Can the university force me to supervise a PGR student?

[LittlePrecious]

I don’t want to give too many detail because of the sensitivity of the situation. But I have a PGR student where the supervisory relationship has deteriorated. The student has been doing their PhD for many years and is making little progress.

My department are quite supportive and trying to encourage the student to leave for their own good. But I fear there will be a bottleneck in the future where the student refuses to withdraw and the university supports them. At this point, the other supervisor and I plan to simply refuse to supervise the student any longer. But I’m not sure what would happen then. I am not getting a straight answer from HR.

Can the university force us to supervise the student? I know this will be dependent on the university’s supervision policies but there is no clarity in these policies about the instance where academics refuse to supervise a student.

Does your institution have an annual review for PGRs? That would normally be the moment at which lack of progress would be addressed. It's better for everyone than refusing to supervise but perhaps your institution has a different process?

Yes there is an annual review process for PGRs but its a tick-box exercise.
We've stated each year that the student has not made adequate progress but nothing has come of it.

at my university, the university has to provide a supervisor for the student. If the relationship with the original supervisor has broken down, then the HoD or graduate tutor will have to allocate someone else to be the supervisor. They can do that according to topics / workload etc.

If a student has passed their upgrade, they can only be forced to leave on the grounds of 'academic insufficiency'. which is defined in the academic manual & needs a series of meetings / pieces of evidence etc to show this. There should be an equivalent for your university. You would almost certainly need an organised & on-the-ball graduate tutor to manage the process.

Seems all university policies are different but it is likely the student will opt out or have to so you don't have to state that you refuse to supervise? E.G. In my university, there is a make or break review after 5 years of full time registration if no thesis is ready for submission. Even self-funded PhDs can't keep registering. But there is a rule about supervision being an obligation of the university so someone must be found and usually within the dept so often that means someone else is lumbered with the difficult student and resents the old supervisors for it.

The student passed their upgrade several years ago by the skin of their teeth.

We are progressing with the formalities around insufficiency while also trying to convince the student to withdraw. We fear that the student won't withdraw, will appeal the formalities, make a complaint and the university will cave in. At that stage we plan to refuse to supervise.

I don't think the student will opt-out of their own accord @RubyRoss We are pursuing formalities to remove the student because of poor progress which will be messier than them just withdrawing. As I said above, I worry that the student will appeal and complain, and the university will cave in to allow them to stay.

At my institution there is no such 5 year review. Students can keep registering and re-registering forever.

I suspect the five year rule in my university was written after a bitter experience. Only thing I can think of is to be prepared to defend yourself or make a compelling case for your supervision refusal by documenting the difficulty of supervision – any ignored emails, missed meetings or deadlines, non-submission of work, suggestions for improvements that were not taken up. Separate to that I’d document your efforts to report the issue: correspondence with the head of department, the progress reports that were not acted on, and so on. That should make it clear that there is no failure on your part.

Thank you @RubyRoss
We have extensive documentation of the student's poor performance over years. The other supervisor spotted that there might be a potential problem many years ago and kept rigorous notes.

My worry is that the student will appeal and complain, the appeal will be upheld and the student will be allowed to continue, we will refuse to supervise, but the university will tell us No, you have to supervise this student

But if you don't want to supervise, don't believe the student is capable, and argue that the supervision arrangement isn't working, then wouldn't the university be giving the student even more reason to complain if you were retained as a supervisor? If possible, I'd hint as such to the student to get them to be the ones to insist on a new supervisor.

Failing that (and assuming you have other supervision duties so you can't be accused of not meeting a contract requirement), can you lean on the claim that this student has already damaged your ouput and thus career development and if you are expected to continue with it, it will further damage your capacity to progress. Persumably you could have graduated a PhD by now and have joint publications or new projects arising from it.

If your university is into Athena Swan, you could note that it recognsies that female staff are held back from the expectation that they will deal with 'difficult students'. There must be other angles too but make it the department/university's problem and not yours. You've done your time with this student.

Yes, it potentially would give the student more ammunition to complain. However, we have been supervising the student for many years.While the relationship is rocky, its at least enduring and relatively functional.

The other issue is that none of my colleagues are, or would be, willing to step up and supervise the student in our place. So, if the student's hypothetical complaint was upheld and the university had to find them a supervisor, the university would struggle to do so. The logical answer, from the university's perspective, would surely be to coopt the people who had already been involved for years.

Your other points are also spot-on especially around women (and early career women of colour to boot) doing the heavy lifting on difficult students. Thank you.

You mention that you are progressing the process around insufficient progress. What form does that process take? You shouldn't be left to manage a failing student indefinitely; there should be some pathway for bringing things to a conclusion, if only for the student's sake as it's not in their interests to continue endlessly with a PhD that will not pass a viva. What's the process in your institution for that (hypothetical) scenario?

OP - i m in a totally similar situation. Exact same circumstances.
I fear it will not end well for me, despite all evidence that the student is not capable...

What a difficult position to be in! God that you've got documentation of the insufficient progress.

Some suggestions. The first is harsh:
Have you actually said, in simple terms "Your progress is unsatisfactory. YOu are not capable of completing."

A left field idea
I suggest you ramp the pace up to make it around that which you'd expect from a satisfactory or better than satisfactory candidate. Your aim is to push the student - absolutely legally - into realising they are not up to the task.

Become a very very active supervisor, and set out a schedule of every two weeks a piece of writing, to take the candidate to a submission date.

