Student-supervisor model

“I think we have to acknowledge that supervisors are often the only touchpoint for somebody doing a thesis at that institution. That means that whatever that person is saying is magnified 10 times, and it just becomes so much more significant in the student’s world. The power but also the importance of this person in the context is really significant. On the flip-side, supervisors are having to take on more and more research students. Mentoring half a dozen students is simply a gigantic workload. It’s just a lot of reading and countless meetings and a lot of time that you have to spend on top of all the other commitments that you have.

So, the traditional student–supervisor model seems broken. Universities are no longer navel-gazing institutions. And yet, we’re still using the same models of research practice that we were using 50 years ago. Something needs to give. Providing that student with more mechanisms of support than what is currently available would be valuable. We know this from social work: the more social supports people have, the more likely they are to be resilient and get through any kind of mental health issues that they have. So, you know, there’s a whole body of research that kind of supports this notion from another angle, which we really should be tapping into in a research space.”

(Kim Beasy)