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Dealing with a department with issues as a grad student?

In our new "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I'm in a phd program that has recently had a lot of turnover and department issues. While I am done with coursework and have a relatively clear path to finishing my dissertation, I worry about further developments and obstacles that are both unforeseeable (in their specifics) and out of my control as a grad student. Each time there is a new instance of bad news, I go through a new cycle of anxiety about whether it will be viable to finish in the program and whether that particular development will have any bearing on my job prospects.

Does anyone have any advice on how to both a) deal with this kind of anxiety as a grad student and b) try and better identify what kinds of developments I should take seriously as reasons to consider searching for ways to transition out of graduate school? I think (b) is a more pressing issue, as there are plenty of things that decrease the quality of intellectual environment without threatening my ability to finish in my program or decreasing my chances of finding a job. Plus, figuring out (b) will contribute to figuring out (a).

I'm sorry the OP is dealing with this. I had to transfer PhD programs when four of my first program's faculty were hired away by other programs. I was fortunate enough to have it happen early on, so I can only imagine how difficult it must be to see faculty turnover and other stuff happen much later on. Alas, I'm not sure that I have any helpful advice to offer aside from: just focus on finishing and putting yourself in the best position you can to get a job. Maybe also try to keep in good touch with faculty who have been hired away?

What do readers think? It would be great to hear from readers who have grappled with similar situations.

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10 responses to “Dealing with a department with issues as a grad student?”

  1. you have my pity

    Without knowing the particulars, it is hard to give advice. But bad departments – departments falling apart – are really quite bad for students. They are not getting the basic support they need. Sometimes faculty are really divided into camps and faculty from one group do not support the students working with the other group. But, again, without knowing details there is little concrete to say about your situation

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  2. anon

    Hard to give advice without a bit more details on the issues. But at this level of abstraction, my advice is to focus on yourself, your committee, and your dissertation. Remove yourself from the departmental environment as best you can, whether that’s just in thought or maybe in terms of physical distance too.
    There are good supports you can find outside of departments in terms of things like writing groups (think students in other departments or the virtual dissertation groups that get organized once in a while.)

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  3. mossy

    Your priority is to finish. The main possible obstacle to that, based on what you say, would be something like losing faculty on your committee. There are a few ways to avoid this, though not entirely. Do not work with untenured faculty for one thing. I knew someone whose advisor was not tenured and then was denied tenure and that caused a big scramble. It might also be best to take caution around new hires since I have seen new hires move in a few years. Ultimately, you cannot control whether someone moves to a different institution since even tenured faculty that have been around for years sometimes leave. The other thing to consider is whether upcoming retirements might also affect your plans.
    As far as job prospects go, it is hard to say much without specifics except maintain good relationships with as many people as possible for the sake of letters. If people leave and you maintain positive relationships, then you have a letter writer from another institution now, which might actually be helpful.
    Ultimately, if you are worried, I would say you would have to weigh options and probably focus on either transferring out or simply finishing ASAP.

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  4. Solidarity with those stuck in bad situations

    I agree with @you have my pity above. There are a range of possibilities, anything from transferring and filing reports against toxic faculty to staying the course and defending amid the chaos, and which would be best would depend on specifics. Unfortunately, the problem of toxic departments is painfully common, but varied in such a way as to lack a catch-all solution. So I’m very sorry you’re going through this, and that it’s hard to know what to do in response!
    Anecdotally, I see grad students escape from bad situations and flourish. In the cases where the badness of the situation is known by others in the field, the understanding is usually that they as grad students wound up in a bad situation (i.e., department with problematic members) and were not themselves part of the problem. Based on your saying that you’re close to defending, my instinct would be to recommend defending and finding ways to keep the sources of anxiety from affecting you post-defense. But if the situation is closer to the worst-case scenario, more drastic measures might be needed; and besides, the problem seems to be so bad that you’re considering leaving academia and not just the department, suggesting a problem that is far more insidious than annoying faculty. Thus, it’s hard to know what to recommend.
    As for the anxiety, this is a difficult question because all grad students face anxiety, but for some it is far worse than others because of the nature of the environment. There are generic recommendations — get a hobby, drink more water, blah blah — but these may or may not address your concern.
    Anyhow, I’m so sorry about OP’s situation and hope that an end to the trauma of some kind is near!

