to help you identify what’s hot and what’s not in the subfield, etc. It’s a lot harder for someone at the margins to do all that. And while these are not all things that will matter a ton to a teaching school, they are things that matter to your professional development (and to your tenure bid, and probably also to your happiness in the discipline).
    I think of supervisors as shortcuts. They’re not necessary, but they sure are handy. What I found, in the dissertation writing process, was that I could bring my work up to the requisite standard myself, but it took me a long time to do so. Whereas my supervisor could set me on the right path after just an hour or so of reading and talking. What I found was that meeting with him would save me months of work. And I think that holds true more broadly: your supervisor is there to save you the trouble of having to do everything for yourself, from scratch, with all the false starts that come with that. It’s not that you can’t do it without them, it’s just that their help is more efficient, and allows you to spend your energies elsewhere. A supervisor outside your AOS can still help, but they’re not likely to be as helpful as someone fully in your AOS.
    I see this happen a lot in my AOS, which is not at all well-represented in PhD-granting departments in North America. The handful or two of graduates from programs with proper representation in the AOS have an easier time fitting into the subfield network (because 1. their supervisors perform the introductions, and 2. they already know people, either their fellow students or colloquium speakers, etc.), and are generally better read in the subfield to start with (that’s the benefit of being able to take seminars/directed reading with someone in the subfield, and with having them be able to tell you about all kinds of things you should read for your work). The people in my AOS coming out of Princeton, Harvard, and Yale struggle a lot more on these counts, because they don’t have appropriate guidance. They just have someone who occasionally dabbles in the AOS but who’s never at any conferences and seldom, if ever, publishes in it.
    As I said, none of that is insurmountable. And, in fact, my AOS is largely made up of people in that boat, who had to struggle through. It’s just that having an advisor who’s squarely in your AOS is a huge leg up.
    When it comes to getting a job, though… Well, I think that the Princeton/Harvard/Yale grads have it a little easier, actually, because the halo compensates, and anyone hiring in our AOS is unlikely to know who the key figures/supervisors are anyway. The halo also makes up for the fact that it’s a very low-status subfield. Plus, nobody is actually hiring in this AOS anyway, and no number of letters from famous people in the subfield will suffice to make up for its low status and get you an interview (at least, that’s been my experience, and it looks to me like it’s my friends’ experience as well).

    Reply
  2. Marcus Arvan

    Hey Michel: much of what you say sounds totally reasonable. But it’s simply not clear to me that one needs one’s advisor to do those things. I don’t see why someone else on one’s dissertation committee couldn’t do all of those things—and I don’t see why them merely being on one’s committee means that they are at the “margin” of what you do.
    An example: I had an influential senior figure on my committee who specializes in Rawls—and my dissertation was heavily influenced by Rawls. However, I didn’t have them as my advisor, mostly because they were new to my program at the time but also because I just had a good relationship with my advisor (whose supportiveness, as I’ve explained many times, basically saved my career).
    Bearing this is mind, why suppose that that the person who specializes in your dissertation area has to be your advisor? If they are on your committee, read your work, meet with you and provide ample feedback (as my Rawls specialist did), and write you a positive letter, what difference does it make? It seems to me that this way you can get most if not all of the benefits of working with them while at the same time (say) having an advisor who you have a closer and more supportive relationship with?

    Reply
  3. Michel

    Marcus:
    Sure, if they’re doing all that work for you without being your official supervisor, then great! What you need is someone who’ll do that work, titles be damned. And as long as someone is doing that work for you, then I think you’re in good shape.
    My hunch is that it’s uncommon for people who don’t feel bound by a supervisory relationship to do that work, but maybe I’m wrong. And things can easily be very different in a department with depth (which I confess is not the scenario I was imagining). I don’t think it matters a ton that you have a Rawls specialist for a supervisor, for example, as long as you have a political philosopher.
    I guess I’m mostly thinking of a situation where, say, you want to work in metaphysics and either nobody in your department does, or one person does but they’re a bad match for some reason, so you work with the Ancient philosopher who dabbles in metaphysics instead, with no direct support from a metaphysicist/ian. Or, to stick with Rawls/political philosophy, nobody in the department actually specializes in political philosophy but you want to write on Rawls, so you go with the Ancient philosopher who’s interested in Aristotle’s Politics (but not much more). I think that’s not uncommon, and it just seems like setting yourself up for a harder time.

