PostDoc Discussion Forum

You are feeling so conflicted about accepting this offer because your heart recognises the many red flags in the PhD project and supervisors. Supervisors with absolutely no experience and knowledge in the field of your PhD is a recipe for disaster. I have never seen any happy, successful PhD project coming out of the situation unless new supervisors who are experts in the field are brought in later.

It's hard as an international student to obtain full scholarship. If you accept this scholarship, is it possible to change to another PhD project with a supervisor that you like later on? This approach will burn many bridges and is potentially risky. Another approach is to work as a technician and wait for PhD opportunity in that academic group. Yet another is to apply for an industry job and ask for sponsored PhD to upskill after 1-2 years.

I'll guess I'll do the counter-argument;

There may be 'red flags', but if your supervisor has a track record in blue-sky research through which they've supervised students to completion, doing this type of work for a PhD is not automatically worrying or a bad thing. It's also not necessarily a bad thing for a supervisor not to know much about the PhD topic itself; what tends to count far more is they're an experienced supervisor with connections who can firmly advise on 'how to do a PhD', rather than the literature/method/etc. as that, typically, needs to come from you as a PhD candidate.

'Failure' in academia means failing to propose a valid question, or methodological flaw. It does not mean showing what you did/made 'works', as that's bad science. Trying something new and showing it doesn't work is a PhD, if done rigorously.

Pragmatically, if you're doing a PhD, there's nothing stopping you applying for other vacancies/studentships - though it would add the slight hurdle of having to explain well why you want to leave the one you're on. It might also, though, open doors as you'll have connections to other professors/groups etc. in the process of the PhD that could lead to the discussion on moving; a far harder one to have if you're on the outside applying.

It's also generally the case any PhD candidate can, and should, shape their PhD, rather than just painting-by-numbers under direction. If you think the project has a flaw, then the goal should be to identify it, argue it, and fix it, rather than blindly continue. The biggest catch there, though, would be what exactly in funded - which may not be as malleable.

The tests for me, in discussion with the potential supervisor would be..

- How many PhDs have they supervised before? What were the outcomes?
- How much is the research constrained by the funding objectives, and how much is open to interpretation or change?
- How well connected/respected in the group in the general field?

The decision would be balanced between how well these are answered, vs the risk of not finding and equivalent funded PhD - which might mean they don't need to be brilliantly answered, just not awfully answered.