Take notes of each supervision, and email them to the candidate & supervisory team.

Note the agreed task set for the next supervision, and note when this is not done.

And so on. Ramp up the pace to achieve satisfactory outcomes, and force the candidate to realise they are not meeting the standard.

Alternatively, what is the maximum period of registration allowed? Let them dawdle on, see them the minimum number of times you need to (at my place it's 10 supervisions a year) encourage them to submit, then let them fail.

That's kind of the nuclear option, but if your university won't support you to de-register the candidate because of unsatisfactory progress, you have to let them fail.

You’ve had lots of good advice so I won’t reiterate this. But my mind is boggling at the idea of someone being allowed to keep re-registering indefinitely. Surely there must be a cut off point where they time out? Probably an obvious (ie stupid question), but have you spoken to Registry and/checked the Regs?

Sadly, if you have the expertise to supervise the subject and the space in your workload to do so you can be made to supervise by your Head. In my experience a breakdown of relationship is often resulting from a student not liking being told they aren't capable or work is of poor quality.

Here's my advice:

I would follow policy/procedure to the letter

Make an assessment of the work completed to date in terms of quantity and quality and set. Be clear with the student on whether the work is of doctoral quality or not.

Ask the student to give you a plan to complete the work by the submission date and come up with milestones (its their project to deliver)

Be clear with the student when deadlines of work to come to you will be and how long they should expect to hear back from you with feedback.

Record meetings thoroughly - particularly the agreed actions (or even better get the student to take the notes so show they understand what is expected of them).

Don't give any benefit of any doubt on excuses given for work being late or poor quality stick to the rules. If the student has mitigating circumstances follow your university process for this

I expect that this structure will either make the student work or provide evidence of insufficient progress.

Good luck!

There's absolutely phenomenal advice on this thread, thank you.

Until now, this has been fairly informal with us supervisors telling the student about their poor progress and hoping this will either make the student realise they are not up to the job, or that they will whip out an excellent performance.

That has not worked so we've progressed to a fairly formal performance management process which is being handled by our PGR Lead. The student will be set some rigid targets which cover both timing and quality of work submitted. If they don't meet the targets, they should/can/will be removed from the university. This process isn't normally used with PhD students so I'm not overly confident that the university will actually follow through and remove them. If the university doesn't remove them immediately, that's when we will refuse to supervise any longer otherwise we are just supervising indefinitely.

We have actually done both options one and two

With the first option, the student has adamantly said that they feel they are capable to complete. They have, moreover, questioned our judgement on the grounds of inexperience and research interest mismatch. Both of these suggestions are completely unfounded and have been refuted.

With the second option, we began to meet monthly with clear goals and rigorous notes being kept of the meetings. The student would repeatedly cancel meetings, not complete the work, or do only some of the work. So it became a huge time drain which actually didn't prove to be very effective at all.

I haven't spoken to them and the PGR lead hasn't mentioned anything about a cut-off point. This is definitely something to investigate, thank you.

The irony is that me and other supervisor actually aren't in the student's core research area.

We're following all the steps that you've outlined, thank you!

@LittlePrecious I did assume that you'd done 1 & 2 on my list because you sound thoroughly professional, and also nowadays we ALL need to cover our backs with PhD supervisions.

Maybe just back off now, do the minimum work you are required to do (at my place that's 10 meetings a year), keep a record - as you've been doing - and let him (I'm assuming a bloke, misandrist me) fail.

I had to do this once, and I'd kept a record of all the advice I'd given the candidate. It was awful because that particular candidate was very keen, but just couldn't get the writing up to the level needed (English was their 3rd language). We got an outside external in to look at the work. It was just dreadful, because I liked the student - and they tried, but they just weren't capable.

I've also been an External Examiner on a PhD which was submitted against the advice of the main supervisor. They brought me in because they knew I'd try to find something in the thesis, and be thorough & kind. But I couldn't find much that was of Doctoral level - the one bit that was, the candidate couldn't explain t me where they'd found the archive - I suspected major plagiarism.

In both cases, male candidate, female supervisor.

But first check in with the Director of PG studies at faculty or even university level, about maximum length of registration. Give that information to your student.

Just came on to say great advice here. Your formal process should end with the PGR leaving the university if they have consistently failed to progress. Failing that, as others have said, they may be out of time.

I would hope the university would not force you to supervise. Can't guarantee that of course. The only PhD I've ever failed as external (I'm a soft touch, honest) was one where, after 13 years, the supervisor tried to de-register the student, she appealed and the university let her stay! Can't remember whether they insisted that the original supervisor continued in harness or not. It didn't do her any favours. There was literally nothing I could pass in the thesis.

Stand firm. It will probably then be down to your HoD to resolve (I've been in that position too). Good luck.

Thank you @GoodThinkingMax We've backed off a little bit while the formal process starts up. But once the formalities are in place, we'll resume supervision to the same level that we supervise our other students (nothing more, nothing less).

Those sound like horrible situations to have found yourself in. Something is going seriously awry with PGR recruitment in UK academia. It's a shame because its ultimately the students who suffer most trying to get a degree that they're just not capable of.

Thank you @Igmum

That's the situation I'm concerned about - that we try to get the student out, they appeal, the university upholds, the student stays, the university says we have to continue to supervise.

I'm in a quandry as to what comes after that point.

How long has the student been registered for (barring any suspension periods)?