    Reply
  4. Shen-yi Liao

    Agree with Michel’s point but would put it slightly differently.
    There’s an (implicit?) hierarchy of subfields of philosophy by prestige, and there’s an (implicit?) hierarchy of institutions by prestige, and the two hierarchies interact. Unfortunate and unjust, but the way that things are. As things stand, it’s more acceptable to have an advisor from a more prestigious subfield, especially if one is at a more prestigious institution.

    Reply
  5. Zac

    Michel:
    I find it interesting that to you the bigger obstacle posed to a recent graduate is subfield integration, rather than job security. As you mention in the last bit of your post, a student from a top-tier school is invariably more likely to secure a job, right? So shouldn’t that be the priority over sub-field integration, since the latter condition is only possible in the first place if the former is met?
    I ask out of genuine curiosity because I am facing a similar instance. I’m an undergraduate getting ready to apply to grad schools — there is someone at a mid-to-low tier school who is probably the best qualified in North America to supervise on the topic. There are other people, though, who are capable but just less so at higher tier schools, and I think I’ve decided to prioritize the higher tier schools because they just provide such a higher chance at actually securing a job. The specialty person might have their contacts, but outside of those contacts the institutional prestige will count for nil in the hiring process. From a higher-tier school, the lack of specific network integration will be made up by the institutional prestige, which also has the benefit of being recognized outside of the limited sphere of the more qualified advisor. My AOS is also quite narrow, and so by counting on advisor prestige rather than institution prestige, I’m assuming that there will even be people hiring in that narrow AOS. If there aren’t, then all the better to have the more widely recognized institutional prestige, right?
    Thoughts?

    Reply
  6. Tom

    Zac, I think one can over-emphasize things like institutional prestige, and even the prestige of a supervisor. These things matter, sure. But the quality of your work and your ability as a philosopher matters more, I’d say. I’ve seen people who were amazing thinkers and who published excellent work during or immediately after their PhD go on to succeed who came from mid to low-tier schools. And I’ve seen people attend top schools and leave academia. People generally recognize now that good thinkers can come from all over the place, not just the top schools. I’d say that if you’re not cut out for philosophy, going to a top school won’t help you one bit.

    Reply
  7. Evan

    I partially agree with Tom in that the quality of work is important as well. However, we have to ask: “How often do hiring committees actually read some of the applicant’s works to determine whether they are in fact of good quality?”
    I’ve read a lot of academic works from supposedly prestige publications such as Oxford University Press and other top academic journals. My conclusion? Some are shoddy. And many times, these articles tend to beat around the bush in their arguments.
    It’s easy to claim that quality “matters more” if in fact most hiring committees actually spend the time familiarizing themselves with the applicants’ works.
    But do they? Or do many (or most) of them just look at how much scholarly works the applicant has published and where the works were published on his or her CV?
    If the latter, then I’m assuming that the hiring committees only care if the applicant has done at least the bare minimum to get their papers or other works published by these journals or academic publishers.
    I’m not an academic, but if I were one and I truly value high quality work, then I’d read some if their works myself. I wouldn’t want to take for granted that the applicant’s work could be of the bare minimum in terms of quality if my university or myself expects high or excellent quality academic works.

    Reply
  8. Amanda

    My own experience does not line up with Tom’s claims. I think prestige matters far more than quality. Many people on search committees do not even closely read the writing samples, because they don’t consider themselves experts. Anyway, while sometimes persons overcome low prestige, I think it is far more common that persons who don’t deserve all the accolades get them anyway, because of institutional prestige.

    Reply

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