Are we asking too much of our doctoral students and postdocs?
Are we asking too much of our doctoral students and postdocs?
Or has it always been like this for every generation in the past.....
The answer is a whimper and muffled sound vaguely reminiscent of a "yes."
I can only speak for myself, but no. An appropriate amount was asked of me, and I probably ask for less from my students. I worked ~40 hours a week, plus maybe a couple crunches a year.
I think it depends heavily not just on the PI and student, but the field of study and department as well.
And the country!
Very true for the field of study. In Biology, there is a very different way of managing projects and students depending on whether you work in Molecular & Cellular Biology, or rather in Ecology & Evolution. I'm in the latter, and while it's not without problem, it's the land of fluffy bears compared to what some of my university friends who worked in cellular biology...
No doubt.
To put in in perspective, my graduate experience was at Georgia Tech (top 10 at the time, now top 5 in the US) in chemical engineering. My postdoc was at the university of Minnesota (top 2 at the time, still top 10). So pretty elite programs in engineering.
Like most things in academia, this varies widely depending on your advisor. In my time in grad school (physics), my advisor was very fair with my time and my workload was similar to my current workload in industry. However, most of my fellow grad students at my institution that I interacted with had significantly higher workloads and were often working late and on weekends.
When I was visiting grad schools during the admissions process, this was something that I always asked current grad students about, as it was very important to me to find an advisor that allowed a good work/life balance. It is also something I advise undergrads interested in grad school to consider.
Very fair. While I would say most of my fellow students had reasonable work loads, there were certainly exceptions.And I've heard horror stories.