Humphrey Davy may have invented the safety lamp among other things, but his most prized achievement was ‘discovering’ his student Michael Faraday. Even in modern times, the ideal supervisor-cum-mentor and student relationship is equally cherished.
But in our era of highly competitive research, having to spend too much time dealing with the woeful people-handling skills of managerially inept supervisors translates into four years of torture for PhD students. A supervisor insecure about self-recognition tends to resort to hard-line micromanagement, which suffocates a student’s innate ability. The industrial working culture systematically emphasizes people skills as much as technical skills, but the absence of people skills within universities has come to be accepted. Many academics do develop people-handling skills over the years, and some are simply born mentors, but generally, the university research environment sorely misses a formalized approach to people skills, such as, for example, a Human Resource management group within each department. While universities have realized that language skills are indispensable to the internationalization process, people skills continue to be undervalued and overlooked. The managerial style a supervisor adopts toward a student is subjective, and knowing how to get the best out of a student requires training. When a PhD candidate makes the compromise of tolerating a supervisor in exchange for the opportunity to work on an interesting project, remarks like, ‘My supervisor’s just a sadist…extremely irritating’…or ‘having invested so much, I’m stuck with him for a couple more years!’, become quite common. The end result is sagging morale, an unhealthy research environment and poor productivity. Many a student’s career has been marred by having to deal with an extremely difficult supervisor. Isn’t it time, then, that this be viewed with due importance?
Institutions that teach people skills don’t make it any easier. Most managerially oriented programs hate to admit applicants who have purely academic backgrounds, because they believe such ‘pure academics’ have nothing of value to contribute to their classes. Indeed, such a cycle . academics having poor managerial backgrounds, and in turn managerial training programs not admitting them for this reason . spirals ominously downward. It’s also a reason why companies are usually reluctant to employ university faculty members who have no industrial background.
So, what can a university like TU Delft do to combat this problem? Firstly, the university must break this cycle by offering a sufficient number of internal workshops that teach supervisory skills. Secondly, a positive attitude needs to be instilled regarding the improvement of staff members’ people- handling capabilities. Approaches to tutelage, management of technology and the like draw widespread interest, yet the managerial skills required in day-to-day academic research aren’t considered worthwhile. And while academia has adapted well to formulating research strategies and drawing-up project proposals, no real emphasis or importance has been placed on creating a research environment that inspires students and allows them to thrive. It’s time that the situation is changed for the better, or else universities will continue to lose researchers to industry.
Ramesh Chidambaram uit India is MSc-student micro-elektronica.
Humphrey Davy may have invented the safety lamp among other things, but his most prized achievement was ‘discovering’ his student Michael Faraday. Even in modern times, the ideal supervisor-cum-mentor and student relationship is equally cherished. But in our era of highly competitive research, having to spend too much time dealing with the woeful people-handling skills of managerially inept supervisors translates into four years of torture for PhD students. A supervisor insecure about self-recognition tends to resort to hard-line micromanagement, which suffocates a student’s innate ability. The industrial working culture systematically emphasizes people skills as much as technical skills, but the absence of people skills within universities has come to be accepted. Many academics do develop people-handling skills over the years, and some are simply born mentors, but generally, the university research environment sorely misses a formalized approach to people skills, such as, for example, a Human Resource management group within each department. While universities have realized that language skills are indispensable to the internationalization process, people skills continue to be undervalued and overlooked. The managerial style a supervisor adopts toward a student is subjective, and knowing how to get the best out of a student requires training. When a PhD candidate makes the compromise of tolerating a supervisor in exchange for the opportunity to work on an interesting project, remarks like, ‘My supervisor’s just a sadist…extremely irritating’…or ‘having invested so much, I’m stuck with him for a couple more years!’, become quite common. The end result is sagging morale, an unhealthy research environment and poor productivity. Many a student’s career has been marred by having to deal with an extremely difficult supervisor. Isn’t it time, then, that this be viewed with due importance?
Institutions that teach people skills don’t make it any easier. Most managerially oriented programs hate to admit applicants who have purely academic backgrounds, because they believe such ‘pure academics’ have nothing of value to contribute to their classes. Indeed, such a cycle . academics having poor managerial backgrounds, and in turn managerial training programs not admitting them for this reason . spirals ominously downward. It’s also a reason why companies are usually reluctant to employ university faculty members who have no industrial background.
So, what can a university like TU Delft do to combat this problem? Firstly, the university must break this cycle by offering a sufficient number of internal workshops that teach supervisory skills. Secondly, a positive attitude needs to be instilled regarding the improvement of staff members’ people- handling capabilities. Approaches to tutelage, management of technology and the like draw widespread interest, yet the managerial skills required in day-to-day academic research aren’t considered worthwhile. And while academia has adapted well to formulating research strategies and drawing-up project proposals, no real emphasis or importance has been placed on creating a research environment that inspires students and allows them to thrive. It’s time that the situation is changed for the better, or else universities will continue to lose researchers to industry.
Ramesh Chidambaram uit India is MSc-student micro-elektronica.
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