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A comment on The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time. Parent comment

Re:The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste... by cperciva on Saturday December 18, 2010 @01:57PM (#2019987)
Some, yes. But definitely not all. My supervisor only had a very vague notion of what I was doing most of the time (to be fair, I only had a very vague notion of what I was doing most of the time).
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Re:The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste... by RK on Saturday December 18, 2010 @07:26PM (#2020691)
Did your supervisor think your work was good enough to attach his name to? I think that counts in the cheap labor argument, even if you aren't just a worker on the assembly line.

I think good advisors (should) enjoy supervising for the sake of supervising, but that doesn't mean it doesn't also boost their CV's.

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Re:The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste... by cperciva on Saturday December 18, 2010 @07:39PM (#2020707)
Did your supervisor think your work was good enough to attach his name to?

We did co-author a paper later, but it wasn't about anything in my thesis. I certainly didn't hear any indication from him that he disapproved of my thesis, though -- he was just happy to let me work independently, and it would have been entirely improper for his name to appear on work he hadn't contributed to.

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Re:The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste... by RK on Saturday December 18, 2010 @09:02PM (#2020847)
it would have been entirely improper for his name to appear on work he hadn't contributed to.

I do agree with that, but I think it's far from rare in academia.

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