Did anyone change supervisor during their doctoral studies? In future, MIT wants to make it easier to do just this. | Image: Dominick Reuter/MIT

The power imbalance between doctoral students and their supervisors is vast, not least because it is those same supervisors who also mark their final thesis. If the relationship between student and mentor no longer functions, doctoral students can find themselves unable to continue their research, and without the funds to do so. In order to reduce this dependency on the part of both doctoral and Master students, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston set up a new programme in March 2021. One of the things it offers is a guarantee of financial support for one semester that is independent of a student’s supervisor.

“We want students in unhealthy research situations to know that they can freely switch research supervisors without the worry of financial burden or fear of retaliation”, says MIT. Every department has to designate a ‘Transition Support Coordinator’ to this end, and inform everyone about it. These changes are in part the work of Nicholas Selby, who is himself a Master student. According to a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Shelby was dismissed from his studies in 2017, completely unexpectedly, after having worked on a research programme for 13 months. “My adviser’s department told me basically that I wasn’t their responsibility, and that I just had to kind of figure it out on my own”, says Selby. It was only thanks to the personal intervention of a management member in a different department that he was able to complete his outstanding five months on the programme. This in turn meant he can begin his doctorate. “Folks who are in these really traumatic and awful situations are going to have at least a little bit of an easier time pulling themselves out of those situations”.

This campaign for change was led by various student organisations. MIT now wants to ensure that students can also get help in less severe situations.