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  5. AnotherCluelessGradStudent

    I read the OP as saying that they could finish but they are really anxious that they wont achieve the level of scholarly development they expected and their long-term job prospects feel at risk.
    I honestly struggle to understand faculty members who, having managed to secure a job their advisees envy, intone that “your priority is to finish” or similar statements – (apart maybe from the separate desire of departments/faculty to keep time to completion low and get time to work with newly admitted students that do not necessarily align with grad student interests/desires).
    If you’re a PhD student in a field like philosophy, it is very likely that developing true mastery of the field needed to work at the cutting edge of your AOS is an important life goal, as is getting the type of job that will allow you have the intellectual and professional community that you want.
    Given these life objectives, it is perfectly rational, maybe admirable, to think that one’s priority is not to just finish the PhD having crossed a minimum competence threshold needed to graduate, but to have achieved your academic development goals within the PhD, with strong support of faculty members – not just as instruments for rec letters but as mentors and collaborators – and to graduate into a job in line with one’s career ambitions.
    I really wish that departments could at least try to align their goals for grad students with the goals of many if not most grad students. We don’t, generally, just want a piece of paper, we want an education we can feel enriched by and a career that continues from our PhDs. Not all of us will even say this because faculty support is so vital and, for a lot faculty members, a PhD student who conceals their need for faculty support is a lot more desirable than one who wants to meet more frequently, get more feedback, or, worse, transfer to another program if that seems like it would be in their best interests.
    I really feel for the OP’s concerns and wish they were taken seriously by people who in theory might be able to address them.

    Reply
  6. East Coaster

    @ACGS,
    Here is a way to charitably read the faculty:
    If you distinguish between criteria and decision procedure (as philosophers familiarly do), then the faculty could be saying “The best decision procedure for you to achieve the criteria you have is ‘just finish’”. That is, everyone in the game knows that these are engaging the material productively and getting an adequate job are almost always higher priorities than just finishing. But it might be the experience of faculty that students fail to strategically progress toward those goals and that students who aim to ‘just finish’ do better at achieving those goals.
    If you think that your advisors don’t have a reasonable sense of your interests or don’t know how to advance them, I suspect you should switch advisors or leave. That is not a healthy situation. But if you generally think well of your advisors as advisors, then it might be good to be at least somewhat credulous regarding their advice, not subjecting it to the philosophers’ “I can figure everything out from first principles.”

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  7. mossy

    For the record, I am a graduate student. I think it has been difficult to adequately address the OP’s concerns without more specifics. However, what they describe is a situation in which they basically wish to escape. One can escape an awful graduate department by dropping out, transferring, or graduating. Given that the OP is nearly done, finishing would seem to be the easiest option here. That does not mean that it is the ideal option or even necessarily the best. Of course, being in a graduate program that isn’t terrible from the beginning would be best, but that is not an option the OP can take without a time machine.
    This is why I saw the ultimate decision as finishing or transferring. Perhaps transferring is the best option since that buys the OP time and a new opportunity to receive from a new graduate program what they could not get from the previous one. I am perhaps somewhat biased precisely because I am a graduate student who has become a bit weary of graduate school and so imagine that, given such a situation, I would want to just finish already and get out.

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  8. academic migrant

    I also originated from a department with internal conflicts, to the extent that different streams of philosophers would basically do their best to hinder the hiring of philosophers of other streams. This partly resulted in very few of the graduates getting stable academic jobs, as the training was well known to be subpar. I just did what most other students there who cared about staying in academic philosophy did, applying for another phd program.
    For me, it really depended on the costs of transferring on one hand, and whether the reputation/training of the original department becomes a liability on the job market on the other.

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  9. OP uncertain grad student

    OP here. I appreciate everyone’s feedback in this thread. I don’t want to give too many details, since I’d like to remain anonymous, though I understand that makes it difficult to give specific advice. However, I did want to clarify that I didn’t mean to imply that I was close to defending, rather that I have a clearly articulated dissertation project (I know in this case that “relatively clear path” does not mean easy, quick, or without further obstacles). I think that clarification might be relevant to some of the advice.
    Also, my primary concern is less about what specific decision to make and more about how to evaluate factors, whatever they are. For instance, there are conflicting views about how these things affect job prospects. If it seems that they don’t affect job prospects much and the crappiness is primarily in having to be in a dysfunctional department, then sticking it out seems to be a perfectly reasonable option. But if they do, then transferring might be worth the costs (moving, increased time to degree, possibly having to change or revise dissertation topics). So it’s primarily that kind of thing that I am unsure about when it comes to making any decisions.
    I know that this is ultimately a very personal decision that only I can make, but just thought it made sense to clarify a little bit. Again, I really appreciate everyone’s comments.

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  10. academic migrant

    If you’re ok with moving overseas, you may also consider excellent phd programs without coursework requirements. You may have to pitch your dissertation plans to a potential supervisor as a research proposal/statement, and see whether you can find a good place to work on it.
    The places to check include but are not limited to the UK and Australasia.

    Reply

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