Continuing with my reflection on the European higher-education system, which I started in my previous post, I will focus in this post on how European schools treat PhD students, what support they provide them, and how that compares to the support, or lack thereof, in their US counterparts.

In a previous post, I elaborated on the phenomenon of the exploitation of graduate students as semi-free labor. Generally, in the USA, PhD students are treated as minions that have little to no rights in terms of work-life balance. Their funding is almost entirely dictated by dummy contracts that grant the advisor uncontested power in dictating how much they are worked (or overworked) and how long it takes to finish their degree. Also, barring sexual harassment, there is practically no system in place to protect the PhD student from academic abuse by their advisor.

Before I dig into specifics, it is worth mentioning that European schools generally treat their PhD students as employees rather than students. This is an important distinction as employees usually have well-defined rights and obligations, which makes abusing them a lot more difficult.

During my visit to Politecnico d’ Milano (PoliMi), A university of high global ranking in terms of research, I was fortunate to meet some of its PhD students and discuss their experience. I here list a few snippets of the things I learned from our conversations:

• At PoliMi, each student has two “advisors”. The first is meant to advise on research, while the other advises the students in matters of academic progress, such as coursework and milestones, as well as making sure all the student’s academic rights and obligations are respected. To me, the separation between these two functions is essential for ensuring the student is not abused for the sake of achieving the advisor’s research goals.
• Moreover, despite the school being a major research institute, I found out that the student graduates when they complete a set of well-defined milestones (e.g., a certain number of publications, a semester of study-abroad, etc.) established by the department. Such a milestone-based system prevents abusive advisors from indefinitely postponing their student’s graduation to “milk” them for the longest timeframe possible. In fact, a PhD student in Europe is expected to graduate in a certain timeframe (e.g. 3 years as per the Bologna process). That is, when the student is admitted into a program, they already know that, barring any emergencies, they WILL finish in 3 years. This is in stark contrast to the US academic culture that places unreasonable power in the hands of the advisor to determine when their student’s progress is “satisfactory”.
• When it comes to funding, students are not expected to be teaching assistants in return for their stipends. When a student enters the program, they are either funded by the research lab they join or by the state itself. As such, the student would not get distract or overwhelmed trying to juggle both teaching and research just to make ends meet. No wonder these students can make faster progress towards their degree!

At the University of Strasbourg, I also had the opportunity to meet some professors and students from the linguistics department and talked to them about the systems in place that protecting students from academic abuse. Two differences from the US system came to light:

• First, the university has the Habilitation process in place, which, in addition to a formal exam, requires professors to spend 6 years teaching and doing research on their own before they can take in and be responsible for advising any PhD student. This is a quite lengthy process that ensures advisors are well-trained and prepared for the task of supervising students. This is in contrast to how assistant professors in the US start advising students as soon as they finish their PhD. At such point, they usually lack the skills necessary to manage their students and lead them on the path of successfully and smoothly finishing their degree.
• For each student, the PhD committee conducts an annual evaluation. After discussing the student’s academic and research progress, the committee asks the advisor to leave the room to have a private conversation with the student. In particular, the committee investigates the student-advisor relationship and whether there is any issues or abuse taking place. This, in my opinion, is a much needed practice to place a check on the advisor’s power.

These are some anecdotal observations I felt obligated to present to my fellow colleagues in the US. As you can hopefully see, the reality of the PhD student life in the USA does not necessarily generalize to the rest of the world. There are other ways where PhD students can thrive and achieve without being stripped of their dignity.

I do not mean here to falsely depict the European higher-education system as some platonic realm. Our hosts at both universities have admitted to defects in the system, such as the lack of codified policies for dealing with academic abuse. For example, it seems mediation is the best, and probably only, course of action that can be taken in case of abuse. This is similar to what the ombudsperson does in US schools, which honestly is not always the best measure for deterring those in power.

Finally, I leave you with a quote a PoliMi’s student mentioned to me in passing. She was told by a faculty member in her school that:

In the modern Republic of Italy, two monarchies remain: The Vatican and the university. The deans are kings and queens, the professors are the nobility, and the students are pawns.

I hope the ring of this quote gets my message through.